Is the gender gap theory in criminology valid for substance abusers who have been imprisoned? We analyzed the risk of committing a crime between 2006 and 2010 using a Cox regression analysis. The data from Finland consisted of 2,034 women and 4,537 men substance abusers divided into groups based on prior imprisonment. Overall, men had a greater risk of committing any crime than women did. However, the gender gap hypothesis was not valid in the specific case of property crimes in a substance-abusing population with prior incarcerations. Women with prior convictions differ profoundly from other substance-abusing women. This raises a question if imprisonment had a wider marginalizing effect on women than on men.
The race/sentencing literature has focused on imprisonment and sentence length decisions to the exclusion of other relevant outcomes. The present study extends this research by examining a previously overlooked decision—that is, the decision to deny federal offenders access to "good time" through sentencing. The current study uses data from the United States Sentencing Commission (USSC; fiscal years [FYs] 2010-2012) to examine the potential influence of race and ethnicity on this previously unstudied outcome. Results indicate that relative to White offenders, Latino and Native American offenders are more likely to be denied good-time access, while Asian offenders are less likely to be denied access. African American offenders are treated no differently than White offenders. Implications for research and practice are discussed in detail.
Noting the paucity of research on the racial threat hypothesis in the juvenile courts, this study examined the interplay of defendant characteristics and country-level characteristics on dispositions. Data were retrieved from the Department of Juvenile Justice files in South Carolina and were analyzed using multinomial logistic hierarchical linear modeling. Results revealed support for the racial threat hypothesis, as racial inequity operated in a different manner (more punitively) for Black defendants. Larger Black populations in counties also led to an increased use of punitive sanctions. In addition, concentrated disadvantage effects were found, and heightened levels of teenage population led to higher incarceration rates for Black defendants. Limitations of this study, implications for stakeholders/practitioners, and directions for future research are discussed.
The present study explores self-control, risky lifestyles, and domain-specific opportunities as explanations of violent victimization among adult male inmates from South Korea. Data were collected from the Inmate’s Conduct and Prison Security Survey in South Korea (N = 951). Structural equation modeling was used by applying a four-step process to examine the indirect effects of low self-control on prison victimization via risky lifestyles. We find that low self-control indirectly affects violent victimization via opportunities through risky lifestyles, and that risky lifestyles fully mediate the effect of low self-control on violent victimization in prison settings. Findings from the current study reinforce the contention that the relationship between low self-control and victimization includes a connection to opportunities for victimization. The results further suggest that the vulnerability that comes with possessing low self-control operates through the opportunities generated in living a risky lifestyle.
The available scientific evidence on the value of detectives in clearing crimes generally suggests that most crimes are solved through the random circumstances of crime scenes rather than special follow-up investigation. Other research, however, suggests that the work of criminal investigators can increase the likelihood that crimes might be cleared through arrest. After years of homicide clearance rates that were lower than the national average, the Boston Police Department engaged a problem-oriented policing approach to improve their post-homicide criminal investigation processes and practices. Our quasi-experimental statistical analyses suggest that the intervention significantly increased key investigative activities and improved Boston homicide clearance rates relative to existing homicide clearance trends in other Massachusetts and U.S. jurisdictions.
This article extends prior research on routine activities and youth deviance by focusing on a broader range of routine activity patterns (RAPs) and on how their effects are conditioned by bonds to society and peer context. As hypothesized, the RAPs with the most consistent effects on delinquency were those lowest, or highest, in both structure and visibility. However, the relationship between school-related activities and delinquency was complex and varied across levels of the moderators in unexpected ways, given the structure and visibility of this RAP. Other RAPs, including unstructured peer interaction, affected delinquency independent of adolescents’ social relations, suggesting that neither social bonding nor external social control, via peer group norms, shapes the effects of situationally based opportunities for deviance on adolescents’ behaviors in a consistent manner.
While the relationship between juvenile transfer and recidivism has received much scholarly attention, the effect of transfer on other outcomes has largely been ignored. This study examined the effect of transfer on 7-year educational and employment outcomes, with time in the community and perceived stigma as hypothesized mediators. Pathways to Desistance data were analyzed with propensity score matching and mediation analysis. Transfer to criminal court strongly predicts lower employment outcomes, fully mediated by diminished time in the community. Transfer also marginally predicts higher educational outcomes. Education results call for further research, and employment results suggest that transfer policies should be revisited.
This study examines the direct, reciprocal, and indirect effects of parolees on neighborhoods, including residential vacancies, property sales, public assistance, and crime. Cross-lagged autoregressive models are estimated using a unique data set containing annual neighborhood information on parolees, crime rates, and neighborhood structure in the city of Cleveland, Ohio, between 2000 and 2008. Results suggest parolees degrade neighborhood structure, and these effects are direct, reciprocal, and indirect. Understanding how the presence of parolees can contribute to changes in neighborhood processes linked to crime will broaden our understanding of the effects that parolees have on communities and highlight additional areas for intervention.
Cyberbullying has been subject to a debate about whether it is a subtype of traditional bullying or a distinct deviant behavior from traditional bullying. Applying a longitudinal South Korean youth sample and latent group-based trajectory modeling, the current study examines (a) an overlap of developmental trajectories between cyberbullying and traditional bullying, and (b) effects of predictors on developmental trajectory groups for both cyberbullying and traditional bullying. It is concluded that cyberbullying is close to a variation of bullying rather than a distinct deviant behavior and reported an overlap of developmental trajectories between cyberbullying and traditional bullying, and strong associations between both forms of bullying and peer-related predictors. Policy implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.
The current study provides a comprehensive test of differential social support and coercion (DSSC) theory of crime as proposed by Colvin, Cullen, and Vander Ven. DSSC suggests that social interactions are either coercive or supportive in nature and that these interactions figure prominently into the development of self-control and delinquent behavior. Data drawn from the Evaluation of the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) assess four DSSC research hypotheses. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression suggests that parental support reduces impulsive behavior whereas coercive relationships correlate with increased impulsivity. Logistic regression indicates that parental support associates with reduced violent offending odds and that interpersonal coercion and low self-control increase violent offending. Beyond testing micro-level DSSC theory, these findings have important implications for criminal justice responses to juvenile offending.
The response to a probation violation is often a shared decision between the probation officer and the supervising judge. The result of this decision is a range of possible outcomes. One violation outcome examined here was extended supervision lengths in lieu of incarceration. This decision has been overlooked by prior research but is important to ensure equitable treatment of probationers. This study examined behavioral and organizational factors that resulted in extended supervisions for 6,034 probationers within a large county agency. On average, supervision extensions for these probationers lasted approximately 2 months (62.08 days). The decision-making framework partially explains these extensions because officers had access to poor client behavior indicators. The practical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.
Deterrence research supports the idea that punishment curbs offending; however, results for the specific deterrent effects of drunk driving are more nuanced. This research is often limited in its use of non-offender samples, its failure to examine links between past sanctions and subsequent risk perceptions, and in its use of aggregate-level data, thereby precluding any exploration of individuals’ perceived sanction risks. The current study examines the relationship between 824 felony inmates’ experiences with formal legal sanctions for drunk driving and their risk perceptions for driving drunk as well as their hypothetical intentions to drive drunk. Results generally fail to support deterrence theory’s propositions, and instead uncover some positive punishment effects (higher drunk driving intentions among those sanctioned previously) net of important theoretical controls. Implications for subsequent research and policy making are presented.
A recent trend in the study of crime is to investigate the role of individual differences in predicting offending, particularly in studying the differences between white-collar and conventional offenders. To further this line of inquiry, the current study assessed the role of the psychological trait of sensation seeking on individualistic white-collar crime and conventional crime, and also whether this relationship varied based upon the individual’s level of self-control. Results from a sample of undergraduate students revealed that there are more similarities than differences between these two offense types. Specifically, those with higher degrees of the unsocialized aspect of sensation seeking were more likely to report intentions to engage in both offense forms. Study implications and limitations are presented.
This study focuses on examining the effects of employment and work hours on delinquency during adolescence. Juvenile employment and work hours are hypothesized to increase delinquency, and the longitudinal panel data obtained from the Korean Youth Panel Survey are utilized. Results from fixed effects models showed that working youths are more likely to participate in crime, substance use, and status offenses. Regarding work hours, both moderate and intensive work was significantly related to substance use and status offenses, whereas only intensive work was significantly related to crime. The effects of intensive work on substance use and status offenses were different between male and female.
Although crime rates dramatically declined during the 1990s, recent statistics indicated more than one third of the U.S. population continued to be afraid of areas within one mile of their home. Statistics such as this imply spatial dependence, but the importance of space in statistical analyses of fear of crime has remained relatively underexplored. The current study contributes to research on fear of crime by assessing the importance of crime rates in nearby neighborhood areas in addition to conventional individual- and neighborhood-level predictors of fear of criminal victimization. Results indicate that individuals who lived near neighborhoods that featured higher rates of violent crime were more likely to report being afraid of violent crime, but that the influence of violent crime rates in nearby neighborhoods was lessened after other features of their home neighborhood were controlled. In particular, the results highlight the importance of neighborhood communities as a protective factor against fear of crime.
Recently, Agnew has narrowed the focus of General Strain Theory by arguing certain factors must converge for criminal coping to occur. Specifically, individuals must have certain crime-related traits, experience strains that are perceived as unjust and high in magnitude, and occur in situations that encourage criminal coping. A longitudinal sample of serious adolescent offenders was used to assess the impact of direct and vicarious victimization on later offending among those with higher and lower criminal propensity. Regardless of their criminal propensity, youth who experienced victimization were more likely to engage in antisocial behavior compared with those who were not victimized. The results are mixed regarding Agnew’s thesis and suggest that victimization experiences may push justice-involved youth into further crime.
Of theoretical interest to research on reentry and desistance is the intersection of cognitive transformation and the ecological contexts to which offenders return. The majority of offenders released from prisons in the United States return to impoverished neighborhood settings. However, there is a limited understanding of how offenders with different cognitive commitments to change interpret and negotiate the prosocial and illicit features situated in their environments. Drawing on different lines of theoretical research, we examine how cognitive commitments are affected by the lures and prosocial features of impoverished neighborhoods and how the intersection of these conditions affects success and failure in the post-release period. We use original survey and in-depth qualitative interviews with 37 incarcerated and formerly incarcerated women from St. Louis, Missouri. Findings suggest that an integrated examination of cognitive mechanisms and residential environments clarifies how offenders who return to similarly structurally disadvantaged places exhibit different reentry outcomes.
Relying on rational choice theory, we compare burglars’ varying levels of offense planning to understand differences among types of burglars. Surveys were collected from a sample of incarcerated male and female burglars in three states. Participants answered questions detailing aspects of a burglary including motivations, target selection, deterrents, and techniques. Comparisons were made between 119 deliberate (32%) and 257 impulsive (68%) burglars. Deliberate burglars focused on obtaining cash, whereas impulsive burglars were more motivated by drug habits. Impulsive burglars were more easily dissuaded from a target when multiple obstacles are present. Burglars consider how many obstacles they may have to overcome, providing support for rational choice-based, situational crime prevention efforts. Differences in burglar motivation emerged and are discussed.
This article investigates how different factors of a domestic violence incident impact the likelihood of a child abuse charge within the context of domestic violence arrests. Data from 5,148 domestic violence arrests were used to test whether domestic violence-, incident-, and child-based predictors increased the likelihood of a child abuse charge. Logistic regression models of gender-stratified samples were employed to test for gender differences among domestic violence arrestees. The results demonstrated predictors affected men’s odds of a child abuse charge when compared with women. For men and women, children witnessing the domestic violence incident had the largest impact on a child abuse charge. These results contribute to the underdeveloped area of police response to child abuse in domestic violence cases.
School dropout has been extensively studied in the literature as a correlate of negative life outcomes. A precursor to school dropout is truancy, the unexcused or illegitimate student absence from school. Few studies have examined the relationship between truancy and involvement in crime and adjustment more generally over the life-course. This study extends previous work by exploring whether truancy at age 12 to 14 is related to later life outcomes such as crime, aggression, and adjustment using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. Results indicate that truancy has long-lasting associations with negative life outcomes, especially for non-violent crime and problem drinking. Importantly, these findings hold for certain outcomes controlling for a comprehensive host of environmental and individual childhood risk factors.
Pretrial dispositions have been receiving greater attention in the literature on extralegal disparities in criminal case processing. We examined the relevance of areas in which crimes are committed for court decisions regarding bond amounts and whether suspects are ultimately detained prior to trial. A random sample of 2,677 persons charged with felony crimes committed in 820 blocks of a major urban U.S. jurisdiction was examined, with separate analyses of property, violent, and drug offenses. Defendants were more likely to be held in jail prior to trial when crimes were committed in more disadvantaged neighborhoods (higher percentages of female-headed households, vacant residences, renters, and African Americans). However, the odds of pretrial detention were also higher for defendants accused of crimes in less disadvantaged neighborhoods relative to their own. Evidence favors neighborhood composition as an important contributor to disparities in pretrial detention beyond individual factors such as a defendant’s race.
Terrorism prevention has become the top priority among law enforcement and homeland security officials. To date, however, little empirical research has been conducted that directly compares the characteristics of successful terrorist attacks to failed and foiled terrorism incidents. To address this limitation in prior research, the current study examines the impact of opportunity, group structure, and temporally patterned precursor activities on far-right terrorism outcomes in the United States using data from the American Terrorism Study (ATS). Our findings partially support expectations that attractive and vulnerable targets, loners, conventional weaponry, and relatively fewer precursor activities are significantly associated with successful incidents.
In this study, we assess the extent to which the availability of guardians, guardianship expectations, and guardianship actions explain the variation of neighborhood property crime rates and self-reported property crime victimization. Furthermore, we examine whether or not the strength of these relationships is moderated by the neighborhood composition. We use data from the Australian Community Capacity Study (ACCS), a survey of 4,000 respondents from 148 neighborhoods across Brisbane, Australia, and employ regression and multi-level regression techniques. We find that particular aspects of guardianship do protect against crime; however, the relationship between guardianship and crime is influenced by neighborhood diversity, disadvantage, and residential instability.
This study assessed whether the higher risk of victimization among criminally active and socially disadvantaged individuals is related to violent incidents including offenders with criminal backgrounds. The analysis is based on a Finnish general population sample (N = 69,635) using a 7-year-follow-up of police-reported violent incidents that enabled the measurement of criminal background of the "outside-sample" opposite parties involved in the incidents. The association between socioeconomic/criminal background and victimization grew stronger by the intensity of the criminal background of the offender. The results indicate that the risk posed by prior offenders is disproportionally targeted toward criminally active and disadvantaged individuals.
Illicit drug dealers who operate in open-air markets must access customers in the face of risks posed by law enforcement, customers, and competitors. However, researchers purport that the environmental characteristics of certain locations may allow dealers to balance these competing demands. This research utilizes risk terrain modeling to identify the environmental characteristics of drug dealing locations in Chicago, Illinois, and compares these characteristics across different types of drugs. Results show that a number of place features increase the risk of drug dealing. Although many of these features are common to locations for all types of drug dealing, there are some variations. The findings provide insight into the environmental context of drug market locations, which has implications for researchers and practitioners.
In this study, we examine how important juvenile race and other factors are in juvenile commitment classification in the New Jersey Family Court. Data from the Family Court in New Jersey for the year 2010 comprise the population. Given the class imbalance in the dependent variable, we employ balanced random forest (RF). Variable importance plots and an information gain summary are used to assess the role of the juvenile’s race and other variables for classes of the dependent variable. The results from balanced RF indicate that the juvenile’s delinquency history and the offense seriousness make the most important contributions to commitment to juvenile state incarceration. The juvenile’s race makes a very weak contribution to commitment; in fact, when the balanced RF was rerun with the juvenile’s race omitted, the estimated misclassification error slightly dropped for commitments. Balanced RF is an attractive procedure for handling dependent variables with highly imbalanced classes. The juvenile’s adjudication history and offense seriousness emerged as the most important variables to state incarceration. The race of the juvenile was not an important variable with respect to commitment.
Beginning in November 2012, New Haven, Connecticut, served as the pilot site for Project Longevity, a statewide focused deterrence gun violence reduction strategy. The intervention brings law enforcement, social services, and community members together to meet with members of violent street groups at program call-ins. Using autoregressive integrated moving average models and controlling for the possibility of a non-New Haven–specific decline in gun violence, a decrease in group offending patterns, and the limitations of police-defined group member involved (GMI) categorization of shootings and homicides, the results of our analysis show that Longevity is associated with a reduction of almost five GMI incidents per month. These findings bolster research confirming the efficacy of focused deterrence approaches to reducing gun violence.
Recent calls for police to focus more on integrating research into practice require paying closer attention to how receptive frontline practitioners are to using research. Officers in four U.S. municipal agencies (n = 992) were surveyed to assess their exposure to research, knowledge about the evidence base, view of science, and willingness to evaluate interventions. Multivariate results show that officer awareness of evidence-based policing and willingness to work with researchers are influenced by education and prior research exposure. These factors strongly predict more specific indicators of receptivity. Results also suggest substantial variation in attitudes across agencies, emphasizing the importance of organizational context. The most receptive officers in our sample vary significantly from all others on multiple experience variables.
To understand how offenders are caught, past research has focused on case closures, which combines the identification and apprehension of a fugitive. However, there is a gap in applied research concerning duration to apprehension and variation in time to capture by crime. This study examined the days to close arrest warrants using administrative data containing 1.3 million cases. A Cox proportional hazards model demonstrated that sex crimes involving contact or encompassing child pornography/exploitation, kidnapping, sex offender registration violations, and warrants involving assaults or an armed/dangerous notation had the strongest relationships to warrant closure. The results illustrate the prioritizing of cases involving sex offenders and violent offenders, as well as underscoring a need for future research on time to warrant closure.
Little research has explored whether social policies aimed at lessening economic hardship affect the prevalence of bullying, particularly after the Great Recession. This article investigates how the strains of neighborhood and cumulative disadvantage are associated with racial differences in bullying, and we consider whether social program participation—enlistment in needs-based social programs to attenuate poverty and disadvantage—upends race-based differences in bullying. Using probit, negative binomial, and propensity score matching methods, we show that adolescents who experience any markers of disadvantage are more likely to bully others, with Black and Hispanic adolescents being more likely to engage in bullying than Whites. Importantly, matched estimates reveal that participation in needs-based social programs eliminates racial differences in bullying.
Participation in risky lifestyles is a well-established predictor of victimization. Several variables have been identified as key predictors of risky activities (e.g., low self-control) but there may be additional sources not considered in the literature to date. We argue that perceptions of procedural unfairness represent a break in social control, thereby opening the door for participation in risky lifestyles that are conducive to victimization. Using three waves of data from the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program, we demonstrated that police procedural injustice was positively associated with risky lifestyles, which partially mediated the relationship between procedural injustice and violent victimization. This study advances the literature by demonstrating that our understanding of victimization is enhanced by including procedural injustice into its explanation.
Why are Americans so punitive toward criminals? Some theories of punitiveness suggest that exposure to crime makes people more supportive of punitive policies toward criminals. We analyzed national survey data and found that neither support for longer prison sentences for four different crimes nor support for the death penalty had a significant positive association with crime rates, prior victimization, vicarious victimization, higher perceived risk of victimization, or fear of crime. Instead, punitiveness was related to how often people watched local TV news, the percent Republican of the person’s county, and race. Support for harsh treatment of criminals therefore appears to be more a product of race, ideology, and news media presentations of crime than of the reality of crime.
Although a large body of criminological studies have examined trajectories of offending, only a handful of studies have attempted to explore victimization trajectories. The purpose of the current study is to use group-based modeling to explore victimization trajectories among Korean youth and to identify factors that protect and jeopardize victims over the life course. The present study uses data from five waves of Korean Youth Panel Survey (KYPS). Results show three distinct victimization trajectories and identify several risk and protective factors of repeat victimization. Suggestions for future research are discussed.
It is essential to learn as much as possible from justice interventions—even those that do not appear to be successful. Data came from a sample of youths participating in drug courts in nine sites across the United States and a comparison group of probationers (N = 1,372). Measures were drawn from case records. Path models with direct and indirect effects were analyzed. Aspects of the juvenile drug court process appear to heighten the likelihood of youth failure in the program and recidivism. The ratio of incentives to sanctions was protective as drug court youth who experienced more of the former had a reduced likelihood of recidivism. The article concludes that it is important to examine mechanisms that impact the success of justice interventions.
The present study tested whether differences in violence exposure and parent and peer attachment help explain why disproportionate minority contact is lower among adolescents adjudicated for sexual offending than among adolescents adjudicated for other offenses. The 1,109 male juvenile offenders recruited from a juvenile detention center were interviewed, completed self-report measures, and legal documentation of prior offenses was obtained. Using a hierarchical multinomial logistic regression, a unique constellation of factors were found to predict sexual and violent offending relative to general offending. Moreover, the influence of race/ethnicity was diminished in the final model, suggesting disproportionate minority contact is partially explained by contextual factors.
Prior work has illustrated youth exposed to adverse parenting practices are more likely to offend and juvenile offenders with maltreatment histories more likely to re-offend. In addition, aggressive tendencies and a hostile interpretation of the actions of others and one’s environment increase antisocial behavior. Unfortunately, the pathways by which those effects occur are not well understood. Using a sample of more than 25,000 juvenile offenders, we use structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine the pathways by which adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) affect juvenile delinquency. Results indicate ACEs have both a direct and indirect effect on recidivism, with nearly half of the total effect of ACEs on re-offending operating through negative emotionality. Policy implications are discussed.
Recent scholarship on sentencing disparity emphasizes the need to consider multiple decision-making points, to incorporate more detailed information on offender background characteristics, and to examine disparity in broader international contexts. This study investigates both pretrial and final sentencing decisions, incorporating a broad array of theoretically relevant offender characteristics. It combines rich survey data with official sentencing data. This data collection is part of a larger project, the Prison Project, in which 1,904 Dutch pretrial detainees were interviewed. Results indicate that several different offender characteristics exert important independent effects over criminal processing decisions and that pretrial release exerts a powerful influence over final sentencing decisions. These findings contribute to ongoing scholarly debates over the key determinants of criminal punishment in international context.
Hate crimes undermine tolerance and social inclusion by conveying an "outsider" status of the victim and other group members to the broader community. Yet, limited research considers whether non-victims recognize hate crime incidents when they occur. Using census and survey data for 4,000 residents living in 145 communities, we ask whether local residents "see" hate crime when it happens in their neighborhood and whether the neighborhood context influences the association between residents’ perceptions of hate crime and self-reported hate victimization. We find that residents’ perceptions are positively related to victim self-reports; however, this relationship weakens in ethnically diverse and disadvantaged areas. This suggests that residents’ perceptions of hate crime may be more dependent upon the community context than non-hate crimes.
Research suggests that youths adopt the code of the street to reduce potential victimization, but it may increase actual risk of victimization. Because of this contradiction, the relationship between the code of the street and fear of crime may be an important component; however, fear of crime is an understudied component in the code of the street literature. This study conducts multilevel models to examine whether the code of the street is associated with perceived risk of victimization and emotional fear of crime. Individual belief in the code of the street was positively related to emotional fear of violent crime. At the neighborhood level, the code of the street was associated with higher perceived risk.
Social disorganization theory proposes that specific neighborhood characteristics contribute to an increase in crime rates. In a disorganized community, informal social controls are not present; therefore, crime and delinquency flourish. Researchers have focused on these measures of social disorganization and the ability to explain public crimes. Recently, researchers have focused their attention to characteristics of socially disorganized areas and their ability to predict private crimes, such as domestic violence. This study contributes to the research on domestic violence and its applicability to social disorganization theory by examining domestic violence in Chicago neighborhoods and Illinois counties. Results indicate that different measures of social disorganization are significantly associated with domestic violence at different units of analysis.
Until recently, police legitimacy research has primarily focused on citizen perceptions of the police. However, it may be that the police believe citizens associate other factors, such as distributive justice or performance, with legitimacy. The present study adds to the literature by surveying a nationally representative sample of U.S. police officers about how they believe citizens residing in high and low crime areas of the community evaluate police in terms of legitimacy. Findings suggest that respondents believe procedural justice and distributive justice are important to citizens of both areas in terms of generating trust. At the same time, respondents believe that citizens of high and low crime areas feel obligated to obey the police for different reasons.
Existing literature demonstrates disagreement over the relationship between hate crime and terrorism with some calling them "close cousins," whereas others declare them "distant relatives." We extend previous research by capturing a middle ground between hate crime and terrorism: extremist hate crime. We conduct negative binomial regressions to examine hate crime by non-extremists, fatal hate crime by far-rightists, and terrorism in U.S. counties (1992-2012). Results show that counties experiencing increases in general hate crime, far-right hate crime, and non-right-wing terrorism see associated increases in far-right hate crime, far-right terrorism, and far-right hate crime, respectively. We conclude that hate crime and terrorism may be more akin to close cousins than distant relatives.
Decades of criminological research has established that victimization is strongly connected with offending—this pattern is among the most durable in the criminological literature. However, there are plausible reasons to believe that under some theoretically defined conditions, the association can vary across the life course. Using 10 waves from the Pathways to Desistance data, which follow more than 1,300 youth from early adolescence into adulthood, we model within-individual change in the victimization–offending association as well as evaluate possible theoretical reasons for this change. Our results show that the influence of victimization on offending weakens as people age, although the association remains positive across the life course. The core substantive predictors, however, could not account for this temporal weakening of the association. We discuss the implications of these results for further theoretical development on offending.
The current study investigates the decision by victims to report the crime to the police following identity theft victimization. Potential influences on the reporting decision are framed around two criminal justice theories—focal concerns theory and Gottfredson and Gottfredson’s theory of criminal justice decision making. The data used to examine this decision were collected from a nationally representative sample of U.S. adults as a supplement to the 2012 National Crime Victimization Survey. Results suggest that the decision to contact law enforcement is based on the seriousness of the offense, the victim’s knowledge of who committed the crime and how it was perpetrated, as well as practical considerations. These findings parallel other research into victim decision making generally, while also highlighting factors that may be unique to identity theft, notably the effects of income. The results also support the use of criminal justice theory to study and understand victim decision making.
Identity judgments are central to the theoretical arguments of procedural justice theory. Perceptions of procedural injustice have been argued to compromise an individual’s social identity and contribute to disengagement from group values and norms. Thus, it is important to clarify the relationship between perceptions of procedural justice and specific facets of social identities, such as ethnic identity. This study attempts to evaluate the relationship between these concepts by examining the potential interaction effect between procedural justice and ethnic identity on two measures of offending, self-report and number of arrests, in a longitudinal study of serious juvenile delinquents.
This article disaggregates Donohue and Levitt’s (DL’s) national panel-data models to the state level and shows that high concentrations of teenage abortions in a handful of states drive all of DL’s results in their 2001, 2004, and 2008 articles on crime and abortion. These findings agree with previous research showing teenage motherhood is a major maternal crime factor, whereas unwanted pregnancy is an insignificant factor. Teenage abortions accounted for more than 30% of U.S. abortions in the 1970s, but only 16% to 18% since 2001, which suggests DL’s panel-data models of crime/arrests and abortion were outdated when published. The results point to a broad range of future research involving teenage behavior. A specific means is proposed to reconcile DL with previous articles finding no relationship between crime and abortion.
This article argues that citizens’ perceptions of police can aid in selecting appropriate hot spots policing tactics and models satisfaction with police as evidenced by respondents who live or work in violent crime hot spots. Survey data (N = 630) were collected by randomly sampling addresses within violent crime hot spots in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. The results reveal that being younger, or more educated, or perceiving higher procedural injustice, or higher social disorder, or being more fearful of crime, all link to lower satisfaction with police in violent crime hot spots. To maintain or improve public satisfaction with police services in hot spots, police departments should adopt tactics that are not only effective in reducing crime but also procedurally just, reduce fear of crime, and address social disorder problems.
This study sought to understand (a) whether or not, compared with men, women are more likely to report being frightened by stalking behaviors, when controlling for correlates associated with fear, and (b) whether or not men and women have significantly different (gendered) reactions to factors associated with increased levels of fear. The author found women were exponentially more likely than men to report fear, despite controlling for indications that women had experienced the more serious stalking incidents. Furthermore, these variable factors affected both men and women in similar ways. Arguably, the fear requirement present in most states’ definitions of stalking is inherently gender-biased and should be removed, as no other type of crime is defined by an emotional response.
Age and drugs are both well-known correlates of crime, with the age–crime curve being a staple in criminology. However, the relationship between age and crime (especially certain types of crime) is still highly debated. For drug use, the evidence is mixed when it comes to the effects of age. Unfortunately, there is little research on how age affects the relationship between drugs and crime. The current study aims to determine whether there are differences in the relationship between drugs and crime depending on age by conducting the same analysis on a sample of adults and adolescents. The results indicate that there are substantial differences between the adult and juvenile samples, in terms of their drug use and criminal involvement.
Drawing on theory and research on prisoner behavior, this study examines whether spatial distance from home influences inmates’ likelihood of engaging in misconduct. Three hypotheses are developed: distally placed inmates will engage in more misconduct, distance will have a greater effect on misconduct among younger inmates, and visitation will mediate these relationships. We test the hypotheses using negative binomial regression analyses of data from the Florida Department of Corrections (N = 33,853). Support for the hypotheses is mixed. A curvilinear relationship between distance and misconduct was identified, with a positive effect on misconduct for distances up to 350 miles and a negative effect thereafter. Distance effects were greater for younger inmates and were partially mediated by visitation. Implications of the findings are discussed.
This study aims to empirically test the immunity effect on the frequency distribution of household victimizations. To clarify the immunity effect, the statistical construction of zero-inflated models is reviewed and compared with that of non-zero-inflated models. The Benjamini and Hochberg correction is used to address the limitation of p values in multiple testing. Compared with the findings from the non-zero-inflated model, two sets of coefficients from the zero-inflated model reveal that there exist more complex and diverse statuses in the process of household victimization than predicted by risk heterogeneity and event dependence. With these findings, this study suggests that zero-inflated models should be introduced and compared with non-zero-inflated models for the clarification of victimization determinants.
Prior research has consistently shown that parenting practices have a direct impact on the levels of delinquency in children and on the development of their moral beliefs. Several studies have also found support for a link between levels of moral reasoning and offending. Using a sample of juvenile delinquents, this research tested the ability of morality to act as a mediator for the association between parenting practices and delinquency. Results supported the findings of past research in terms of the direct effects of parenting on juvenile offending. The mediation hypothesis received partial support. No mediation effects were detected when violent offending was the dependent variable, but the direct effects of parental hostility on property offending were mediated by moral disengagement.
The sentencing literature is replete with studies that have examined the influence of extralegal offender characteristics on two key sentence outcomes: the imprisonment and sentence length decisions. Yet the study of other outcomes, such as the application of intermediate sanctions, is rarely addressed. To date, no studies have been conducted in the federal courts to examine the potential influence of race/ethnicity, age, gender, and educational attainment on the decision to apply intermediate sanctions. Consequently, the present analysis employs U.S. Sentencing Commission data to examine direct and interactive effects of these extralegal characteristics on this understudied outcome. Findings indicate that extralegal effects may play an important role in the use of intermediate sanctions. The implications of this research are discussed in detail.
Scarce in criminological literature is an exploration of whether crime reporting varies geographically. Yet, there are substantive reasons to believe not only that the percentage of crimes reported to the police varies across jurisdictions but also that crime reporting can be explained by ecological characteristics. Drawing upon data from both the National Crime Victimization Survey and the U.S. census, this study examines the relationship between immigration and the likelihood that crimes are reported to the police. Results indicate that crime reporting is inversely related to increases in the relative size of both the noncitizen and foreign-born populations within a metropolitan area, and that the negative effect is greater for violence than for property crime. Implications for the underreporting of crime are discussed.
The stability of self-control represents a recently popular empirical topic; however, little attention has been paid to the stability of the underlying constructs of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s conception of self-control. The present study uses longitudinal data on youth residing in the northeastern United States and employs trajectory analysis to explore the presence of varying developmental trends in these constructs. The findings indicate that these constructs follow unique and varied trajectories that may help to elucidate issues with our understanding of the stability of self-control.
Using a longitudinal data set of 317 neighborhoods from 1996 to 2002 in Utrecht, The Netherlands, this study tests whether types of crime differentially impact (a) the mechanisms of social disorganization theory and (b) residents’ mobility behavior and attitudes toward the neighborhood. Neighborhoods with more cohesion have less violence 2 years later. Also, neighborhoods perceiving more violence experience lower levels of cohesion 2 years later. Higher levels of perceived violence were most important for explaining who moves out of the neighborhood, as such neighborhoods had more non-Whites and more lower income households at the next time point. Burglaries (a crime that occurs in private space) appear to increase residents’ sense of feeling responsibility for the neighborhood.
It is presumed that public opposition to sex offender treatment derives from the "nothing works" philosophy. However, few studies have systematically unpacked perceptions about sex offender treatment. Drawing on national poll data, this study uses multinomial logistic regression to identify predictors of treatment views. Results indicate that misperceptions about sex crimes, particularly the belief in "stranger danger" and offense amplification, reduce support for treatment. Parents with children under age 17 were less likely to approve of treatment efforts, because they did not believe the treatment research. Separately, belief in high sex offender recidivism was associated with a greater likelihood of not sure responses about treatment. In contrast, desiring more information about how to prevent sexual offending increased support for interventions. Implications are discussed.
Akers’ social learning theory (SLT) is one of the predominate theories of criminal behavior; moreover, its empirical validity has been consistently supported by the extant research literature. However, a number of limitations plague this literature: Rarely is the full social learning model tested such that all four social learning constructs are operationalized and, where complete tests are found, they have either focused near exclusively on substance use/abuse or have examined only the direct, independent effects of its key theoretical constructs. The present study employs structural equations to test a more complete SLT model against self-reported data on intimate partner violence. Doing so permits an examination of both the direct and indirect effects of differential association, imitation, definitions, and differential reinforcement as well as the reciprocal/feedback effects of intimate partner violence back onto these social learning constructs as explicated by Akers.
Burglarized locations are at an elevated risk of re-victimization soon after an initial offense. The current study uses a two-mode network approach to examine three possible mechanisms of repeat victimization: (a) The characteristics of a location make the target attractive to all motivated offenders, (b) the same offender returns to the offense location multiple times, or (c) other offender(s), to whom the primary offender is connected, commit subsequent offenses. The results support all three mechanisms, but particularly the same offender returning for subsequent offenses. These "returners" are generally more experienced, more connected burglary offenders. Significantly, however, repeat victimizations not committed by the same offender(s) often involve connected co-offenders, a mechanism for repeat victimization that has not been previously demonstrated empirically.
This study investigates the stability of self-control by examining whether neighborhood composition conditions the effect of self-control on offending. Congruent with social learning perspectives, I argue that neighborhood behavioral models provide a conduit for the expression of one’s self-control. Using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), I examine multi-level zero-inflated negative binomial models that include cross-level interactions between self-control and aggregate self-control. I found that for the frequency of delinquency, but not serious offending, the effect of low self-control is amplified in neighborhoods identified as having low aggregate self-control. These findings provide evidence that the effect of low self-control on offending is not always invariant across neighborhoods.
Tyler’s process-based model of regulation suggests that when citizens perceive the police as a legitimate authority, they are more likely to cooperate in the form of reporting crimes and providing information to the police. Yet most studies have considered citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy—few studies have asked the police what they feel makes them legitimate in the eyes of the public. Likewise, no studies have considered whether the police believe legitimacy is associated with cooperation from the public. The present study addresses this gap using data from a stratified sample of U.S. police executives. Findings suggest police believe performance, rather than procedural justice, is the key to generating cooperation from the public.
We examine the effects of the type and frequency of drug use on whether offenders engage in economic crime to obtain money for drugs. Analyses are based on a nationally representative sample of prison inmates (5,371 property offenders and 4,588 drug offenders). Daily users of heroin, crack cocaine, or powdered cocaine are most likely to report that they committed their offense for drug money. However, offenders who used these drugs less frequently and daily users of marijuana and methamphetamine reported this motivation as well. The motivation was more common among offenders who lacked access to legitimate income. The findings suggest that economic crimes are used to support recreational drug use as well as heavy use of heroin and cocaine.
The usually negative relationship between school bonds and juvenile delinquency implies that adolescents with strong ties to school are less likely to engage in delinquency. Still, it is not always clear whether the impact of school bonds on delinquency is direct or mediated by other, more proximate causes. This article examines the dynamic interrelations between social bonds and the acceptance of legal norms over the course of adolescence. Results reveal that school bonds directly affect the acceptance of legal norms, but not delinquency. However, norms are directly and reciprocally related to delinquency. Therefore, school bonds can be considered an indirect preventive factor for delinquent behavior. Moreover, the closely related school bond and norm dimensions share a common developmental pattern during adolescence.
The assault of law enforcement officers is an important but understudied topic. To better understand this form of violence, this study drew on the National Incident–Based Reporting System—the nation’s largest data set tracking assaults against police alongside detailed information on situations surrounding attacks. Risk factors were examined within a fixed-effects logistic regression framework via a case-control method in which all incidents involving assault against police (n = 20,140) were compared with a random sample of arrest encounters that did not involve this form of aggression (n = 20,118). The data showed that a number of victim, offender, and situational characteristics predicted violence against officers, and the models were able to explain a substantial portion of the variance. Implications for research are discussed.
Building on previous research, this article investigates whether discrepancies between official and self-reported measures of arrests as an adult can be predicted from such discrepancies as an adolescent. We use longitudinal data from the Rochester Youth Development Study to assess whether a pattern exists in adolescent and adult under- and over-reporting of arrests. We find consistency in under- and over-reporting throughout the adolescent–young adult life course. In other words, when respondents misreport the number of arrests they have experienced, they do so consistently regardless of age. This is reassuring for scholars using self-report data, as under- and over-reporting behaviors remain stable over this span of the life course. Finally, our models predicting discrepancies in official and self-reported arrests during the combined period of adolescence and young adulthood are both extremely strong. Our findings support the continued use of self-report measures as a valid indicator of delinquency.
The liberation hypothesis argues that the effects of extra-legal factors such as victim and/or offender race on sentencing outcomes are conditioned by legally relevant factors, particularly the severity or the strength of the case. Where the evidence is weak or contradictory or the offense is less severe, decision makers are most liberated to use extra-legal factors in reaching their decisions. This study uses data on a large sample of capital murder trials in North Carolina from 1977 to 2009 to test this hypothesis. The results show that the effects of extra-legal factors (specifically, the race of offender–race of victim dyad) vary across levels of offense severity, but in a complex manner. Most notably, Black defendant–White victim dyads demonstrated an increased probability of death sentences at high levels of severity, but decreased probabilities at lower levels of severity.
There has been a great deal of research revealing that psychopathy is related to criminal involvement and other measures of antisocial behavior. However, the generalizability of these findings is limited because of some potential problems with measurement and because of the overreliance on forensic samples and the relative lack of psychopathy measures in national samples. The current study addresses these gaps in the existing psychopathy literature by examining the association between a Five-Factor Model–based measure of psychopathic personality traits and criminal justice outcomes in a nationally representative sample of males and females. Analysis of data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) revealed that psychopathic personality traits predicted the probability of being arrested, of being incarcerated, and of being sentenced to probation for both males and females. Additional analyses revealed that the psychopathic personality traits scale was also associated with a self-reported delinquency scale. We concluded by discussing the importance of the concept of psychopathy and psychopathic personality traits to criminological theory and research.
Developmentalists suggest that adolescent criminal involvement encourages later life failure in the social domains of education, welfare, and risky sexual activities. Although prior research supports a link between crime and later life failure, relatively little research has sought to explain why this relationship exists. This research attempts to understand why crime leads to negative social outcomes by testing hypotheses derived from the perspectives of population heterogeneity and cumulative disadvantage. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the results reveal that net of control variables and measures of population heterogeneity, adolescent criminal behavior consistently predicts school failure, being on welfare, and risky sexual activities. The findings also suggest that after controlling for delinquency, adolescent arrest negatively affects these factors. Furthermore, stable criminal traits and adolescent delinquency interact when predicting measures of poor social adjustment in early adulthood.
Moffitt’s developmental taxonomy describes a small group of adolescents who abstain from all forms of delinquency because they are isolated from peer groups or because, unlike most adolescents, they lack the desire to engage in "adult-like" behaviors, such as drinking and smoking. Based on Moffitt’s work, this study examines the correlates of abstention for males and females, focusing on negative personal characteristics that may isolate youth from their peers. Using a sample followed from birth through adulthood, the authors found that although many prosocial characteristics are associated with abstention, individuals who refrain from delinquency are also more likely than offenders to possess undesirable personal characteristics. Still, abstainers are more likely than other youth to become successful, well-adjusted adults.
Numerous studies have examined the influence of offender characteristics on sentencing outcomes, yet little attention has been afforded to offenders’ educational attainment. The focal concerns theory provides reason to suspect that greater educational attainment may insulate offenders from the effects of criminal stereotypes linked to extralegal factors, including race/ethnicity, age, and sex. The current analysis employs a sample of 115,674 federal offenders to test this assumption on the in/out and sentence length decisions. Results of the in/out models demonstrate a general pattern where the effects of several extralegal factors (i.e., race, ethnicity, age, sex, and detention) are reduced, and in some cases fully moderated, by offenders’ educational attainment. This pattern, however, is not apparent during the sentence length decision.
The Nordic countries are often seen as "exceptional" in that they have moderate punitive policies while also having low rates of crime and recidivism. It is, however, a challenge for comparative recidivism research that recidivism is measured in widely disparate ways. We exploit the richness and flexibility of Norwegian registry data to examine how and how much national recidivism rates may be affected by how, among whom, and for how long recidivism is measured. Our results vary from 9% to 53%, and these numbers could—notwithstanding scientific scrutiny—be taken as a validation as well as a debunking of the abovementioned notion of the Nordic penal exceptionalism.
Few studies have examined multilevel effects of neighborhood context on childhood maltreatment. Less work has analyzed these effects with juvenile offenders, and no prior work has examined context effects of childhood maltreatment through the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) framework. ACEs include 10 indictors: emotional abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional neglect, physical neglect, domestic violence toward the youth’s mother, household substance abuse, household mental illness, parental separation/divorce, and household member with a history of jail/imprisonment. Effects of concentrated disadvantage and affluence on ACE scores are examined in a statewide sample of more than 59,000 juvenile offenders, controlling for salient individual (including family and parenting) measures and demographics. Both disadvantage and affluence affect ACE exposure. Implications for research and policy are discussed.
The factors complicating our understanding of the drugs and violence nexus include the role of community structure and subculture, and situational features of market exchanges. Reuter and MacCoun contribute to the latter by highlighting a typology of market violence. Using distance as a proxy for social ties, the four-market category typology suggests that the mixing of buyers and sellers from various distances has implications for the amount of violence expected to occur within them. This research performs a partial test of that typology using 5 years of arrest and incident data from the Philadelphia Police Department. Multilevel models reveal that compared with markets with local buyers and sellers, those characterized by lengthier travel patterns have significantly higher counts of violent incidents.
The War on Drugs’ emphasis on apprehending low-level drug offenders dramatically increased the number of arrests for drug distribution and exacerbated racial and ethnic disparities in such arrests. Although these disparities have been the topic of much discussion, they rarely have been the subject of multivariate empirical scrutiny. This research examines the degree to which race differences in drug offending, nondrug offending, and community context explain race differences in the likelihood of experiencing a drug distribution arrest in a longitudinal sample of youthful respondents (age 12-29). Our results indicate that in comparison with White drug offenders, Hispanic drug offenders’ greater likelihood of arrest is largely due to differences in community context; however, African Americans’ greater likelihood of arrest is not explained by differences in offending or community context. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.
This study explored whether chronic and costly offenders were more likely to be from disadvantaged communities and whether the most disadvantaged communities accounted for higher proportions of chronic and costly offenders. The Semi-Parametric Group-Based Method was used and costs applied to the five offending trajectories. Moderate and chronic offenders represented 15.8% of the cohort but 70% of total costs. The Index of Relative Disadvantage was assigned based on the first recorded residential postcode and an ANOVA indicated that moderate and chronic offenders resided in communities that had more disadvantage. The 5% most disadvantaged communities were compared with other communities and were found to have higher concentrations of chronic and costly offenders. Implications for the efficient targeting of crime prevention programs and interventions are discussed.
This study examines the extent and nature of short-term repeat sexual assault and harassment victimization in school. We used data collected from 7th through 10th graders as part of the Rural Substance abuse and Violence Project (RSVP) to test whether the observed frequencies of sexual assault and harassment are significantly different from the expected frequencies. We then estimated hierarchical logistic models to determine whether measures of opportunity and low self-control can distinguish between one-time and repeat victims. Both sexual assault and harassment victimization were nonrandomly distributed. Victims of sexual assault and harassment who had low parental attachment, low self-control, and delinquent peers were more likely to suffer one or more additional victimizations during the school year. In addition, involvement in school sports and activities increased risk of repeat sexual assault, while self-reported criminal behavior increased risk of repeat sexual harassment. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, prevention, and future research.
Although the vast majority of people sent to prisons will eventually be released, we know relatively little about factors affecting correctional release. This study considers the roles of race, ethnicity, and gender in correctional release. Incorporating state-level predictors, including violent crime rates and sentencing policies, we examine variation in length of time served and the proportion of sentence incarcerated across demographics. Using National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) data, we determine the extent to which differences in time and proportion of sentence served is attributable to demographic and offending differences, as well as difference in sentencing and conditional release. Identifying race, ethnic, and gender disparities subsequent to court-ordered sentencing decisions has important implications for our understanding of justice and the salience of legal and extralegal factors across multiple phases of punishment.
We assess the effects of exposure to police use of force on inmates’ odds of offending in prison using survey data collected from a national sample of inmates. We found, net of relevant controls, prisoners subjected to police violence were more likely to engage in assaultive and other rule violating behavior, especially those who did not resist police authority. Consistent with the cycle of violence hypothesis, our findings suggest violence perpetrated by legal authorities produces similar effects to exposure to violence in general. Moreover, the consequences of police use of force are especially problematic when the recipient fails to perceive his or her treatment was fair, which supports the theoretical perspective on procedural fairness and legitimacy. Policy implications are discussed.
This article reports the results of an experimental evaluation of the impact of Intensive Supervision Probation (ISP) on probationer recidivism. Participants, who were assessed at an increased likelihood of committing serious crimes and not ordered to specialized supervision, were randomly assigned to ISP (n = 447) or standard probation (n = 385). ISP probationers received more restrictive supervision and experienced more office contacts, home visitations, and drug screenings. After 12 months, there was no difference in offending. This equivalence holds across multiple types of crimes, including violent, non-violent, property, and drug offenses, as well as in a survival analysis conducted for each offense type. ISP probationers absconded from supervision, were charged with technical violations, and were incarcerated at significantly higher rates. Policy implications for these results are discussed.
Separate studies have shown that a variety of postrelease housing placements for returning prisoners can significantly influence recidivism. Research has also found that contextual factors such as economic disadvantage can also significantly predict recidivism. This study combines those lines of research by examining the effects of five categories of postrelease housing placements as well as contextual measures of economic disadvantage on recidivism for newly released Minnesota state prisoners. Using multilevel analysis techniques, this research found that with one exception, certain postrelease housing situations, along with several other individual-level control variables, were more robust predictors of recidivism than contextual measures of disadvantage and poverty. This study highlights the significant impact that postrelease housing placements can have on the reentry process.
In November 2012, Massachusetts’ voters passed a medical marijuana law that was soon followed by municipal moratoriums prohibiting marijuana dispensaries. This study uses structural equation modeling (SEM) to examine (a) whether municipal characteristics predict voting outcomes for medical marijuana, (b) whether these same characteristics predict moratorium enactment, and (c) whether voting outcomes mediate the relationships between municipal characteristics and moratorium enactment. Results indicate that municipal characteristics predict voter support and indifference for medical marijuana, and this support and indifferences in turn predicts moratorium passage. However, most municipal characteristics only indirectly affect moratorium passage via voting activity. This suggests moratorium enactment may be an extension of municipal voting activity, in turn reflecting the characteristics of a municipality’s population. Policy implications are discussed.
Geographic restrictions on registered sex offenders (RSOs) have become commonplace. Such policies generally assume that sex offenses are likely to be higher near RSOs. Yet, few ecological studies have examined this question empirically. The current study examines whether incidences of reported sex offenses are higher in proximity to the addresses of RSOs. Specifically, we examine whether there is a relationship between the number of reported sex offenses and the number of RSOs living in square grid cells (and in 1,000, 1,500, and 2,500 ft radii of the cell centroid) in Indianapolis. Count models indicate that the number of RSOs in an area is not a robust predictor of reported sex offenses, net of controls.
In the wake of United States v. Booker and Gall/Kimbrough v. United States, sentencing researchers and legal scholars conducted research designed to identify their impact on the federal sentencing process, with a focus on determining whether the decisions increased unwarranted disparity. In this article, we extend this body of research. Using 10 years of data from the U.S. Sentencing Commission and data from other sources, we assess whether and how these decisions influence sentence severity. Results indicate that sentence severity declined following Booker and, especially, Gall/Kimbrough, but that the decisions’ effects on sentence severity varied significantly across U.S. District Courts. Most importantly, the impact of Gall/Kimbrough sentence severity was conditioned by districts’ percent Black population, level of socioeconomic disadvantage, and degree of political conservatism; each of these factors moderated the decisions’ effects on the harshness of the sentences imposed by the districts’ judges.
The current study aims to analyze the historical development of community-oriented policing (COP) in Turkey as well as exploring officers’ attitudes toward COP and examining factors related to their attitudes. The current research is based on a survey of 405 Turkish police officers. We focused on officers’ demographic characteristics, work orientation, training, the level of participation in decision-making, and perception toward public as a way of understanding officers’ attitudes toward community policing. Our research suggests that majority of organization members have favorable attitudes toward community policing and support it in general and in their own department. The results indicate a positive relationship between participation in decision-making, service work orientation, officers’ relationships with citizens, and police officers’ attitudes toward community policing. Furthermore, the study assesses the effects of police culture on officers’ attitudes in a highly centralized police agency and discusses the policy implications of our findings.
Concern about the risk of consumer fraud victimization among the elderly has led to programs that disseminate fraud prevention information and provide services. However, little is known about how seniors access such information or learn about or contact these programs. Drawing on scholarship on fraud, media consumption, and the fear of crime, this study contributes to efforts to understand and reduce consumer fraud victimization. Analyses of data from adults age 60 and above demonstrate that certain segments of the elderly population access a greater variety of information sources to learn about fraud prevention. In turn, such access is associated with greater fraud prevention program awareness and contact.
Despite a large number of studies testing Broken Windows Theory (BWT), the reverse theoretical pathway has never been assessed longitudinally (risk perceptions -> incivilities perceptions). It is estimated here using panel data from Baltimore, Maryland. Results show lagged, multilevel impacts of risk perceptions on shifting incivilities perceptions. Furthermore, impacts of risk perceptions on later shifts in perceived incivilities vary significantly across streetblocks. Findings support Harcourt’s assertion that "disorder" is not a fixed and unambiguous label; rather, it is dependent on a person defining his or her surroundings. People who report a high degree of crime risk are "biased" toward defining neighborhood features as more problematic than those who do not.
Recent studies suggest that 50% of offenders released from state prisons return to prison within 3 to 5 years. In contrast, this article shows that roughly two of every three offenders who enter and exit prison will never return to prison. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ newly revised National Corrections Reporting Program, we examine prison admissions and releases over a 13-year period in 17 states and over shorter periods in other states to determine the rate at which individual offenders return to prison. We distinguish between the traditional event-based sampling methods for studying recidivism and our alternative offender-based method, explaining how each is useful but how the two approaches answer different policy questions.
A recent study scrutinized the effects of providing people with information about suspended sentences on their opinions of these sentences, and concluded that the impact is modest or even absent. Re-analyzing the original data, we demonstrate that this conclusion greatly underestimates the relevance of informational provision. Recognizing that information is framed differently by people with different cultural predispositions, we show that the effects of informational provision are much stronger among groups with specific penal attitudes than analyses of mere "direct" effects suggest. Even more importantly, the direction of these effects also depends on people’s penal attitudes; among specific groups, more information leads to less, instead of more, favorable opinions on suspended sentences.
Legal variables, such as offense severity and criminal history, principally shape sentencing decisions, but extralegal factors such as race, gender, and age also influence sentencing outcomes. Studies focusing on the effect of pretrial detention on sentencing outcomes usually associate pretrial detention with negative sentencing outcomes. The current study followed 90,037 federal defendants from indictment through sentencing, and measured the effects of pretrial detention on sentencing decisions. Detention (and, to a lesser degree, revocation of pretrial release) was associated with increased likelihood of receiving a prison sentence and greater sentence length, even when controlling for offense severity and criminal history scores.
The purpose of the current study was to examine to what extent risk factors and treatment readiness were related to engagement (i.e., participation and completion) in prison-based rehabilitation programs. The sample consisted of the total 6-month inflow of male detainees in the Netherlands who were assigned a candidate for a prison-based rehabilitation program (N = 638). Logistic regression models showed that treatment readiness partially explained treatment program completion. Offenders who were ready for treatment were more than two times as likely to complete treatment programs, compared with offenders who were not. Risk factors (such as drug or alcohol misuse) did, with a few exceptions, not correlate with treatment participation or treatment completion. Outcomes pointed to the importance of treatment readiness and showed the significance of enhancing treatment readiness among offenders who are eligible for correctional treatment programs. Results were discussed in light of study limitations and suggestions for future research.
The current study contributes to the small, but growing, body of literature testing Tittle’s control balance theory by offering a unique test of the theory’s ability to explain a wide variety of offending among a large sample of recently incarcerated jail inmates. Among the full sample of inmates, both control deficits and surpluses significantly increase the risk of offending. When men and women are examined separately, control deficits are non-significant while control surpluses continue to increase offending, and this effect does not significantly vary among men and women. Evidence from the interactive effects of control imbalance and self-control indicate that control surpluses and low self-control are also related to committing a wider variety of crimes.
The growing empirical literature on the effects on crime of the recent housing crisis in the United States provides inconsistent results for a direct effect. Furthermore, no longitudinal studies examine the association between home vacancy and crime during the U.S. housing crisis. To address this question, we used a sample of 126 major metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) within the United States for the period 2005-2009 and estimated random and fixed effects models. Results indicated that increasing rates of home vacancy during the housing crisis were significantly associated with burglary rates within and between MSAs but had no association with robbery rates after controlling for other important crime covariates. We discuss the theoretical and methodological implications of these findings.
Research has frequently referenced the influence of gentrification on crime, but only a few studies empirically assessed this relationship. Recent research has utilized innovative measures of gentrification and advanced statistical techniques, but many questions remain unanswered. One such question is whether and to what extent gentrification influenced crime in New York City. The current study used a quantitative operationalization of gentrification that was grounded in qualitative information and hybrid fixed-effects regression to assess whether changes in violent crime rates in New York City were associated with gentrification. Results indicate that sub-boroughs that experienced greater rates of gentrification featured significantly larger declines in assault, homicide, and robbery and that this relationship did not vary significantly over time.
It is now well documented that the view that immigrants commit more crime than native-born persons is not supported by empirical research. Yet, the knowledge base is limited in our understanding of the criminological frameworks that may distinguish these groups and, in part, lead to divergent offending patterns. We use the legal socialization framework to understand potential differences along with data from the Pathways to Desistance to assess differences in legal socialization perceptions between first-generation immigrants, second-generation immigrants, and native-born serious youthful offenders. Results show that, compared with second-generation and native-born youth, first-generation youth tend to have more positive views toward the law, less cynical attitudes toward the legal system, and report more social costs associated with punishment.
The merger of Hirschi’s social bonding and Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theories has resulted in a recent redefinition of self-control as the "tendency to consider the full range of potential costs of a particular act." The present study clarifies the implications of Hirschi’s redefinition, advances a new measure of redefined self-control, and provides an empirical test of key hypotheses using data from a Midwestern sample of adolescents. Results indicate that the alternative measure of redefined self-control has predictive validity. Although redefined self-control and social bonds are not the same thing, they are moderately correlated. Net of controls, redefined self-control has a significant direct effect on marijuana use and partially mediates the effect of social bonds.
Grounded in both organizational- and individual-level theories, this study examined the relationship between police field training officers (FTOs) and their trainees’ subsequent allegations of misconduct. Trainees in the sample were each exposed to multiple FTOs, which presented a unique methodological problem. As such, multilevel models that permitted the nesting of individual trainees within multiple higher order groups of FTOs were estimated. Results revealed that approximately one quarter of the variation in trainees’ allegations of postsupervision misconduct was attributed to FTOs, suggesting the apple (trainee) indeed falls close to the tree (FTO). Implications for FTO selection and training are discussed.
Scholarship has shown that visitation helps individuals maintain social ties during imprisonment, which, in turn, can improve inmate behavior and reduce recidivism. Not being visited can result in collateral consequences and inequality in punishment. Few studies, however, have explored the factors associated with visitation. This study uses data on Florida inmates to identify individual- and community-level factors that may affect visitation. Consistent with expectations derived from prior theory and research, the study finds that inmates who are older, Black, and who have been incarcerated more frequently experience less visitation. In addition, inmates who come from areas with higher incarceration rates and higher levels of social altruism experience more visits. Unexpectedly, however, sentence length and economic disadvantage are not associated with visitation. Implications of these findings are discussed.
Social bonds theory is one of the most influential and tested perspectives for explaining juvenile delinquency, yet tests have often been methodologically limited. Prior research has failed to examine how intra- and interindividual variation in social bonding influences delinquency. In addition, there are few applications of this theory to non-Western contexts. Thus, the current study attempts to test the cross-cultural generalizability of social bonds theory and overcome weaknesses of prior research. We use longitudinal panel analyses and five waves of data from the Korean Youth Panel Survey to examine the influence of nine measures of social bonding on delinquent behavior. By estimating different panel models, we find some support for social bonds as indicators of within- and between-individual variation in delinquency. Specifically, the emphasis on education in Korea and the role of parents in supervising their children play an integral role in reducing the delinquency of Korean youth.
Organized crime and drug cartel violence are major problems in some Latin American countries. This study examines the relationship between fear of crime and daily routines. It fills a gap in the international literature by testing the mediating effect of the war on organized crime (WOC) in Mexico. Integrating conventional individual and neighborhood characteristics with a local context variable, such as the intensity of the WOC and drug violence, provides a more complete view for understanding fear of crime in this country. Based on a national victimization survey, it was found that respondents in areas gravely affected by the WOC and drug violence were also more negatively affected in their daily routines after controlling for a set of classic correlates of fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization. However, no evidence was found to support that the current WOC mediates the relationship of fear of crime and perceived risk of victimization with daily routines.
This article critically reviews prior labeling theory research concerning juvenile delinquency and crime, and proposes a new study using a recent data set. The labeling perspective is outlined as it was originally presented, and the theoretical elaborations that have taken place since are highlighted. Distinctions are made between formally applied criminal justice labels and the informal labels that are applied by educational institutions, significant others, and parental figures. An interactionist labeling model is presented to explain levels of juvenile delinquency among a nationally representative sample of American adolescents: the first three waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Finally, negative binomial regression models are estimated to better explain the dynamic relationship between labels and delinquency. Consistent with labeling theory, formal labeling significantly increased future delinquency.
The United Kingdom experienced a rapid inflow of migrants from European Union accession countries between 2004 and 2011, many of whom participated in the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS). Given the relative labor market position of this recent migrant wave, scholars argued that returns to criminal activity were negligible. Yet, recent data from London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that foreign-born nationals from Poland, Lithuania, and other Eastern European nations were responsible for almost 25% of alleged crimes in London between 2010 and 2011. With the United Kingdom set to see an influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants starting in 2014, political and public arenas became rife with fears of a growing Eastern European crime wave. This article attempted to bring some coherence to the relationship between recent Eastern European immigration and multiple forms of crime in the United Kingdom. Using data from 348 local authorities in England and Wales, this study examined recent immigration composition effects on crime. The study also went beyond existing studies on immigration and crime by examining the effects of change in employment-related migration flows, study-related migration, and other migration flows since 2004. Results confirmed that areas that saw the highest rates of immigration do not have higher rates of violence. These areas did exhibit higher rates of drug offenses, however, that could not be explained away by differences in structural conditions. Finally, evidence was found that the reason for migration was critical in predicting criminal returns.
Increased cell phone use among adolescents has created new opportunities for deviance and victimization in recent years. One teenage cell phone–based behavior that has received increased attention from a variety of sources including public health researchers, parents, and law enforcement is "sexting" (i.e., a minor receiving sexually explicit photos or videos of another adolescent or adult via cell phone or sending such material to another teenager). Research has revealed that sexting is a risky form of adolescent deviance that is linked with a host of potential negative health consequences (e.g., risky sexual behavior and drug use) and legal ramifications. Despite the importance of the issue, research exploring the risk factors associated with exposure to sexts is virtually nonexistent. Using telephone interview data from a representative sample of adolescents aged 12 to 17 years, the present study applies routine activity theory to explain the receiving of sexts. The results confirm expectations that both exposure-based (e.g., use of a cell phone during school hours) and supervision-based (i.e., school cell phone rules and family cell phone plan) routine cell phone activities are associated with receiving sexts. Overall, the study extends the generality of routine activity theory to teenage sexting, highlights the utility of examining domain-specific routine activity indicators, and offers one of the first theoretically informed analyses concerning the factors associated with adolescent sexting.
Research demonstrates that crime is spatially concentrated. However, most research relies on information about where crimes occur, without reference to where offenders reside. This study examines how the characteristics of neighborhoods and their proximity to offender home locations affect offender spatial decision making. Using a discrete choice model and data for detected incidents of theft from vehicles (TFV), we test predictions from two theoretical perspectives—crime pattern and social disorganization theories. We demonstrate that offenders favor areas that are low in social cohesion and closer to their home, or other age-related activity nodes. For adult offenders, choices also appear to be influenced by how accessible a neighborhood is via the street network. The implications for criminological theory and crime prevention are discussed.
Although theories posit that some types of local institutions will have a crime-producing influence in neighborhoods while others will have the opposite effect, the empirical evidence is far from conclusive. Previous studies are typically limited to analyzing cross-sectional data and one type of institution. Using longitudinal data of the number of employees of various institutions within census tracts across nine U.S. cities, the present study examines the longitudinal impact of four types of institutions on violent and property crime. Negative binomial regression models suggest that alcohol outlets and banking establishments increase criminal opportunities, whereas "third places" like coffee shops and cafes induce efficacious neighborhood control and social action. Civic and social organizations have no statistical relationship with crime.
The present study addresses whether sex moderates the effects of known risk and protective factors for alcohol and drug use. Simultaneously drawing on traditional delinquency theories and feminist theoretical insight, the authors first included product terms in regression equations for the total sample and then estimated separate regression equations for girls and boys to determine the extent to which the theoretical constructs differentially affected their substance use. In a large sample of 8th to 12th graders, stronger effects of peer approval, school bonds, and victimizations were evident in the equations for girls, while peer pressure mattered more for boys. Implications of moderated effects for theoretical and empirical developments are discussed.
Although previous research has examined arrests for intimate partner violence (IPV), most of these analyses focus exclusively on physical assault and intimidation. Research on arrests for sexual assault have examined arrests for cases of stranger and/or acquaintance sexual assault, but have not included sexual IPV. Using data from the 2010 National Incident-Based Reporting System, this analysis is the first to calculate and compare arrest rates for sexual IPV, physical IPV, and intimidation. Results indicate that after controlling for other factors, police are less likely to make an arrest in cases of sexual IPV than in cases of physical IPV or intimidation. These findings are discussed in the context of the consequences of sexual assault on IPV victims.
Technological advances have enabled criminal justice organizations to collect and share offender data. Accompanying these advances are concerns about how various segments of the criminal justice system utilize these data. Specifically, scholars have expressed concerns about the legal consequences of being included in gang databases. This study explored the use of gang affiliation indicators on prosecutorial outcomes by using a sample of 5,111 urban juvenile cases. Using three binary measures of gang affiliation, multinomial logistic regression analysis suggested indicators of gang affiliation influenced prosecutorial outcomes (dismissal, pre-adjudication informal supervision, deferred prosecution, or petition), but in an unanticipated manner. Confirmed gang affiliates, instead of suspected or non-gang affiliates, were significantly more likely to experience pre-adjudication informal supervision over other forms of case outcomes: case dismissal, deferred prosecution, or court petition. Policy implications focus on the inter-connectedness of the criminal justice system.
This study evaluates the behavioral consistency in offending styles among a sample of serial burglars from the United States. Three popular specialization analyses—Jaccard’s coefficient, the forward specialization coefficient (FSC), and the Diversity (D) index—are used to compare if, and how much, variation exists in the behavior of serial burglars committing different styles of offenses, among the three analyses. Results show that there is variation across the analyses, with the FSC and D index suggesting serial burglars are relatively consistent in their burglary offense styles. However, burglars with organized and disorganized offense styles are more consistent in behavior across offenses than burglars who committed opportunistic and interpersonal style offenses. These findings have important methodological implications for criminological research, and practical implications for policing and crime linkage analysis.
The present study examined the link between financial problems and delinquency in adolescents and young adults (N = 1,258). Using three measurement waves that covered a time span of 6 years, we conducted cross-lagged panel analyses. Overall, we found evidence that financial problems increase the risk of delinquency, and vice versa. Effects of delinquency on financial problems were larger than the other way around. In addition, a longer term (6 year) effect of delinquency on financial problems was found, whereas this effect was not found for financial problems to delinquency. Gender and age did not moderate the financial problem–delinquency link, suggesting that the bidirectional effect between financial problems and delinquency applies to adolescent and young adult males and females. Finally, we found some evidence to suggest that the indirect effects became stronger over time.
This study assesses the likelihood of rearrest among a cohort of all adults (N = 1,438) released from the Massachusetts state prison system who received mental health services while they were incarcerated. All individuals were followed for 24 months. The analysis focused on four classes of variables: demographic characteristics, clinical history, criminal justice history, and postrelease supervision. These analyses showed that criminal history factors—a juvenile record and a history of multiple previous incarcerations—were significant risk factors, but that clinical factors, including a history of substance abuse, were not. Overall, the models developed here look much like the ones that would be observed in the general offender population. The implications of these findings for criminal justice and mental health policy are discussed.
Relationships between correctional officers and prisoners are crucial to life in prison, and affect prison order and prisoners’ well-being. Research on factors influencing staff–prisoner relationships is scarce and has not included the design of prison buildings. This study examined the association between prison architecture and prisoners’ perceptions of their relationships with officers. Data were used from the Prison Project, a large-scale study in which 1,715 prisoners held in 117 units in 32 Dutch remand centers were surveyed. Multilevel analyses showed that prison layout was related to officer–prisoner relationships: Prisoners in panopticon layouts were less positive than prisoners in other layouts. In addition, prisoners housed in older units and in units with more double cells were less positive about officer–prisoner interactions.
The Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act (AWA) established the U.S. Marshals Service (USMS) as the nation’s lead agency in the pursuit of sex offenders who violate a sex offender registry and cross state, tribal, or national borders. This study examines the flight behavior of 195 AWA violators investigated by the USMS during 2011 and focuses on the strategic choices fugitives made including the distance offenders traveled, whether they lived alone or with others at capture, and whether they were arrested in a community they were familiar with (e.g., a city they had lived in before). A number of personal, criminal, geographic, and social indicators were taken from law enforcement and public records in an effort to model patterns across these three strategic choices. The data showed that 37% of AWA violators fled to a familiar area, 65% lived with friends or family at capture, and 50% traveled more than 370 miles (with 35% residing in an adjacent state to the last known address). Analyses also showed that these three outcomes varied as a function of offender demographics, geographic history, social networks, and criminal history. Implications for policy and research are discussed.
This study evaluated a Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) evidence-based offender supervision program, Citizenship, using a randomized controlled trial (RCT). Citizenship has a cognitive-behavioral basis and focuses on education, increasing motivation to change, and community integration. The RCT is a stepped wedge cluster randomized design that has rarely been used in criminal justice and overcomes some ethical objections to RCT implementation. Participants were all medium- and high-risk offenders commencing probation supervision (N = 1,091) in any one of the six office units during the 1-year rollout of the program. Overall, there was a non-significant 20% effect of Citizenship in reducing reconvictions. However, controlling for risk, the hazard with higher risk offenders was 34% lower than for the control group. Results therefore support RNR-based probation supervision.
Tyler’s process-based model of policing suggests that the police can enhance their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness in the eyes of the public when they exercise their authority in a procedurally fair manner. To date, most process-based research has focused on the sources of legitimacy while largely overlooking trust in the police. The present study extends this line of literature by examining the sources of trust in the police. In particular, emerging research has revealed that neighborhood context influences attitudes toward the police but much less attention has been given to exploring the role individuals’ perceptions of their neighborhood play in shaping such evaluations. Therefore, the present study considers whether individuals’ perceptions of collective efficacy serve as a social-psychological cognitive orientation that influences levels of trust in the police. Using data from a recently conducted mail survey of a random sample of 1,681 residents from a metropolitan city, we find that procedural justice evaluations are a primary source of trust in the police. At the same time, however, level of perceived collective efficacy is positively associated with trust even after accounting for procedural justice. The findings suggest that police procedural fairness is vitally important to establishing trust from the public but peoples’ cognitive orientation toward their neighborhood context partially shapes the level of trustworthiness they afford to the police.
This study examined the census tract characteristics associated with the spatial concentration of registered sex offender (RSO) residences in 1,823 census tracts across 53 counties in upstate New York. The concentration of RSOs for each tract was measured using excess risk scores that essentially measure disproportionate concentrations of RSOs based on the resident population of the county and tract. The tract characteristics examined included structural characteristics from the 2010 Census, such as indicators of social disorganization, housing availability and affordability, and population density, legal characteristics describing the presence of residence restrictions, and controls for spatial autocorrelation and regional differences. Results indicate that registered sex offenders (RSOs) are disproportionately more likely to be found in tracts exhibiting high levels of concentrated disadvantage, available housing, and affordable housing, and disproportionately less likely to be found in tracts with high levels of ethnic heterogeneity. Controlling for spatial autocorrelation (lag) did not change overall results but was significantly and positively associated with excess risk. Implications for future policy and research practices are discussed.
Life-course theories expect imprisonment to negatively influence a person’s employment prospects. Incarceration not only instantaneously interrupts a number of life-course domains but may also reduce future opportunities to reconnect to them. This article analyzes the effects of incarceration on employment by using observational data on the employment careers from age 23 up to age 32 in 270 high-risk males. All men had been treated for delinquency and problematic behavior in a juvenile justice institution in the Netherlands. First, we investigate whether specific employment trajectories can be distinguished within the overall employment pattern in this sample. Second, controlling for selection into both incarceration and low-employment participation, we investigate the effect of incarceration on future employment over and above the effect of being convicted.
Only a limited body of research has focused on how victim sex may affect capital sentencing decisions. Acknowledging this issue, the present study uses a large sample of capital cases from North Carolina (n = 709) and victim sex–specific logistic regression models to examine whether different variables are important predictors of receiving the death penalty for male victim cases versus female victim cases. Results indicate that (a) sex-specific models better explain juror death penalty decision-making compared with a full model, including victims of both sexes, and (b) different extralegal and legal characteristics predict jurors’ decisions to choose the death penalty in cases with male victims versus female victims. Specifically, for male victims, older victim age, younger defendant age, urban jurisdiction, the number of victims killed, the number of aggravators, the number of mitigators, and case designation as heinous and cruel predict juror decision-making. Comparatively, for female victim cases, only the number of mitigators and case designation as heinous and cruel are significant predictors. Theoretical and legal implications as well as directions for future research are discussed.
The current study examines the differential influence of face-to-face and virtual peers in predicting digital and traditional offending among college students through the lens of social learning theory (SLT). SLT components are explored to discern whether the theory holds for virtual peers, as it has for face-to-face peers using a structural equation modeling framework, thus making a substantial contribution to the social learning literature. Findings provide some support for SLT for both virtual only peers and the face-to-face peers model in relation to digital as well as traditional offending. In addition, findings suggest that virtual peer associations may be as important as traditional peer associations in explaining certain types of deviant behavior.
In this study, we examine race, sex, and self-reported arrest histories (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (NLSY97; N = 7,335) for the period 1997 through 2008 covering cumulative arrest histories through ages 18 and 23. The analysis produces three key findings: (a) males have higher cumulative prevalence of arrest than females and (b) there are important race differences in the probability of arrest for males but not for females. Assuming that the missing cases are missing at random (MAR), about 30% of Black males have experienced at least one arrest by age 18 (vs. about 22% for White males); by age 23 about 49% of Black males have been arrested (vs. about 38% for White males). Earlier research using the NLSY97 showed that the risk of arrest by age 23 was 30%, with nonresponse bounds [25.3%, 41.4%]. This study indicates that the risk of arrest is not evenly distributed across the population. Future research should focus on the identification and management of collateral risks that often accompany arrest experiences.
Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing the performance of one entity with the performance of comparison entities. Assessments of the various entities of the criminal justice system, such as police officers, judges, correctional facilities, and neighborhoods, often involve the construction of benchmarks with which to compare their relative performance. However, the typically made comparisons do not adequately account for the underlying differences in these entities. This article presents a general method, based on propensity scoring and doubly robust estimation, for constructing benchmarks for assessing the performance of entities within the criminal justice system while properly accounting for potentially confounding differences among the entities. The article demonstrates the method on an assessment of police performance in Cincinnati.
Past research has focused on the intertwined relationship between homelessness, mental illness, and criminal justice. Although a well-established correlation between mental illness and homelessness has emerged, a better understanding of how this may be mediated by other prominent risk factors such as substance use or victimization is warranted. The current study uses data obtained from 3,673 recently booked arrestees to examine these relationships. Using structural equation modeling with measured variables, the analyses indicate the relationship between mental health and homelessness to be almost entirely mediated by alcohol use, drug use, and violent victimization. Policy implications are discussed.
Schools that require the most help are often those that have difficulty staffing qualified teachers. Data suggest that many teachers who leave their schools or the profession cite student misbehavior and an unsafe work environment as reasons. Although public attention is not at present focused on problems of gang delinquency in schools—focusing instead on educational funding, teacher quality, and achievement levels—there is every reason to anticipate that gangs, school disorder, and teaching quality are closely linked. This research involves a large probability sample of secondary schools surveyed in 1998 merged with U.S. census data on community characteristics. Multilevel models imply that community demographic influences on individual gang involvement (GI) are largely mediated by school and personal variables. School safety and students’ personal sense of safety emerged as important variables that predicted GI.
This study assesses the relationship between racial and ethnic change and change in crime in a different type of community—schools. Like neighborhoods, some schools are perpetually more dangerous than others despite turnover. This study investigates how change in the racial and ethnic composition of school enrollment plays a role in school-level crime. In addition, because schools are located within a community context, this study incorporates spatial context and includes information on crime and residential change in the neighborhood surrounding the school. Using a series of negative binomial regression models assessing the influence of changes in school-specific and local community factors on serious school offending (assaults, batteries, robberies, and property offenses that occurred on campus) over time, the findings reveal that that the relationship between school-level racial and ethnic change is moderated by the community-level changes, but that the relationship is specific to school type and contrary to theoretical expectation.
Several studies demonstrate a relationship between social capital and reductions in crime. However, recent research has begun to demonstrate that social capital may affect violent and property crime differently. Moreover, some researchers have suggested that specific aspects of social capital affect crime, while other aspects have little or no effect. This study examines social capital’s effect on the total crime rate, violent crime rate, and property crime rate within U.S. counties. In addition, we group social capital measures as Putnam-type (P-Group), Olson-type (O-Group), and recreation-type (R-Group) parochial controls depending on the type of control it is expected to exert. We find that elements of social capital affect both violent crime and property crime, but affect each in different ways. The type of organization affects whether P-Group, O-Group, and R-Group parochial controls reduce crime.
The supervision of driving while intoxicated/impaired (DWI) offenders composes a large share of probation officer’s caseloads. Crime and justice researchers have made tremendous advances in the ability to classify offenders according to general recidivism, with the Level of Service Inventory–Revised (LSI-R) being one of the most tested instruments used by community corrections officers. There has yet to emerge a risk assessment tool designed to classify DWI offenders according to their likelihood to be arrested for multiple DWIs. This article estimates a series of multinomial logistic regression models to identify differences between one-time DWI offenders and chronic DWI offenders. The central independent variables are the items on the LSI-R and a popular alcohol and substance abuse screener (Adult Substance Use Survey [ASUS]), while controlling for age, race, gender, and marital status. These instruments are important tools to classify DWI offenders, and the results suggest that the community corrections field (including the offenders supervised) would benefit from a risk assessment tool to classify DWI offenders.
Using data from the Supplemental Victimization Survey and relying on theoretical direction provided by Agnew’s general strain theory, we examine whether specific types of stalking experiences trigger specific types of negative emotional states and whether specific negative emotional states are in turn associated with specific types of noncriminal coping mechanisms. We find that while several of the stalking experiences trigger a variety of negative emotional states, other stalking experiences do not exhibit any association with negative emotions. We also uncover that negative emotional states in response to strain can trigger legitimate coping mechanisms. One notable finding that emerged from our results is that feeling annoyed/angry is significantly associated with noncriminal coping strategies. The policy implications of our findings are also discussed.
The goal of this study is to explore the monetary costs of crimes committed by former inmates as they attempt to transition back into their communities. We use data gathered from New Jersey prison releases from 2005 to 2007 (n = 31,831) for our explorations. In addition to describing local-, county-, and state-level costs of crimes, we construct a series of regression models to predict costs using several predictors of recidivism. Results indicate that age, minority status, area-level deprivation, and whether the inmate was released to parole supervision were statistically significant predictors of costs in expected directions. However, strongly established predictors of recidivism such as criminal history and policy-relevant predictors such as time served are not significant predictors of postrelease costs of crimes. Our discussion presents a simple cost-benefit analysis according to two distinct policy approaches: (a) targeting evidence-based correctional principles toward high-risk former inmates and (b) incapacitating high-risk former inmates.
The growth in the number of tourist arrivals in Spain in recent years has had significant economic repercussions; yet, little has been reported about its negative impact. This study goes some way to rectifying this by estimating the impact of tourist activity on crime rates in the Spanish provinces during the period 2000-2008. We use both 2-SLS and GMM techniques in a panel data framework to overcome the various challenges posed by estimating this relationship, namely, controlling for the unobserved characteristics of the provinces, and accounting for both the possible endogeneity of the tourist variable and the inertia of criminal activities. The results show that tourist arrivals have a positive and significant impact on crimes against both property and the person.
Within the early/late start typology of offenders with schizophrenia, a third type, first offenders (FO), has been proposed. The aim of this study was to examine the justification of this first offender type. Retrospective file study consisted of 97 early starters (ES), 100 late starters, and 26 FO. Variables in different domains were scored. There were significant differences between the groups within the domains life functioning, abuse and family-related problems, psychiatric functioning, substance misuse, antisocial personality, and offense characteristics. Most differences were between the ES and FO. The existence of the first offender type is justified by the present findings. These findings underscore the importance of offender subtyping for better offender treatment interventions.
Deterrence researchers have long considered the extent to which perceived certainty and severity inhibit offending. More recently, scholars have encouraged more specific investigations about the conditions under which sanction threats may deter offending. This study contributes to and extends this line of research by exploring whether morality conditions this relationship among a large sample of incarcerated felons. Results show that while certainty and morality are independently associated with a lower likelihood of offending, perceived certainty relates to offending only among those persons with high—but not low—moral beliefs.
Public policy in the area of youth crime has periodically shifted back and forth between punishment and child saving. Generally, scholars believe that public opinion and youth justice policies are linked. It is also believed that crime salience—fear and perceived risk of victimization—is linked to public opinion about youth sanctions. To test these widely held beliefs, this study examines public opinion about youth justice policies by exploring the impact of crime salience on public support for child saving versus youth punishment. This study expands on prior literature by also considering the public’s willingness to pay (WTP) for the youth justice policies they prefer. Results indicate that fear increases punitiveness, WTP for youth justice policies generally, and, more specifically, the WTP for youth punishment. However, fear does not affect the public’s WTP for child saving. Limitations and suggestions for future research are discussed.
Fast-track programs allow prosecutors in authorized jurisdictions to expedite case processing for offenders charged with immigration violations. We explore whether disparities from fast-track usage exist by utilizing multilevel modeling techniques to analyze 2008 United States Sentencing Commission data on the federal sentencing of illegal entry defendants. Results indicate that the use of fast-track programs, the amount of sentence reduction applied in fast-track cases, and the overall sentence length is differentially impacted by various legal, extralegal, case processing, and district-level variables. These findings suggest some support for previous theoretical explanations for decision-making, but also indicate that these processes may differ slightly in the context of fast-track programs.
Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared with their first-generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist, namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis—born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second-generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from nine waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer, and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second-generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second-generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared with native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.
School resource officer (SRO) programs that place sworn law enforcement officers at schools are a popular violence prevention strategy. Despite widespread implementation, little is known about the impact of interacting with these officers on students’ attitudes about SROs and feelings of school connectedness. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impact of SRO interaction on the attitudes and feelings of 1,956 middle and high school students at 12 schools in one school district. Multivariate analyses showed that more SRO interactions increased students’ positive attitudes about SROs yet decreased school connectedness. Overall, the results suggested a complex relationship between SRO interactions, students’ attitudes, and experiences with school violence. The implications of these results and strategies for how officers can contribute to a positive school environment are discussed.
We explore how identity processing styles affect the relationship between self-control and delinquency. We use data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth (NLSCY) to examine whether the effects of the diffuse-avoidant, normative, and informational identity styles mediate and interact with the relationship between self-control and delinquency. Our results show that self-control is associated with the three identity styles and that identity styles mediate and moderate the effect of self-control on different types of delinquency. Self-control is partially mediated in predicting different types of delinquency and is fully mediated when predicting heavy marijuana use. In addition, interactive effects of identity styles and self-control are observed for drug and alcohol use but not crimes against persons and property.
Despite the salient role many criminologists accord peers as a source of influence in the frequency and character of offending, little is known about the role peers play in promoting offending versatility. The current study contributes to this understanding by testing the hypothesis that individuals isolated from peers display greater levels of specialization than their nonisolate counterparts. Using data from the National Youth Survey, the analyses examine (a) the contemporaneous effects of isolation from peers on offending versatility and (b) how changes in isolation status affect changes in offending diversity. Results indicate that peer isolates are more likely to specialize in offending than nonisolates. Moreover, individuals change their level of offending diversity after their status as a peer isolate changes. The discussion considers the implications of these findings and offers avenues for future research.
Firearm violence directed at law enforcement officers has become an increasingly prominent topic among policy makers, the press, and academics. This prominence is driven in part by recent growth in the number of officers killed or injured by gunfire. Although researchers have studied less serious forms of resisting arrest, little is known about risk factors for firearm violence directed at police. This study drew on the National Incident-Based Reporting System to compare all incidents in which police officers were the victim of firearm violence with a random sample of police encounters without this form of aggression. A variety of offender and situational factors identified in prior literature on resisting arrest, as well as new constructs introduced here, were compared between these two groups within a multivariate logistic regression framework. The data showed several important patterns regarding risk to officers, some of which reverse or refine earlier work produced from studies of less serious forms of resistance.
Scholarly research on commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) of youth has been impeded due to difficulties in researching hidden and vulnerable populations. Drawing from Agnew’s general strain theory, this study utilized multigroup structural equation modeling to explore similarities and differences in vulnerability to CSE across gender. The strain reactive pathway, linking caregiver strain to youth susceptibility to CSE, was tested with data from 1,354 serious youthful offenders, 8.4% of whom indicated CSE. Findings revealed that caregiver strain, such as arrests and substance use, similarly impacted nurturing of boys and girls. Across both genders, poor nurturing was linked to higher negative psychosocial emotion, running away, and initiating substance use and sexual relationships at earlier ages. For males, negative psychosocial emotion and earlier initiation of sexual relationships were significantly related to CSE. In contrast, vulnerability of females was more strongly linked to earlier substance use.
This study extends research on recidivism by examining the phenomenon via a survival mixture modeling approach, a method that is analogous to mixture modeling approaches used in trajectory analyses. Using this approach, the authors discover that multiple recidivism profiles are identifiable within a random sample of inmates released from Florida prisons between January 1998 and June 2001. Findings revealed that certain covariates predicted class membership and operated differently across the groups in predicting the hazard of recidivism, suggesting that a unilateral approach to reducing recidivism risk is an ineffective strategy. The Discussion section presents the findings in the context of theory, research, and policy.
Framed within the racial/ethnic threat thesis, the present research examined the relative effects of the size of minority populations and the ratios of White-to-minority unemployment on intake, adjudication, and judicial disposition decision making within juvenile court proceedings. Communities with greater Black and Hispanic presence and greater economic equality were expected to increase the social control for youth up to a point, where social control would then diminish. These relationships were anticipated to be stronger for Blacks than Hispanics. The overall pattern of results failed to yield support specifically for these hypothesized effects and in general, for the minority threat perspective. Implications for theory and future research are discussed.
Graduation rates from drug courts are impressive and are often attributed to the delivered treatments. However, it is unclear whether graduation rates are bolstered by low severity of drug use problems upon entry into drug court. To address this question, this study examined the relationship between baseline substance use severity and graduation rates among 251 drug court clients. Results revealed that participants with subthreshold drug composite scores on the Addiction Severity Index (ASI) were significantly more likely to grraduate than those scoring in the mild-to-moderate or severe range. Furthermore, results revealed that participants who provided a drug-negative baseline urine were significantly more likely to graduate than those who provided a drug-positive baseline urine. A binary logistic regression analysis revealed that ASI drug composite score, urine screen, race, and years educated were statistically significant predictors of drug court graduation.
This study tests Osgood, Wilson, O’Malley, Bachman, and Johnston’s extension of the routine activity theory of individual deviant behavior by considering adolescent time spent socializing with peers in virtual settings in relation to estimates of delinquency and substance use. The growth in digital communication has significantly changed the ways that youth commonly communicate with one another, and such changes may therefore provide a specification of newly emerging situational inducements that precipitate antisocial behavior during adolescence. Using data from a school-based survey of adolescents, the analyses reveal that the amount of virtual time adolescents spend socializing with peers is positively related to the frequency of alcohol use, marijuana use, and a variety index of delinquent behavior. Less support was found for an association between virtual time spent with peers and individually separated property/violent offending behaviors. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Criminologists have suggested that Latinos differ from Southern Whites in their views of violence. A sample of 1,429 Texans indicated whether they agreed that violence deserves a violent response, whether violence is necessary to prevent future violence, and whether people have a right to kill in defense of self or family. Controlling for other factors, Latinos and African Americans were more likely than non-Hispanic Whites to disagree about the need for violence in preventing future harm and the right to self-defense. Less-acculturated Latinos, indicated by whether they took the survey in Spanish, were the least supportive of violence. Despite having roots in a so-called "culture of honor," Latino immigrants, as well as those who are U.S. citizens, have distinct views on violence.
Exposure to violence remains a pervasive public health problem for adolescents in the United States. This cross-sectional study examined relations between exposure to violence in three different contexts (home, school, community) and delinquent behavior, using data from 233 11th graders (predominantly economically disadvantaged Hispanic and African American students). Analyses examined the effects of victimization and witnessing violence in each context and those of cumulative violence exposure across contexts on the outcome, controlling for other risk factors. Victimization and witnessing violence at home significantly predicted delinquency. However, violence exposure in school and neighborhood was unrelated to delinquency. Victimization was marginally more predictive than witnessing violence. Mild support for a nonlinear desensitization effect of cumulative violence exposure was found for delinquency.
Based on "amelioration," "backlash," and routine activity/lifestyle theories, the present study tested the impacts of both absolute and relative gender equality on female homicide victimization. The present cross-national examination developed several regression models by employing female homicide victimization data from the World Health Organization for 124 countries. Women’s absolute educational status and relative social status indices displayed significant relationships with female homicide victimization rates. However, significant associations of these two variables with female homicide victimization disappeared when important control variables—such as the gross domestic product, income inequality, and ethnic heterogeneity—were introduced in the regression models. Thus, the findings suggest that the relationship between gender equality and female homicide victimization is, at best, spurious.
Current police policies are based on assumptions that proactive policing strategies will not only deter crime but will also improve police–community relations. Deterrence theorists argue that general and specific deterrence can be achieved through such policing strategies. Labeling proponents, however, maintain that juveniles stopped and/or arrested by the police, rather than be deterred, will actually engage in more delinquency as a result of this contact. Research to date has provided mixed evidence. The current study seeks to inform this debate by examining the effect of being stopped or arrested on subsequent delinquent behavior and attitudes. Relying on three waves of data from a multisite sample of youth, we use propensity score matching to control for preexisting differences among youth who have and have not experienced police contact. Our findings reveal that being stopped or arrested not only increases future delinquency but also amplifies deviant attitudes.
This study examines whether deterrence and morality interact in the explanation of adolescent offending. On the basis of the Situational Action Theory, the author hypothesizes that deterrence is more effective in preventing offending among individuals with low levels of morality than among individuals with high levels of morality. To test this hypothesis, self-report data are used from a sample of young adolescents in Halmstad, Sweden (N = 891). The findings provide strong support for the hypothesis that the effect of deterrence (measured as the perceived risk of getting caught, that is, "certainty") on offending is dependent on the individual’s level of morality, indicating that deterrence has a significantly stronger effect on offending for individuals with low levels of morality than for individuals with higher levels of morality.
Despite the provisions of the Clery Act, which requires institutional reporting of crime on college campuses, patterns of campus crime have received surprisingly little research attention to date. Furthermore, few studies have described the extent to which college students engage in criminal behaviors. This study examines the criminality of students and nonstudents on the campus of a large southeastern university. To assess the effectiveness of the Clery Act, the data were mapped to identify geospatial patterns of offending on and off campus. Results illustrate important patterns of crime both on and off campus, involving both students and nonstudents. Also, multivariate analyses suggest that several factors are consistently predictive of on-campus and student arrests. Policy implications and suggestions for future research based on these findings are discussed.
This study involved an examination of sex-based differences in judicial decision making during pretrial, an understudied stage of the criminal court process. We also examined whether defendants’ sex interacted with other legal and extralegal case characteristics, or the context of the county in which defendants were processed. Analyses of data collected from 62 large urban counties for the years 1994 through 2006 revealed that overall, women were treated more leniently than men throughout the pretrial process. Results also indicated that defendants’ sex interacted with other case characteristics to influence pretrial decisions and outcomes, and that judicial decisions were shaped by the sociopolitical context of the county in which these defendants were processed.
The handling of rape by the criminal justice system may be intimately intertwined with the gender inequality found in patriarchal communities. The present study examined the empirical relationship between female sociopolitical power and the rape rates and rape case clearance rates of 105 counties in an agrarian state with a reputation for patriarchal culture. The results suggested that, after controlling for contextual variables, counties with higher levels of female sociopolitical power also experienced higher rates of rape, and lower proportions of rape cases cleared by an arrest. The findings suggested that women in patriarchal communities experience a backlash effect as they achieve progress toward gender equality.
Historically, many have suggested that women’s participation in the labor force has contributed to higher juvenile delinquency rates due to the extensive amount of time and attention that working mothers must spend outside the home and away from their children. Although some researchers have examined this hypothesis, findings are mixed and inconclusive. Using longitudinal data provided by the Korean Youth Panel Survey project, the effects of maternal employment on a child’s propensity to commit general delinquency are examined. Results from hierarchical linear modeling analysis indicated that children of working mothers display a higher likelihood of becoming involved in delinquency. In addition, working mothers with higher educational backgrounds were more apt to have a child who commits delinquency.
This study examines how prior neighborhood characteristics affect youth’s offending when youths move into an incarceration context. Neighborhood ethnic heterogeneity, residential stability, and disadvantage are often predictive of neighborhood crime, but it is unclear how these neighborhood constructs continue to affect youth’s behavior inside a secure facility. In a sample of recently incarcerated juvenile offenders (N = 320), this study examined how prior neighborhood characteristics affect institutional offending over the first 8 weeks of incarceration. Although disadvantage did not relate to institutional offending, results indicate that youths from racially/ethnically homogenous communities are more likely to offend during the initial weeks of incarceration, whereas youths from residentially stable communities are more likely to offend in the latter weeks.
This article examines whether potentially criminogenic places (including bars, liquor stores, restaurants, public transport hubs, drug markets, and more), located within a 1,240-feet radius of parolees’ residences (the home "node"), predict their rearrest or revocation. Taking these features into account, in addition to individual traits and behaviors, might pave the way for more accurate risk assessment that could help make supervision sensitive to place-based risks. However, multivariate survival analysis of 1,632 parolees released to Newark during July 2007 to June 2009 found little evidence that these factors increased the risk of failure. Successful operationalization of environmental risk will probably need to incorporate more detailed measures of parolees’ routine activities, including the settings and paths they frequent beyond their home environment.
Research has shown that time spent with peers is related to delinquency, but little is known about the conditions under which spending time with peers is most related to delinquent behavior. In this study, we contrast different categories of time spent with peers, using detailed information about the activities and whereabouts of 843 adolescents in The Hague, the Netherlands. Our findings reveal substantial differences. Time spent with peers appears to be independently related with delinquency only when it combines at least two of the following risk-inducing conditions: just socializing, being in public, and being unsupervised.
Despite previous gender-based studies of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s self-control theory, limited empirical attempts have been made outside of the Western hemisphere. This study is set to examine the cross-cultural and/or national boundaries generalizability of the self-control concepts in predicting gender differences on theft and violent delinquency in a rarely examined Hong Kong adolescent population. In addition, this study is among the first to investigate the age-effect gender differences on delinquency in the East. Using a cross-sectional design, 1,377 randomly selected native-Chinese secondary school–aged male and female adolescents of nine stratified randomly selected schools were surveyed. Multivariate analyses were used to examine gender differences, with and without controlling for the adolescent age, aside from the general offending propensity among Hong Kong adolescents with respect to their self-control level. Overall findings suggest that the relationship between low self-control indicators and types of delinquency differs across gender. Hence, findings of previous gender-based self-control studies conducted in the West are generally supported in this study. Implications, limitations, and future research directions are outlined.
Over the past two decades, a number of different types of policies have been developed to govern sex offenders. Sex offender residence restriction policies have proliferated as part of this growth in sex offender policies. Several studies have focused on how different types of respondents perceive these policies. These studies show that individuals have mixed perceptions about the policies. Less attention has been given to the factors that influence professionals’ attitudes about sex offender residence restriction. In this study, 716 community corrections professionals were surveyed in an effort to identify how they framed their perceptions about residence restriction. Specific attention was given to the impact of demographic factors, education, and perceptions of the fairness and efficacy of sex offender policies. Results show that support for the policies is tied to gender, education, and perceptions of fairness and effectiveness. Implications are discussed.
The intermittency, or time gaps between criminal events, has received very little theoretical and empirical attention in developmental/life-course criminology. Several reasons account for lack of research on intermittency, including limited data sources containing information on the time between events and the prioritization of persistence—and especially desistance—in developmental/life-course criminology. This article sets out to provide a descriptive portrait of intermittency and in so doing aims to understand and explain intermittency within and between individuals, how it varies with age over the life course, and how it covaries with the seriousness of offending. Longer intermittency is characteristic of offenders with earlier onset as well as those who offend less frequently, whereas high-frequency/early-onset offenders have less intermittency. Findings suggest that intermittent gaps between offenses relate to offense seriousness. As offenders age, the gaps between offenses increase. Each of these effects is disaggregated among chronic and nonchronic (recidivist) offenders to demonstrate the intermittent patterns of different criminal careers. Implications for theoretical and empirical research on intermittency are highlighted.
Utilizing data from two large samples, cognitive variables were evaluated as potential mediators of the past crime–future crime relationship. In the first study, the reconstructed General Criminal Thinking (GCTrc) score of the Psychological Inventory of Criminal Thinking Styles (PICTS) was found to mediate the relationship between past adult convictions/juvenile adjudications and future recidivism in 1,101 male federal prisoners. In the second study, a cognitive appraisal of one’s future chances of arrest was found to mediate the relationship between self-reported delinquency between the ages of 13 and 15 and self-reported delinquency between the ages of 17 and 19 in 1,414 male and female members of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) cohort. Sensitivity analysis revealed that the mediating effects in both studies were reasonably robust to violations of the sequential ignorability assumption. These findings suggest that cognitive factors may play a role in encouraging continuity from the early to the later stages of criminal involvement.
Without question, discretion plays an important role in the criminal-sentencing process. Some of this discretion has resulted in racial and ethnic disparity in sentencing. Under the Sentencing Reform Act (1984), judicial discretion was constrained as a result of the Federal Sentencing Guidelines. For the 20 years that followed, for the most part, judges could only consider offense severity and offender criminal history when applying sentences. However, in 2005, the Federal Guidelines were made advisory following the United States v. Booker decision. This study evaluates the effects of this decision on sentence length. Using data from the Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences database, I estimate the effects of Booker, as well as race, ethnicity, and other variables on sentencing. Moreover, I use quantile regression models to examine whether the effects of those variables are consistent across the distribution of sentences. Implications are discussed.
A pool of 141 juvenile justice intervention studies conducted in the United States, utilizing a control group, reporting quantitative outcomes and spanning the years 1996 to 2009 were identified via electronic searches. Study inclusion into the summary of best practices was based on the demonstrated equivalence of study groups (treatment and control) at the start of the study, the equivalence of the study groups at posttest, and the degree to which fidelity to treatment procedures was demonstrated. Of the 141 studies, 120 failed quality review, mostly due to fidelity issues. Of the 21 articles that passed, 76% used a therapeutic approach (vs. behavioral control) to behavioral change, with the treatment group outperforming the control group in 88% of the therapeutic intervention studies.
The research described in this article applies general strain theory to identify possible points of intervention for reducing delinquency of students in two middle schools. Data were collected from 296 youths, and separate negative binomial regression analyses were used to identify predictors of violent, property, and status delinquency. Emotional punishment by teachers and youths’ prior victimization are significant predictors of delinquency. Strained youths are especially likely to commit various delinquent behaviors if they associate with delinquent peers, while they are less likely to be involved in violent and property-related delinquency if they report a positive relationship with parents. The findings suggest the need for programmatic attention to youths’ criminal victimization and teachers’ use of emotional punishment as well as youths’ relations with parents and involvement with delinquent peers in the two schools studied.
From 2005 through 2008, 23 states across the nation have enacted laws generally referred to as "castle doctrine" laws or "stand your ground" laws. A castle doctrine law gives a homeowner the legal right to use force (even deadly force) to defend himself or herself and the family against an intruder. No study, however, has been conducted to evaluate its deterrent effects. The State of Texas enacted its castle doctrine law on September 1, 2007, and the subsequent Joe Horn shooting incident in Houston in November, 2007, served to publicize the Texas law to a great extent. The purpose of this study is to evaluate the deterrent effect of the Texas castle doctrine law and the subsequent Horn shooting on burglary in the two largest cities in Texas, Houston and Dallas. Daily data of residential and business burglary, over the period from January 1, 2007, to August 31, 2008, were obtained from the Houston Police Department and the Dallas Police Department. Interrupted time-series designs were employed in the study to analyze the intervention effects. The findings reported suggest a place-conditioned deterrent effect of the law and the Horn shooting; both residential and business burglaries were reduced significantly after the shooting incident in Houston, but not in Dallas.
The present study analyzes the relationship between moral judgment and perceptions of crime seriousness. This analysis is done with special attention to Kohlberg’s theory of moral development. Main research findings: Significant correlations exist between perceived seriousness of offenses and consideration of such conducts as immoral, and between the levels of the perceived seriousness of offenses and the levels of the moral judgment of their moral dilemmas. In addition, attitudes toward various moral dilemmas are found to be influenced by education, ethnicity and social strata. Main conclusions: Correlation between moral reasoning and perceptions of crime seriousness is weak at best, and that mature-level socio-moral development and perceptions of crime seriousness might not necessarily protect a person from identifying with criminal acts.
In addition to housing, employment, and registration restrictions, sex offenders have been subjected to electronic monitoring with the idea that they may be either surveilled or deterred from committing additional crime. This study evaluated the supervision costs of placing high-risk sex offender parolees on Global Positioning Satellite (GPS) monitoring as part of a pilot program by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation. Using a quasiexperimental design, the study tracked parolees’ costs of supervision and their parole violations for 1 year. GPS was not cost-effective; the overall cost of parolees on GPS was greater than parolees not on the monitoring, the two groups committed similar parole violations, and parolees on GPS were retained on parole longer.
Police disciplinary systems are predicated on the notion of deterrence, particularly that officers more severely sanctioned for misconduct will be less likely to repeat those behaviors compared with less severely or unsanctioned officers. Using retrospective, longitudinal data from a large police department in the northeastern United States, we explore whether this fundamental assumption of police disciplinary systems is supported. Specifically, we examine both the likelihood and timing of complaints filed against officers who had obtained at least one complaint in their career that was sustained (i.e., upheld in an investigation), and compare outcomes of sanction severity on future sustained complaints. The results demonstrate that while a few demographic and complaint characteristics significantly affect the likelihood and timing of future misconduct in expected ways, officers who received more severe sanctions were actually more likely to obtain an additional sustained complaint when compared with nonsanctioned officers. Why this is the case is unclear from the data, but the most plausible explanation is that the perceived injustice of the disciplinary system may actually promote officer deviance.
Routine activity theory and lifestyle-exposure theory propose that victimization rates differ across demographic groups because individuals in these groups engage in different activities. This implies that routine activities mediate the relationships between demographic characteristics and victimization. Although this core assumption underlies both theories, few researchers have attempted to test its validity, and the tests that do exist have relied primarily on cross-sectional, nongeneralizable data. The current study examines how routine activities mediate the associations between four demographic characteristics (gender, age, marital status, and household income) and violent victimization and theft using a longitudinal data set created from the National Crime Victimization Survey. We combine a multivariate ordered logistic model with a general structural equation model to examine direct and indirect paths. Results indicate that the effects of gender, income, and marital status on victimization are each at least partially mediated by routine activities, suggesting the applicability of lifestyle theories to the study of victimization.
Employee organizational commitment provides positive outcomes for any organization, including law enforcement agencies. Although organizational characteristics such as supervisor feedback and organizational support have a strong influence on increasing organizational commitment in other sorts of organizations, the police organizational environment is unique and can hamper the facilitation of these characteristics. The present study used a sample of police officers to test the influence of supervisor feedback and perceived organizational support on officer organizational commitment, net the influence of other organizational, job characteristic, and officer personal characteristic influences. The findings revealed that, in spite of the barriers faced by police managers, these characteristics and other organizational-level characteristics were strong predictors of officer organizational commitment.
This article examines the relationship between the number of alcohol outlets in block groups and the number of incidents of street crimes in Norfolk, Virginia. Cross-sectional and longitudinal panel designs are used to explore the relationship. Results were corrected for spatial autocorrelation and controlled for variation in size of population, socioeconomic disadvantage, and a dummy variable for being the downtown area. The cross-sectional analysis revealed a strong relationship between the number of alcohol outlets and the number of street crimes for on-premises and off-premises outlets. A panel design was then used to examine the effects of newly established outlets on the change in the number of street crime events over three periods. All three panels showed significant relationships between the number of alcohol outlets and the number of street crime events controlling for prior levels of crime, socioeconomic disadvantage, population size, and a spatial lag.
Indigenous adolescents are overrepresented at multiple stages of the justice system, but we know very little about the role that mental health, particularly substance use disorder, plays in Indigenous pathways to arrest. This study examined the association between substance use disorder, its comorbidity with other disorders, and arrest using a longitudinal sample of Indigenous youth from the Northern Midwest and Canada. Of the 16% of youth who reported at least one arrest at Wave 5, half met criteria for substance abuse/dependence and slightly more for conduct disorder. Substance abuse/dependence and conduct disorder were each associated with an increased risk of arrest, although co-occurring disorders were not. The reciprocal effects of arrest and mental disorder are discussed.
Although a range of opinions about the impact of incarceration on later offending have been articulated, there have been very few studies of sufficient methodological quality to allow the effect to be examined empirically. Drawing on a sample of 5,500 male offenders from 1 of 10 regions in the United Kingdom, propensity score matching was used to balance the preexisting differences between two groups of offenders: those who had been incarcerated for their index offense and those who had received community orders involving supervision. Both methods of balancing the group differences (matching/stratification) suggested that 1 year after release, offenders who had been incarcerated were significantly more likely to have committed another (proven) offense. These offenders also tended to commit more offenses and started reoffending earlier than those supervised in the community. Moreover, offenders who had originally been incarcerated were much more likely to be reincarcerated. In line with other emerging evidence, it was concluded that incarceration tends to slightly increase rather than decrease the chances of future offending. Limitations of the research are considered and directions for future research are explored.
Social support has been recognized as a protective factor associated with reduced intimate partner violence (IPV). A question that few studies have examined, however, is whether the effectiveness of social support on IPV is conditioned by the neighborhood in which it occurs. This study investigated whether the separate effects of support from friends and family members on partner violence were conditioned by neighborhood disadvantage. Results indicated that social support from family significantly reduced the prevalence and frequency of IPV, whereas support from friends was associated with higher frequencies of partner violence. Importantly, the effects of social support were contextualized by neighborhood disadvantage, with the impact of both forms of social support on IPV being diminished in neighborhoods characterized by higher levels of disadvantage.
Scholarly debate about whether the presence of sexually oriented businesses in a community is related to increased levels of crime has been present for several decades. This argument about the "secondary effects" of such businesses shows support for the link to increased crime as well as evidence of a lack of relationship. This article addresses this debate, presenting findings from three spatial analyses using varying-sized buffer zones of rates of violent, property, and public order offenses in the vicinity of sexually oriented businesses in Louisville, Kentucky. Results show that sexually oriented businesses are associated with much higher rates of all types of offenses in the immediate vicinity of the business and continue to have significant effects on crime levels as one moves further from the business. At the site of the sexually oriented business, community, social and economic characteristics are outweighed by the effect of the business; in farther-reaching buffer zones, community characteristics become more important, although the effects of the business remain significant.
We examined records of males incarcerated in a large southern state to assess the risk technical violators would pose to public safety by exploring their likelihood of engaging in prison misconduct. Data from official prison records provided by a large southern state’s primary corrections agency were examined using multiple counterfactual analytic techniques. Based on the official disciplinary records from male inmates readmitted to prison for technical violations and new offenses, technical violators were found to be significantly less likely to engage in any form of prison misconduct. Implications for research and policy are discussed, including the potential for recidivism research and prison reduction policies.
Recent studies of the transition to adulthood advocate taking a person-centered approach and modeling key transitional events simultaneously. This article advances this literature by focusing on precarious transitioning among at-risk youth and relating their transition experiences to criminal offending. I find evidence for three distinct "pathways" to adulthood. Those with juvenile convictions are equally likely to take one of two "precarious" routes to adulthood—an early family starter pathway or a stalled pathway. Importantly, early family starters are much less likely than stalled transitioners to offend as adults. The findings suggest the transition to adulthood represents a fork in the road for juvenile delinquents in which early family starting serves as an avenue out of continued offending.
This study evaluated the effectiveness of EMPLOY, a prisoner reentry employment program, by examining recidivism and postrelease employment outcomes among 464 offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2006 and 2008. As outcome data were collected on the 464 offenders through the end of June 2010, the average follow-up period was 28 months. Observable selection bias was minimized by using propensity score matching to create a comparison group of 232 nonparticipants who were not significantly different from the 232 EMPLOY offenders. Results from the Cox regression analyses revealed that participating in EMPLOY reduced the hazard ratio for recidivism by 32% to 63%. The findings further showed that EMPLOY increased the odds of gaining postrelease employment by 72%. Although EMPLOY did not have a significant impact on hourly wage, the overall postrelease wages for program participants were significantly higher because they worked a greater number of hours. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings.
Prisons hold a disproportionate number of society’s drug abusers. Approximately 50% of state prisoners meet the criteria for a diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence; however, only 10% of prisoners receive drug treatment. Diverting offenders to community-based treatment has been shown to generate positive net social benefits. We build on a lifetime simulation model of a nationally representative state prison cohort to examine diversion from reincarceration to community-based substance abuse treatment. We find that diversion provides positive net societal benefits to the United States and cost savings to the national criminal justice system. Our study demonstrates the societal gains from improving access to the community drug treatment system as an alternative to prison.
Scholars have documented how media accounts and policy discourse have presented Blacks and criminality as virtually synonymous, a phenomenon termed the racialization of crime. However, despite extant research on the contact hypothesis—which holds that relationships with members of other groups should reduce stereotypes—no studies have examined whether different indicators of interracial contact (IC) affect Whites’ perceptions of Black criminality; by extension, no research speaks to whether IC effects are contingent on types of racialized views, or whether the amount of IC impacts perceptions. To advance scholarship, this study uses survey data to analyze the extent to which each type of IC is associated with Whites’ views of Black criminality. It then examines whether IC differentially predicts beliefs in crime versus non-crime-related stereotypes. Finally, it assesses whether the amount of IC influences stereotype endorsement. Consistent with the contact hypothesis, results indicate a generalized stereotype-reducing impact of IC, with some caveats.
Research has identified numerous negative consequences of childhood maltreatment, including poor academic performance, psychological distress, and delinquency. To date, studies examining childhood maltreatment and subsequent victimization have largely focused on the relationship between childhood sexual abuse and intimate partner abuse in adulthood. It is unclear, however, if maltreatment during childhood is related to subsequent violent victimization during adolescence. Theories of victimization, in combination with the existing literature on the causes and consequences of childhood maltreatment, suggest that these experiences would be correlated. This study used longitudinal data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents to examine whether childhood maltreatment is empirically related to subsequent adolescent violent victimization, and if so, whether this relationship can be explained by existing victimization theories. Findings indicate that a significant relationship exists between childhood maltreatment and adolescent violent victimization, and that a risky lifestyle appears to mediate the relationship.
This article explores the role of migration in the recent emergence of Latino street gangs in a large, Midwestern city. Like many other places in the region, Indianapolis, Indiana, has witnessed the growing presence of Latino street gangs over the past decade. Seizing on the opportunity to document and analyze the early stages of formation, competing theoretical perspectives on how and why these gangs emerged are evaluated. The work is supplemented by insights gained in ethnographic work with Latino gang members, nongang Latino residents, public school employees, and police. The result is a contemporary historiography of Latino gang emergence, framed by a description of the social and structural context in which these groups are situated.
The present study primarily aims to empirically identify offender trajectory groups and their associated first-, second-, and third-degree familial characteristics. Data were extracted on all first and subsequent juvenile offenders (n = 18,915) with criminal convictions (n = 90,393) from 1996 to 2008 recorded in the National Crime Registry of the State of Israel. Semiparametric group-based modeling identified low-rate (76.88%), late-peak adolescence (3.85%), middle-peak adolescence (10.22%), early-peak adolescence (3.22%), and chronic (5.83%) offender trajectories. Compared with low-rate offenders, chronic offenders had significantly more nonviolent offenses and first-degree imprisoned relatives who were imprisoned during childhood and adolescence. In conclusion, parental imprisonment appears to act as a parent–child separation mechanism that modestly increases the likelihood of chronic offending.
This study examines the overlap between victimization and offending within officially recorded incidents of intimate partner violence (IPV). Using official police data, 1,256 individuals are initially differentiated by their role as the victim or the offender in an IPV incident and then categorized into four distinct groups (e.g., as victims, persistent offenders, desistent offenders, or victim-offenders) based on their role in further officially recorded IPV incidents during an 18-to 30-month follow-up period. Of particular interest is the victim-offender category, which involves individuals who switched roles from the original IPV incident (e.g., IPV victims who later became IPV offenders or IPV offenders who later became IPV victims). Results suggest that important distinctions exist across categories related to sex and crime exposure. Compared with victims who were predominately female and offenders who were predominately male, victim-offenders were the most gender symmetric and exhibited greater contacts with the justice process prior to and after the original IPV incident. Implications from these findings, as well as limitations and suggestions for further research are discussed.
The reading complexity of a sample of Canadian police youth waiver forms was assessed, and the oral comprehension of a waiver form was examined. In Study 1, the complexity of 31 unique waiver forms was assessed using five readability measures (i.e., waiver length, Flesch–Kincaid grade level, Grammatik sentence complexity, word difficulty, and word frequency). Results showed that the waivers are lengthy, are written at a relatively high grade level, contain complex sentences, and contain difficult and infrequent words. In Study 2, high school students (N = 32) were presented orally with one youth waiver form and asked to explain its meaning. Results showed that participants understood approximately 40% of the information contained in the waiver form. The likelihood of the rights of Canadian youths being protected and the need to create a standardized and comprehensible waiver form are discussed.
There is currently widespread interest in gender-responsive programming within the juvenile justice system. The research literature currently provides critical information about the needs of girls and pathways into the justice system through epidemiology or program evaluation studies; however, the experience of practitioners implementing reforms is less represented. This perspective is essential given the nascent stage of research on gender-specific best practices and the widespread adoption of gender-specific principles. In this article, the authors review the policy and research literature relevant to the gender-responsive movement and present the results of their multistate study of how principles are being translated into practice, including how reforms are being initiated and sustained. They discuss these findings in light of their implications for practice and research.
In this article, the authors study the effects of family formation on criminal careers for 540 high-risk men and women in the Netherlands. In a prospective design, spanning 21 years, the authors analyzed complete data on offending, marriage, parenthood, and a large set of background information. Random effects were used to model the relation between family-life events and offending, controlling for possible confounders. Findings for men support the hypothesis that marriage promotes desistance from serious offending. Males additionally benefit from parenthood, and from having a first child in particular. Furthermore, although parenthood reduces offending more strongly than marriage, the "full family package" brings the most benefit. Female offending patterns were not significantly influenced by marital status or motherhood.
To date, research on multigenerational aspects of delinquency has been devoted to transmission from parents to offspring, largely ignoring long-term invariance of criminological theories. This study uses multigenerational data from the most recent waves of the National Youth Survey Family Study to test a general model of delinquency across two samples of adolescents of similar ages, separated by more than 25 years. Original respondents were compared with their adolescent offspring using identical models based on a partial general strain approach. Direct and indirect effects of strains on delinquency were generally consistent across generations. The discussion of the findings centers on general theoretical and methodological issues associated with a relatively unexplored avenue for understanding crime and delinquency.
Although sex offender registration and notification policies have occupied an increasingly prominent place on state and federal crime control agendas, much policy discourse has occurred amid a dearth of reliable and relevant national data. This article presents the results of a study designed to broaden knowledge about the registered sex offender (RSO) population and the content of the nation’s sex offender registries. The authors analyze state-level RSO populations across several dimensions, including levels of public Internet disclosure, RSO residential status, supervision status, and assigned risk levels. Findings suggest significant interstate variation across these dimensions, and indicate that the nation’s RSO population is considerably more diverse and complex than commonly portrayed in the media and in policy debates. Implications for federal and state policies aimed at reforming the nation’s sex offender registries are discussed.
In this study, the author examines the effects of three forms of gentrification—demographic shifts, private investment, and state intervention—on gang-motivated homicides in Chicago from 1994 to 2005 using data from the U.S. Census, the Chicago Police Department, business directories, and the Chicago Housing Authority. The findings suggest that demographic shifts have a strong negative effect on gang homicide. Private investment gentrification, measured here as the proliferation of coffee shops, has a marginally significant and negative effect on gang homicide. In contrast, state-based gentrification, operationalized as the demolition of public housing, has a positive effect on gang homicide.
Based on interpretations of an integrated focal concerns and loosely coupling framework, individual and joint relationships involving race and gender with case outcomes were examined as well as possible tempering effects by crime severity and the stage in the proceedings. The results from multiple logistic regression indicate mixed support for the theoretical framework in terms of the ability to determine at what stages race and gender effects would be most evident. Crime severity was predictive of decision making and in some cases had a conditioning effect on the discovered race/gender relationships with case outcomes. The implications of the findings and directions for future research are discussed.
Mainstream accounts of community corrections supervision emphasize rehabilitation on the one hand, and surveillance and control on the other. This article, however, examines whether probation supervision is used to reduce the exposure of offenders to crime opportunities. Using data from a national community corrections survey, it finds that opportunity-focused supervision (OFS) practices are, to varying degrees, common. Most OFS activities coalesce around a distinct strategy that involves harnessing efforts of potential handlers, place managers, and capable guardians to help steer offenders away from crime opportunities, deployed somewhat independently of conventional supervision strategies. Predictors of the OFS strategy are different from other supervision approaches, and include low caseloads, juvenile supervision, and working in an office serving a rural area.
The authors use a pooled-time series design to examine the interplay between state incarceration rates, determinate sentencing, and the size of the African American population between 1978 and 2004. Consistent with prior research, findings show that larger Black populations are associated with higher incarceration rates but that this association has weakened over time. Results also indicate that determinate sentencing is associated with lower imprisonment rates. The interaction between a higher proportion of African American residents and determinate sentencing, however, is associated with higher incarceration rates, suggesting that in states with greater minority presence the abolition of discretionary parole amplifies the impact of punitive responses linked to racial threat. It is argued that this unintended effect reflects the fact that formal constraints on release decision making reduce the ability of justice systems to administer greater punishments to specific subpopulations.
Based on fieldwork with gangs and interviews with gang members in London, United Kingdom, this article illustrates how recreation, crime, enterprise, and extralegal governance represent sequential actualization stages in the evolutionary cycle of street gangs. Gangs evolve from adolescent peer groups and the normal features of street life in their respective neighborhoods. In response to external threats and financial commitments, they grow into drug-distribution enterprises. In some cases, gangs then acquire the necessary special resources of violence, territory, secrecy, and intelligence that enable them to successfully regulate and control the production and distribution of one or more given commodities or services unlawfully. Territory is first claimed then controlled. Likewise, violence is first expressive then instrumental. With each step, gangs move further away from "crime that is organized" and closer to "organized crime."
From demographics, to technology, to attitudes, the U.S. population has changes since the 1970s. Over the past 40 years, policing has also changed to include more individuals who are female and non-White. Despite all of the changes, no study has yet been conducted to determine whether predictors of police contact, including factors such as race and gender, are consistent over time. The current study used multilevel Bernoulli models and logistic regression to examine two generations of respondents from the National Youth Survey Family Study. Results indicate some consistency in predictors of police contact between the two generations, with two notable exceptions: gender and socioeconomic status. Implications for police policy and practice are discussed.
Researchers have explored the empirical validity of linking key concepts from Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime and Akers’ social learning theory. Much of this research, however, has neither included measures of differential reinforcement and imitation nor operationalized the social learning process as a second-order latent construct as supported by Akers and other scholars. Thus, in this study, the authors used structural equation modeling to examine both the direct effect of low self-control and its indirect effect via a fuller measure of the social learning process on software piracy to improve our understanding of this specific phenomenon and to also provide further insight on the empirical validity of linking concepts from these two theories. They found that the indirect effect of self-control via the social learning process on piracy was greater than its direct effect. In addition, as levels of low self-control increased, the probability of software piracy actually decreased when controlling for the social learning process.
Using a sample of national stalking victims, this study draws from four general models applied in previous works on sexual harassment acknowledgment to propose a comprehensive model of stalking acknowledgment. The results indicate that the type of stalking behaviors, personal characteristics of victims, negative emotions experienced by victims, and changes in perceptions due to the intrusive behaviors are significant correlates of stalking acknowledgment. Implications of findings relating to the qualification of legal definitions of stalking and stalking reportage are also discussed.
Public opinion research shows that the general public tends to perceive noncustodial sanctions, such as suspended sentences, as too lenient while being largely ignorant about their nature. In two studies among representative samples of the Dutch population, the authors examine public opinion about and knowledge of suspended sentences in the Netherlands. Findings suggest that knowledge of suspended sentences is positively related to their perceived punitiveness and beliefs in their effectiveness. Furthermore, opinions about suspended sentences are related to general penal attitudes. More punitive attitudes translate into less favorable opinions. Finally, providing information about suspended sentences can lead to more positive attitudes and greater belief in their effectiveness.
Prior research has suggested that family group conferences (FGCs), a particular form of restorative justice, hold promise in reducing reoffending among youths, at least for some types of offenses. Most prior research, however, has simply assessed whether participation in a FGC resulted in reduced rates of reoffending compared with control or comparison groups in court or diversion programs. These prior recidivism studies have largely left unaddressed the characteristics of the FGCs that may produce differences in reoffending. The exceptions are two studies, from New Zealand and Australia, respectively, that relied on variation analyses to assess whether differences in the FGC processes affected future offending. This research builds on these two studies and tests as to whether FGC characteristics derived from reintegrative shaming, procedural justice, and defiance theory account for variations in reoffending. The data have been obtained from a sample of youths (N = 215) who participated in a FGC as part of the Indianapolis Juvenile Restorative Justice Experiment (IJRJE). The findings suggest that the more the FGC appeared to follow principles of restorativeness and procedural fairness and avoided defiance, the less reoffending occurred. Specifically, offense type and conference restorativeness influenced the probability of recidivism at 6 months, whereas offense type and race influenced the probability of recidivism at 24 months.
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has adopted Correctional Offender Management and Profiling Alternative Sanctions (COMPAS), an actuarial risk- and needs-assessment instrument, as part of its reentry supervision and parole planning procedure. A large-scale 3-year prospective study was conducted to assess the instrument with regard to how well it predicted whether a parolee would be rearrested for (a) any crime and (b) a violent offense. This study followed, for up to 2 years, a total of 91,334 parolees who had been assessed with COMPAS prior to reentry into the community. The instrument achieved an acceptable level of predictive validity in general rearrests with an area under the curve value of 0.70, but its predictive power for subsequent violent offenses fell short of this conventional threshold. Moreover, a parsimonious model using four known risk factors from existing official records (i.e., gender, age, age of first arrest, and the number of prior arrests) performed just as well in predicting subsequent arrests. Findings from this study illustrate the challenges in applying group-based attributes to predict individual criminal behavior and suggest that, although COMPAS has other attractive features such as case management capability, existing official records may offer a lower cost alternative for assessing the risk of reoffending for community reentry purposes.
"Neighborhood disorder" refers to how people perceive neighborhoods as unsafe and disorganized. However, certain disorder cues may indicate disorder to some residents but not to others. There are many explanations for disorder perception bias, though few have been tested. This article uses data on 4,721 residents in 100 neighborhoods in Seattle to assess two explanations for biases: neighborhood attachment and routine activities. Using fixed-effect models, this article shows that neighborhood attachment and routine activities provide additional insight into disorder perceptions. Hanging out with teens and engaging in protective neighborhood activities, like watching neighbors’ property, have a strong positive influence on disorder perceptions. This study concludes by discussing alternative explanations for disorder perception bias and their impact on disorder theory as a whole.
Research on police behavior suggests that discretion is vital to police decision making. Although discretion can originate from many sources (e.g., officers, situations, structure), relatively few studies examine how organizational variables affect officer discretion. Of the studies that test whether organizational level influences shape discretion, even fewer examine their influence on lethal force. This oversight is notable in light of the overrepresentation of Blacks in lethal force incidents because organizational characteristics and policies may reduce racial disparities in the application of lethal force. Using administrative policy and police department size as proxies for organizational variables, this study tests for organizational effects and examines whether these effects vary by race. Using city-level data from 1980 to 1984, this research examines how organizational limits on discretion affect the volume of lethal force incidents. Negative binomial regression results indicate that administrative policy predicts lethal force incidents for total and Black-specific population models but not White-specific models, and department size predicts lethal force incidents for total and White-specific models but not Black-specific models. Organizational correlates of police discretion seem crucial for understanding officer behavior.
Increasing numbers of female youth involved in the juvenile justice system highlight the need to examine this population. This study enumerates distinct profiles of risk and protection among juvenile court-involved females, examining young adult outcomes associated with these profiles. Administrative data on 700 participants were drawn from multiple service sectors in a Midwest metropolitan region. Latent class and Pearson chi-square analyses were used. Five unique classes were identified; these classes were associated with young adult outcomes. One class of impoverished African American females was most likely to experience problematic young adult outcomes but least likely to have received juvenile justice services. Findings highlight the heterogeneity in the female juvenile court population and discrepancies between service needs and service receipt.
Numerous studies have tested the feminist hypothesis that gender inequality affects homicide rates by analyzing Census and Uniform Crime Report data for a single time period. Although these "snapshot" tests are important, they do not capture the "change" element that is implied by these hypotheses. According to feminist perspectives, gender inequality and gender equality could increase homicide rates, the former increasing the structural disadvantage of women relative to men and the latter representing a "backlash" effect. Women’s absolute status may also be an important predictor of homicide victimization. Furthermore, it is quite possible that this process is dynamic and therefore the change in equality over time may be more important than the actual level of equality at any given time. The present study measures the impact of gender equality and women’s absolute status on female homicide victimization using city-level data from 1980 to 2000. In general, the results suggest that changes in gender equality and women’s absolute status have decreased women’s rate of homicide victimization, and the negative effect of gender equality appears to have grown stronger over time; however, these results are not uniform across victim–offender relationships.
Scholars have devoted significant attention to measuring the degree to which a driver’s personal characteristics affect police decisions to stop and sanction motorists. Following the pattern of research on gender and enforcement practices more broadly, traffic stop studies show that female drivers are less likely to receive formal sanctions such as a citation following routine traffic stops. Despite the consistency of these findings across places and times, we know little about the conditions under which female traffic violators are granted leniency. This article extends research on the effect of driver and stop characteristics on gender disparities in traffic enforcement decisions by examining 149,888 stops from across 37 communities in Rhode Island with different local needs and variation in police organizational culture and structure. The findings confirm that although women are less likely to be cited than men, community-level variation in police agency culture and structure, particularly the proportion of female officers in an agency, moderates the effect of driver sex on stop outcomes.
Hirschi argues that self-control has not been properly measured or conceptualized in previous research. He insists that personality-based notions of self-control should be replaced with inhibitors/social bonds as the key construct, which in turn influence whether an individual considers the full range of costs associated with an antisocial behavior.This analysis supplements a small literature exploring this new conceptualization of self-control, specifically by examining substance use. The findings indicate that inhibitors/bonds do exert an effect on substance use but are not mediated by perceived costs. Furthermore, different variants of impulsivity continue to exert independent influences, with some mediated by perceived costs. Finally, perceived rewards not only influenced substance use directly but were also the most consistent mediator of inhibitors/bonds and impulsivity.
Travis Hirshi’s control theory hypothesizes that weak attachment to social control mechanisms increase the likelihood of crime and delinquency commission. The current study examined the effect of family structure and attachment on adolescent substance use, specifically hard liquor and drug use. Youth respondents between the ages of 15 and 18 years from the National Survey of Youth were included in the analyses (N = 1,036). The sample on which analyses were conducted comprised female (n = 498) and male (n = 538) respondents. For both male and female respondents, findings revealed that the family attachment variable emerged as a more significant predictor of adolescent alcohol and marijuana use (p < .05) when compared with the family structure variable.
Although the September 11 attacks have drawn much law enforcement attention to Arab Americans, research on Arab Americans’ perceptions of police is almost nonexistent. Using survey data collected from 850 Arab Americans who resided in the Detroit metropolitan area, this study empirically examined the effects of demographic characteristics, personal experience, social attitudes and values, and social trust, of confidence in local police. The results indicated that the majority of Arab Americans had a great deal or a lot of confidence in police. Arab Americans’ confidence in police was significantly related to their social attitudes and trust, such as conservative outlook, confidence in the legal system, respect for authority, and trust in neighbors. Arab Americans’ background characteristics and experience had a weak effect on their confidence in police. More empirical research is warranted to assess Arab Americans’ evaluations of local police along more indicators of police performance.
During the past several decades, research on immigrant adaptation and incorporation experience within different host societies has proliferated. Nevertheless, studies comparing how immigrants interact with law enforcement in the largest cities, respectively, in the United States and Canada do not seem to exist. In an attempt to bridge the gap in past literature, this study examines the differences of Chinese immigrants’ perceptions of the police in New York City and Toronto. Analyzing data gathered from 444 Chinese immigrants (151 from New York City and 293 from Toronto), this study compared Chinese immigrants’ attitudes toward police efficacy and their overall perceptions in both cities. The findings indicated that Chinese immigrants in Toronto held more positive overall perceptions of the police than did their counterparts in New York City. With regard to police efficacy in dealing with crime, there were no significant attitudinal differences in Chinese immigrants between New York City and Toronto. Policy implications were discussed.
Opportunity theory enhances one’s understanding of school-based adolescent victimization. Race and ethnicity plays a significant role in school-based victimization. What is uncertain is how opportunity is linked to the school-based victimization of racial and ethnic minority adolescents. This study explores how race and ethnicity interact with opportunity and victimization. Analyses, which are drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002 and employ hierarchal generalized logistic model analyses, suggest some important results. Most notably, the relationships between opportunity and victimization vary across racial and ethnic groups. For instance, athletic extracurricular activity involvement is an insulating factor for White Americans but a potential risk factor for Latino Americans and Asian Americans. Besides discussing the findings of this study, this article underscores the importance of understanding racial and ethnic minority school-based adolescent victimization.
Drawing from theories of social control, this study involved an examination of the time-varying effects of six different residential situations and residential mobility on offenders’ odds of recidivism during the year immediately following their release from prison. Analyses of data collected on a statewide sample of offenders released under supervision in Ohio generated results favoring a control perspective. Both residential mobility and residential situations such as living with a spouse or parent were relevant for understanding differences among offenders in their odds of recidivism. Stable characteristics of offenders such as gender and prior criminal history were also linked to recidivism.
Research consistently demonstrates that severity, often measured by victim injury, is the most influential factor to predict reporting crimes to the police. However, less is known with regard to how the victim’s perception of the incident or their involvement in offending behavior inhibits this decision. The current study examines how traditional indicators (i.e., victim, offender and incident characteristics), the victim’s offending behavior, and perceptual measures influence police awareness of criminal victimization. Results suggest that victim injury and offending status does not significantly predict police awareness when subjective measures are controlled. However, multiple offenders, community crime, and parental knowledge significantly increased the odds that the police were aware that the victimization occurred.
In recent decades, researchers have identified many programs that successfully reduce juvenile delinquency. Evaluations of these programs generally do not, however, assess the mediating variables that intervene between program participation and reduced delinquency. Thus, although much insight has been gained on which programs are effective, the question of why they are effective is often neglected. This study addresses this issue by considering the risk factors that mediate the effects of a comprehensive intervention on juvenile offending. This was considered with data from the Children at Risk program, a 2-year multimodal intervention with random assignment that has been shown to reduce delinquency among high-risk early adolescents.
Studies confirm differences between participants and nonparticipants in voluntary organizations in general as well as those for crime prevention. Participants are more stable, longer residents, and attached residents with better socioeconomic status. Yet, previous studies have not thoroughly considered neighborhood conditions. A few studies show the overall participation-rate differences across neighborhoods without considering whether individuals residing in neighborhoods with different conditions show dissimilar patterns of participation. In addition, studies rarely consider the crime-related problems of communities. This study examines the differences between participants and nonparticipants in neighborhood crime-prevention associations with particular attention paid to the neighborhood-related factors, including crime problems. In addition, whether individual-related characteristics show the same or similar impact on participation when the community social context is in consideration is another question to be answered. It is revealed that individual- and neighborhood-related factors differentiate the residents’ participation. In particular, crime problems of the neighborhood affect participation in crime-prevention associations.
This study examines some of the individual, social, and environmental factors that differentiate gang-involved youth (both gang members and peripheral youth) and nongang youth in a British setting. The authors found that gang-involved youth were more likely than nongang youth to be older, and individual delinquency and neighborhood gangs predicted gang involvement. Using structural equation modeling, the authors examined the relationships between social/environmental factors and gang involvement. As a result, this article found that parental management, deviant peer pressure, and commitment to school had indirect relationships with gang involvement. These findings are discussed as they highlight a need to address the mechanisms in which protective and risk factors function collectively.
This article examines the impact of race/ethnicity and quality-of-life (QOL) policing on citizens’ perceptions of racial bias and traffic stops. Using data obtained from a random-sample telephone survey of Houston citizens, respondents were asked whether they felt that the police treated citizens "equally" based on the race/ethnicity of the citizen as well as the race/ethnicity of the officer. These variables were then recoded to construct a nominal measure ranging from racially biased policing to absence of racially biased policing, with a middle category of "semiracially" biased policing. Results indicated that race/ethnicity was a significant predictor. In addition, the results strongly suggested that QOL policing was significantly associated with a decrease in respondents’ perceptions of racially biased policing. Finally, there was a significant relationship between racially biased policing and expected treatment of traffic stops made by the police.
It has been proposed that hiring more Black police officers is an effective way to alleviate long-standing tensions between police and African Americans because Black officers will connect with Black citizens and treat them well. This hypothesis, however, fails to account for the macro-level context of the troubled locations in which African Americans disproportionately reside and wherein police–minority citizen problems are deep seated. The present study examines two competing hypotheses concerning the influence of officer race relative to that of ecological context in shaping African Americans’ experiences with and perceptions of local police. These hypotheses are tested using in-depth interview data with Black residents of a majority-Black, high-crime, economically troubled city. Implications for policy and future research are discussed.
This study provides insight into the postrelease performance of all former inmates with available data who were released from a prison in New Jersey in 2006 (N = 12,187). Three indicators of recidivism are considered: (a) an arrest for a new crime, (b) a conviction for a new crime, and (c) a technical parole violation. Individuals are categorized into groups according to the release mechanism that they experienced: discretionary parole, mandatory parole, or unconditional release. Multivariate analyses utilize Cox proportional hazards survival tests. Results indicate that after approximately 3 years of follow-up time, those released to supervision were generally less involved in new crimes when compared with those who were released unconditionally. However, a high proportion of those who were paroled recidivated shortly after release, and the predicted probability that a former inmate would recidivate did not substantially differ between release groups in the presence of statistical controls.
The use of surveys is one of the few ways to determine the extent and character of firearms ownership in the United States. The findings from such surveys have implications for both firearms research and firearms policy. Using data from the 2000 General Social Survey, the author examines the possibility of error in the reporting of household firearm ownership. Strong and significant differences in ownership reporting are found between married men and women, especially for those who were not socialized in part of a traditional "gun culture."
Research indicates that men and women commonly express different amounts of fear about crime. This article explores the sex difference in fear of crime levels by assessing differences in fear of crime in relation to urban environments. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics Criminal Victimization and Perceptions of Community Safety, the present analysis employs multinomial logistic regressions to examine gradations in two measures of fear of crime. Some aspects of the neighborhood environment do differentially influence men and women’s fear of crime levels, including serious crime in the neighborhood, physical and social disorder. Findings highlight that women’s greater fear of crime is partially due to higher perceived risks through signals of neighborhood conditions.
The authors use administrative data from Florida to determine the extent to which prison-based adult basic education (ABE) improves inmate’s postrelease labor market outcomes, such as earnings and employment. Using two nonexperimental comparison groups, the authors find evidence that ABE participation is associated with higher postrelease earnings and employment rates, especially for minorities. The authors find that the relationship is the largest for ABE participants who had uninterrupted ABE instruction and for those who received other education services. However, the results do not find any positive effects of ABE participation on reducing recidivism.
Using data from the Rochester Youth Development Study, the authors show that trajectories of past violence predict future violence better than other more traditional measures of risk. The authors then evaluate whether factors that can be manipulated during this time can both promote less violence for all individuals as well as protect against violence among those who are most at risk for more violence. This article finds that several factors protect youth from violent behavior but not from gun or weapon carrying. Implications of these findings for future research on risk and protective factors of youth violence and for strategies for preventing such behavior are discussed.
Labeling theory suggests that contact with the criminal justice system leads to feelings of stigmatization, which will consequently have the counterproductive effect of increasing offending. The current study investigated this phenomenon by (a) interviewing 394 young people sentenced in the New South Wales Children’s Court about their emotional reactions to the experience and (b) testing whether differences in these emotional reactions were related to increases or decreases in reoffending. It was found that feeling stigmatized after the hearing was a significant predictor of reoffending for the young women, but not the young men, in the sample. In addition, young men with previous convictions who reported feeling stigmatized were less likely to reoffend. The implications of these findings for the way in which young offenders are treated are discussed.
The current work assesses the relationship between respondent perceptions of collective efficacy and neighborhood violence. Data used in the analysis combined a community survey from Mesa, Arizona, with census data. Factor analysis provided mixed evidence regarding the factor structure of collective efficacy; therefore, separate regression models were used to test the influence of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and willingness to intervene on levels of neighborhood violence. Analyses found that community structural characteristics including concentrated disadvantage and residential instability significantly predicted perceptions of collective efficacy, social cohesion, and willingness to intervene. In turn each of these variables was related to violent crime after controlling for levels of concentrated disadvantage, residential instability, and individual demographic characteristics. When social cohesion and willingness to intervene were included in a single regression model, only social cohesion was predictive of neighborhood violence. Social cohesion and violent crime had reciprocal effects that were both negative and statistically significant.
Prior research indicated that African American and Caucasian youth respond differently to items on the Massachusetts Youth Screening Instrument–Version 2 (MAYSI-2), a mental health screening tool used nationwide in juvenile justice systems, thus possibly affecting mental health need identification. To explore the cause for the differences, cognitive interviews were conducted with eight African American and eight Caucasian male juvenile detainees, aged 12 to 16 years, from two Midwestern detention facilities. Results indicate differences in how both groups interpreted certain mental health symptoms and the dimension of time. Both groups also similarly misinterpreted and were suspicious of some items. To address these issues, the MAYSI-2 could benefit from further examination and development.
During the Spousal Assault Replication Program, the city of Charlotte, North Carolina, was identified as a site where arrest did not deter misdemeanor domestic violence. Shortly after these findings were published, the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department developed a Domestic Violence (DV) unit to combat the problem of intimate partner violence. The mission of the Charlotte DV unit is to reduce future offending through intensive investigation and victim assistance. The current study evaluates the impact of the Charlotte DV unit versus standard patrol on official accounts of offender recidivism in a random sample of 891 domestic violence cases. Controlling for offender demographics, prior criminal history, case severity, and additional criminal justice responses, suspects processed through the DV unit had significantly lower rates of re-offending across an 18- to 30-month follow-up period. Theoretical explanations for the DV unit effect are proposed.
Since the late 1960s, crime has been hypothesized to be associated with fear of crime. However, little research has been available to test this assumption at the individual level of analysis. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between crime and fear of crime using data collected from a random telephone survey of local residents in the city of Houston. The authors investigate if there is an impact of an individual’s spatial proximity to crime on fear of crime also measured at the individual level. To be more specific, the authors examine the crime–fear of crime link using three types of crime—violent crime, property crime, and disorder crime. Both the residence of respondents and crime events are spatially located, allowing the authors to construct a buffer surrounding the respondent’s residence to obtain the number of crime incidents that occur within a 528-foot (1/10th of a mile) radius of the residence. In addition, the authors explore the relationship between spatial distribution of actual crime events and individual fear of crime at 0.5-mile radius and 1.0-mile radius of each respondent who participated in the telephone interview. The findings suggest that a person’s proximity to crime incidents has a significant impact on fear of crime among respondents interviewed. Furthermore, the magnitudes of coefficients show that different types of crime (violent crime, property crime, and disorder crime) have similar impacts on fear of crime.
The aims of this study were (a) to investigate sex differences in risk factors for re-offending and (b) to provide a risk assessment model for girls. The data of 1,396 adolescents who committed a criminal offense were examined. Both generic and sex-specific risk factors for re-offending were found. The girl-specific risk factors are located mainly in the family domain. These girl-specific risk factors turn out to be by far the most important predictors for re-offending for girls. The risk assessment model divides girls into four different risk groups: a low risk group (containing 65% of the girls) and three high risk groups (girls with delinquent parents, victims of abuse, and repeat offenders), each showing a specific set of risk factors, which suggests the need for specific interventions.
Researchers have not yet devoted sufficient attention to the effect of prison architecture on inmate misconduct. Using data from the population of male prisoners in Texas, the authors explored the association between two prison architectural design types (as determined by satellite imagery) and inmate misconduct. The results from multilevel statistical analyses suggest that architectural design is associated with nonviolent misconduct but not violent misconduct. Policy implications and directions for future research are discussed.
A significant body of literature has developed to explain the controversial issue of sentencing disparity among various racial/ethnic groups. According to the focal concerns perspective, judges may rely on race-based stereotypes, among other factors, in reaching sentencing outcomes. This contention has received support by the empirical literature when examining sentencing differences that emerge between similarly situated White, Black, and Hispanic offenders. Unfortunately, very little research has addressed the relative treatment of Asian offenders to determine whether stereotypes that commonly target these individuals—particularly the "model minority" stereotype—emerge as a potential extralegal factor in judicial sentencing decisions. To address this shortcoming, the current study employs a large sample of offenders processed by state courts to examine the sentencing of Asians relative to White, Black, and Hispanic offenders. Findings are consistent with a focal concerns/model minority perspective and indicate that Asians are, in fact, treated more leniently than other racial/ethnic groups at the incarceration decision. This extralegal disparity, however, does not emerge during the sentence length decision. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed.
Delinquent behavior of one’s peers is one of the most robust predictors of adolescent delinquency. However, no study to date has explored the role of this relationship among those who engage in high rates of nonproductive sedentary activities (e.g., video gaming, TV viewing, and watching movies); a growing public health concern. Here, this issue is explored using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Findings support a direct relationship between certain sedentary behaviors and most types of delinquency. Furthermore, results indicate that the impact of peer delinquency on adolescent delinquency is partially confounded by above-average participation in computer gaming. Implications for research on sedentary behavior and delinquency (regarding both policy and theory development) are discussed in the context of cultural evolution into the digital age.
Drawing on a random sample of 340 adults, this study examines the relationships between strain, negative emotions, and criminal coping in the context of Russia. Extending the argument of general strain theory (GST), it also assesses the criminogenic potency of strain accumulation and raises the possibility that negative affect, accumulating from stressors closely grouped in time, heightens individual’s sensitivity to concurrent or subsequent strains. Although the data suggest that the core variables of GST are operant in Russia, support for the theory is mixed. Strain appears to be generally associated with negative emotions, but negative emotions are not uniformly criminogenic. Negative emotions do not appear to mediate the association between strain and crime but moderate the strain–crime link and, in some cases, increase the enabling effects of strains on illegal coping. Overall, the findings suggest that negative affect likely produced by accumulation or clustering of negative events and conditions may heighten the crime-generating potency of other, less criminogenic strains.
The transfer of drugs from one person to another does not always involve a fair sale. Gifts and frauds are also common. Although the rationality perspective has dominated and made important contributions to the study of drug transfer, this article proposes a new theory of drug sales, gifts, and frauds. The theoretical lens of pure sociology is used to find social structural patterns in qualitative data obtained from a study of middle- and lower class drug dealers. Based on that data, the authors suggest that the social status of drug procurers and their social distance from drug dealers affect (a) whether the transfer is a gift, sale, or fraud and (b) the size of the gift, the price of the sale, and the seriousness of the fraud. Implications for future research are discussed.
Problem-oriented policing (POP) has generated substantial attention from practitioners, scholars, and policy makers. A growing body of research is beginning to cast doubt on the extent to which this reform has been implemented in police agencies as prescribed by reformers. This study presents findings from an analysis of POP in the Colorado Springs Police Department, one of the national leaders of POP in the United States. The principal form of evidence is a systematic content analysis of case summaries and reports completed by police officers in 753 POP cases in Colorado Springs. The results point to a set of common roadblocks in the implementation of POP, as well as more general patterns that seem to influence the implementation of police reform.
Does increasing police strength deter more crime? Some studies have found apparent negative effects of police manpower levels on crime rates, and the most common explanation of such findings is that greater police strength increases perceptions of arrest risk, thus reducing crime via general deterrence mechanisms. The authors directly tested this hypothesis by estimating the association between survey respondents’ perceptions of arrest risk and the level of police strength prevailing in the counties where they live. No relationship between the number of police officers per capita and perceptions of the risk of arrest was found, suggesting that increases in police manpower will not increase general deterrent effects and decreases will not reduce these effects. The authors also considered the possibility that police manpower levels influence the number of criminals incarcerated, and thus affect crime rates via the incapacitative effects of incarceration, but concluded that such an effect is unlikely. These findings point to a need to reconsider previous interpretations of findings as supportive of a deterrent effect of increased police manpower on crime rates.
Facilities that draw youth from different communities are prone to become offender convergence settings and intercity crime generators. Applying network analysis to self-nominated hangouts of 5,082 delinquent youth residing in Southern California revealed specific facilities acting as regional convergence settings. A small number of magnetic locations (measured by popularity and breadth of appeal) enable the congregation and interaction of youth that would otherwise not be exposed to each other. As predicted, the sociocirculatory structure of place networks remains relatively constant over time. In-degree and betweenness centrality statistics offer a viable analytic strategy to identify facilities operating as stable regional convergence locations. Crime prevention programs invoking effective place management through ordinances may offer a way to publicly govern these private facilities.
California’s voter-initiated Proposition 36 (Prop 36) program is often unfavorably compared with drug courts but little is empirically known about the comparative effectiveness of the two approaches. Using statewide administrative data, analyses were conducted on all Prop 36 and drug court offenders with official records of arrest and drug treatment. Propensity score matching was used to create equivalent groups, enabling comparisons of success at treatment discharge, recidivism over 12 months posttreatment entry, and the magnitude of behavioral changes. Significant behavioral improvements occurred for both Prop 36 and drug court offenders, but although more Prop 36 offenders were successful at discharge, more recidivated over a period of 12 months. Core programmatic differences likely contributed to the differences in outcomes. Policy implications are discussed.
Drawing on three waves of survey data, the authors examined the effects of criminal victimization on depression. First, the authors developed a structural equation model to determine whether criminal victimization predicts depression. Second, recognizing that victimization is contingent on background factors, they tested whether victimization, conceptualized as an assigned treatment, has significant effects on depression, using inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW). In structural equation modeling equations, victimization predicts initial levels of depression and change in depression across waves. In the IPTW regression models, victimization had significant effects on levels of depression. There is considerable evidence to suggest that victimization influences depression, and investigators must be cautious when examining the temporal and selection issues surrounding the effects.
The Crawford v. Washington decision has prompted changes in the way that intimate partner violence (IPV) is prosecuted. This research uses logistic regression to examine the victim, offender, and offense characteristics associated with the decision to prosecute a sample (N = 904) of domestic violence arrestees under an evidence-based prosecution strategy post-Crawford. Documentation of injury and police taking the perpetrator into custody at the scene of the crime have the greatest effect on the decision to prosecute, although the victim’s willingness to assist with prosecution is also a significant factor. Future researchers should seek to replicate these findings, better understand current prosecution strategies, and determine the criminal justice and social service interventions best equipped to combat IPV in the post-Crawford era.
Limited empirical focus has been given to identifying individual and structural correlates of methamphetamine use. Although race (i.e., being White) is one of the most distinguishing characteristics of methamphetamine users, few studies have examined whether race/ethnicity is a significant predictor of such illicit drug use. Research has also shown that cocaine and opiate use is associated with disadvantage; however, studies have yet to examine the relationship between structural disadvantage and methamphetamine use. Using national data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program, this study examines the prevalence of methamphetamine and explores the relationship between race/ethnicity, structural disadvantage, and methamphetamine use. Findings reveal that race/ethnicity and structural disadvantage are significant predictors of methamphetamine use. Additionally, findings show an interactive effect between race/ethnicity, structural disadvantage, and methamphetamine use. Implications for policy and practice are discussed.
The present study conceptualizes gang membership in a life-course framework. The authors focus specifically on an understudied aspect of gang membership—desistance. This study’s goal is to further develop our understanding of the process of desisting from gangs. This is done by examining the social and emotional ties that former gang members maintain with their previous gang network. Using a detention sample of juvenile arrestees, the authors first compare differences between 156 current and 83 former gang members at a bivariate level. This is followed by a multivariate analysis of former gang members that (a) examines factors that predict increases of ties to the former gang network and (b) illustrates the importance of gang ties by exploring their effects on victimization. The findings shed light on the correlates and consequences of persisting gang ties. In particular, it is found that ties have direct positive effects on recent victimizations. More important, it is found that longer lengths of desistance matter to the extent that ties are diminished; that is, length of desistance operates indirectly through gang ties to reduce victimization. The study concludes with a discussion of the conceptual and policy implications surrounding gang desistance and how lingering ties to the former gang network are crucial to understanding the desistance process.
Although there has been a growing research interest in examining factors associated with police arrest decisions and victims’ perceptions of the police in handling domestic violence, very few studies have empirically assessed female and male officers’ attitudes toward domestic violence. Using survey data collected from 272 male and female officers from two metropolitan police departments in Taiwan, this research compared male and female police officers’ reactive and proactive attitudes toward handling domestic violence incidents. The findings indicated that male officers were more likely than female officers to support minimum police involvement and to tolerate domestic violence. With regard to proactive attitudes, there was no significant gender difference in officers’ endorsement of proarrest policy and the importance of domestic violence in police work. Implications for future research and policy are discussed.
This study analyzed the National Incident Based Reporting System data from 2000 to 2004 to determine how domestic violence arrest policies, along with incident, offender, and victim characteristics, influence arrest outcomes in violent incidents committed by juveniles against their parents. The authors’ primary interest was to assess whether the enforcement of domestic violence arrest laws, coupled with increased police involvement in familial disputes, has contributed to the decreasing gender gap in juvenile arrests for violent offenses. Results indicated that domestic violence arrest policies had positive effects on arrest outcomes both for juvenile females and males accused of assaulting a parent, as juveniles were more likely to be arrested in states with mandatory or pro-arrest policies than in states with discretionary arrest policies. However, there was also evidence that, beyond the effects of the domestic arrest laws, girls became increasingly more likely to be arrested for assaults against parents over the 5-year study period relative to boys. The implications for these findings are discussed, including the importance of a better understanding of how police respond to domestic violence incidents involving juveniles.
Many life course studies are based on a few cohorts of individuals born in the early part of the 20th century. Despite the significance of military service in the life course, few studies have addressed the consequences of military service on offending trajectories. This study explores the relationship between military service and patterns of offending in three cohorts of men. Analyses examine both the impact of military service as well as the potential period effects of service during different periods of the Vietnam War. Results suggest that between-individual differences in military service significantly affect criminal behavior. However, the specific direction of the effect depends on when during the Vietnam era these men entered the military. Implications of these results are discussed.
Foundational research on the link between neighborhood accessibility and burglary has consistently shown a positive association. However, recent research has found that less accessible neighborhoods have higher burglary rates. Geographically referenced data from 401 neighborhoods in Jacksonville, Florida, are used to determine whether these inconsistencies can be explained by a conditioning effect of neighborhood social-structural context. Results from spatially lagged regression models indicate that neighborhood accessibility fails to have a direct effect on burglary rates after social-structural variables are controlled; rather, the effect of neighborhood accessibility on burglary rates is conditioned by the level of concentrated disadvantage of the neighborhood. Two potential explanations for the empirical findings are offered, and implications of the results for "designing out" crime are discussed.
To elaborate past research, this study examines the course of specialization and versatility with maturation and contends that specialization develops in a nonrandom manner, as suggested by the orthogenic principle of human development. To examine the development of specialization and versatility, forward specialization coefficients were disaggregated for three age cohorts over a 20-year follow-up period in a sample of high-risk youth (n = 3,652) with 54,175 arrests. Results show that forward specialization coefficients were generally of moderate magnitude and, across age cohorts, developed modestly in an age-graded manner for the youngest cohort. In conclusion, the results provide preliminary support for the orthogenic theory among early first-admission youth.
Surprisingly little is known about the types of substance abuse services offenders receive prior to incarceration and the differences in demographics, criminality and drug involvement between those who received services and those who did not. This study provides estimates of these substance abuse services—treatment, self-help, and psycho education—received by federal offenders before their commitment to the Bureau of Prisons. Estimates indicate that among newly committed offenders, nearly one third (30%) received substance abuse services. Offense category, prior records, and histories of violence each predicted service receipt. Also, offenders involved with drugs before incarceration were more likely to have received services as well, but those who used both drugs and alcohol prior to their most recent arrest were much more likely to have received services. Interestingly, gender was only significant when predicting inpatient substance abuse treatment services. Recommendations for training, research, and practice are made.
Utilizing a sample of homeless street youth, the authors apply Wikström’s situational action theory (SAT) to explaining drug use. The article examines the assertion that morality is the most important factor in explaining crime and that self-control and deterrence are key factors in understanding criminal behavior only at moderate levels of morality. Results reveal that morality has a strong effect on hard but not soft drug use, whereas the impact of deterrence on both forms of behavior is stronger than self-control. The proposed conditioning effects outlined in SAT do not have significant associations with drug use. Implications for the theory and avenues for future research are offered.
The effects of violent video game exposure on youth aggression remain an issue of significant controversy and debate. It is not yet clear whether violent video games uniquely contribute to long-term youth aggression or whether any relationship is better explained through third variables such as aggressive personality or family environment. The current study examines the influence of violent video game exposure on delinquency and bullying behavior in 1,254 seventh- and eighth-grade students. Variables such as parental involvement, trait aggression, stress, participation in extracurricular activities, and family/peer support were also considered. Results indicated that delinquent and bullying behavior were predicted by the child’s trait aggression and stress level. Violent video game exposure was not found to be predictive of delinquency or bullying, nor was level of parental involvement. These results question the commonly held belief that violent video games are related to youth delinquency and bullying.
This study examines the impact of the victim–offender relationship on the willingness of victims to call the police in family violence incidents, with particular attention to the life stages of victims. Different stages of life have an impact on the decision to report criminal victimization. Family composition and the roles of family members change over life stages. When children are young, adults in the household have child-rearing responsibilities that shape the interpersonal dynamics in the household. When children approach adulthood and parents age, the parents may become more dependent on the children in a variety of ways. These changes in family composition and organization across life stages can affect the normative and cost–benefit considerations in deciding whether to call the police or not. Yet studies of responses to family violence have virtually ignored the influence of life stage on the decision to call the police. In addition, most studies of victims of family violence focus on marital or intimate relationships and fail to examine any other relationships in the family. It is not clear whether the findings from the general literature on domestic violence are applicable to intergenerational family violence. This article examines the impact of a broader range of victim–offender relationships across three age groups representing different life stages. The authors find that the factors explaining victims’ decisions to report victimization to the police vary across life stages.
Criminal victimization is associated with a cascade of negative effects on social development, but research has primarily focused on children and adolescents. Less is known about the effects of criminal victimization on psychosocial functioning of Americans age 50 and older. Relying on individual-level data from Waves 1 and 2 of a longitudinal panel study of older adults—the Americans’ Changing Lives study—the current study explored the effects of criminal victimization on self-esteem and self-efficacy separately for Whites and African Americans. Net of the effects of employment, income, depression, age, sex, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, criminal victimization reduced self-esteem and self-efficacy among African Americans but not Whites. However, Whites who had greater difficulty dealing with their victimization evinced lower subsequent self-esteem. Greater difficulty with their victimization was also modestly associated with subsequent self-efficacy for Whites and African Americans. Implications and directions for future research are provided.
This study compares the recidivism of eligible drug possessors sentenced under Kansas’s mandatory drug treatment policy (SB 123) to those of similar offenders receiving other sentences. Using multinomial logistic regression, the authors found that participation in SB 123 was generally associated with a decrease in the likelihood of recidivism. However, models relying on matched samples of offenders generated via propensity scores showed that SB 123 did not have a significant impact on recidivism rates relative to community corrections and actually increased recidivism rates relative to court services. The authors argue that the limited effect of SB 123 on recidivism stems from the net-widening effects often encountered with mandatory sentencing policies rather than inherent problems with the delivery of treatment.
This article compares the effects of indeterminate and determinate sentencing models on recidivism using a measure of parole board discretionary release and mandatory parole release under each sentencing model. Data collected from Recidivism of Prisoners Released in 1994: United States are used to conduct a state-specific comparison of the two release programs in six mixed-sentencing states. The results indicate that the effects of different sentencing models significantly vary across the six states. Whereas mandatory parole release was more likely to have a deterrent effect on recidivism in Maryland and Virginia, parole board discretionary release was more effective in New York and North Carolina. Release programs in Oregon and Texas showed no significant differences in their effects on recidivism.
This article examines outcomes for first-time juvenile marijuana possession offenders based on relationships between state policy and local prosecutor self-reported decision making. Specifically, relationships between state statutory penalty data for low-level marijuana possession offenses and prosecutor-reported case outcomes for first-offender juvenile marijuana possession cases are examined. A national sample of prosecutors was interviewed in 2000. Analyses included state statutory policy data in effect as of January 1, 1999, as well as community sociodemographic controls. Results indicated that state statutory policy significantly related to prosecutor-reported juvenile court processing as well as diversion and transfer to criminal court. State statutory policy appears to play a significant role among the legal, resource, and extralegal factors that affect prosecutorial discretion regarding juvenile substance offenders.
Research from the rational choice perspective found that some offenders adapt to law enforcement strategies using various tactics to decrease the risk of detection. Few have considered the effect that this has for criminals who engage in high and low visibility offending, as well as the ways in which arrest avoidance practices are communicated between and among offenders. In this qualitative study, the authors explore these issues using a sample of posts from Web forums for the customers of prostitutes in 10 cities in the United States. This analysis finds that johns openly discussed, shared, and used a variety of methods to decrease the risk of arrest as well as informal threats, such as assault or theft. Implications for law enforcement and rational choice theory are also discussed.
Problem-oriented policing strategies have been regarded as promising approaches for disrupting open-air drug markets in vulnerable communities. Pulling levers deterrence interventions, which are consistent with the problem-oriented framework, have shown potential as an effective mechanism for reducing and preventing youth, gun, and gang violence. This study examines the effect of a strategic, pulling levers intervention that was implemented by law enforcement officials in Rockford, Illinois, to address drug markets in a high crime neighborhood. The initiative builds on a similar effort developed in High Point, North Carolina, and represents an extension of pulling levers that was originally developed in Boston. The impact evaluation uses a mixed method of quantitative hierarchical growth curve models and qualitative interviews with residents. Study findings suggest that the Rockford strategy was associated with a statistically significant and substantive reduction in crime, drug, and nuisance offenses in the target neighborhood. Results from this examination have implications for both research and public policy.
Police organizations are a ubiquitous aspect of the landscape of criminal justice in the United States. Yet, little attention has been paid to the failure of police agencies and the consequences of such failure. This article uses structural contingency theory and organizational institutional theory to explore why 31 police agencies were disbanded during the 1990s. The findings indicate that agencies disband because they face significant environmental changes in their contingency and institutional environments. Contingency reasons for disbanding are mostly related to budgetary constraints. Institutional reasons usually involve agencies that engage in behaviors that violate the expectations of powerful sovereigns. Overall, police agencies disband because they cannot adapt to changes in their contingency and institutional environments or they change in inappropriate ways, and their small organizational size does not provide a sufficient buffer against external intrusion from the institutional environment, which results in disbanding.
This article reconsiders the "Southern culture of honor" thesis, which has enjoyed prevalence in the social sciences since the first half of the 20th century. The bulk of researchers investigating the link among Southern residence, culture of honor, and violence have focused on attitudinal measures of violence through surveys and ethnographic experiments indicating preferences and opinions toward engaging in hypothesized violence. The current research measures respondents’ actual violent behaviors in a national survey of defensive gun use (DGU). Although the results failed to support a relationship between Southern residence and defensive gun use, respondents’ age and victimization were significant. This finding is dissonant with the historical literature that suggests that the rural Southern White male is prone to a violent defense of honor; as such, the article orients discussion around the further theoretical advancement of the culture-of-honor perspective.
Recent research on innovation diffusion points to a number of key factors that stimulate the need for change or facilitate the adoption of innovations. Empirical studies examining the process of innovation—that is, how ideas are spread—are less common and often lack a theoretical foundation. The present study uses institutional theory to develop a model of community-policing adoption in municipal law enforcement agencies. The fit of the institutional model is assessed using secondary data and structural equation modeling. The results show that centrist forces—including publications, the professionalization of law enforcement, and other law enforcement agencies—shape the organizational adoption of community-policing reforms. The implications of the research for communicating innovations are addressed.
Social disorganization theory attempts to explain the relationships of community characteristics and patterns of illicit drug use, but methamphetamine poses a problem for this perspective. Methamphetamine use is prevalent in rural areas, where greater community social organization may contribute to its usage, a possibility examined here using data from a highly rural state. Data were collected from a population of prisoners entering Wyoming state correctional facilities from July 2005 to June 2006. Hierarchical linear models estimated the effects of individual- and county-level variables on preincarceration amphetamine/methamphetamine use and severity of use. Results indicate that individual-level variables predict use, whereas county-level variables predict severity of use. The effects of individual-level measures of social control were consistent with the social disorganization model, whereas the effects of county-level variables provided support for the social organization argument. Implications of the findings for a multidimensional, multilevel conceptualization of the social organization/disorganization continuum are discussed.
The present study examined the relationships between order maintenance arrests and violent crime across and within communities in a major metropolitan setting. Integrating the macro-deterrence and systemic model perspectives, the research tested the direct effects of vigorous disorder arrests on robbery and assault with a deadly weapon (i.e., violent street crime), as well as the interactive effects of Disorder Arrests x Residential Integration (mobility and owner-occupied dwelling) on violent crime. The research found no direct relationship between disorder arrests and violent crime, but it found that disorder arrests in conjunction with decreased residential integration was associated with violent crime reductions. The results suggest that police disorder arrests may produce the strongest violence reduction results in areas of decreased residential attachment; however, as residential integration increases, the effects of order maintenance arrests on violent crime diminish. The study discusses the implications for shared social control agency in communities, as well as future research directions.
Sixty youth (16-19 years) from two youth prison sites participate in a prospective study examining criminal offending and learning disabilities (LD), completing measures of estimated IQ, attention, reading, and mathematical and oral language abilities. Prevalence rates of LDs exceed those of international studies, with 91.67% of the offenders showing significant difficulties in at least one area of achievement (defined as 1 SD or more below the normative mean), the mean reading comprehension score falling at the 4th percentile. Four years post assessment, recidivism rates among released youth (n = 51) are investigated. After the investigators control for other known risk factors (including delinquency and estimated IQ), reading comprehension predicts future offending across measures, capturing rate, seriousness, and persistence of offending post release.
Finding credible alternatives to revocation for offenders who violate the conditions of their community supervision has emerged as a salient issue in the corrections field. A number of jurisdictions have turned to graduated sanctions as an alternative to revocation. This study addresses one of the major gaps in the research on graduated sanctions by examining perceptions of graduated sanction severity through the administration of surveys to offenders under active supervision. Survey results revealed several important findings. First, offenders do not view jail as being substantially more punitive than community-based sanctions such as community service or electronic monitoring. Second, offenders viewed treatment-oriented sanctions as being more punitive than other graduated sanctions. Third, offender perceptions of graduated sanctions were influenced by a variety of individual characteristics such as gender, age, and education level.
Quantitative studies geared toward understanding differences among prison inmates in their odds of committing rule infractions have grown over the last decade but with little consistency in the models examined, especially regarding the types of rule violations examined. These differences have, in turn, contributed to an increasingly complex picture of inmate misconduct that appears counterproductive for both theory and practice. The study described here was designed to assess the ramifications of examining different outcome measures for quantitative analyses of the subject. Findings revealed that three of the nine models examined produced unique information regarding the effects of various inmate predictors, including the models of physical assaults (on inmates and/or staff), drug/alcohol use, and other nonviolent misconduct. Analyses also uncovered several new substantive findings on the topic. Findings are discussed in light of their relevance for practice as well as theories of inmate behavior.
In 2007, Ohio lawmakers passed that state’s version of "Jessica’s law" (Senate Bill [SB] 260), which mandates severe prison terms for sex offenses against very young children. Using data from a survey of Ohio judges administered right after SB 260’s passage, the authors found that a majority opposed the new law, as predicted. However, no relationship between political party preference and overall assessment of SB 260 was found, challenging the assumption that judicial "leniency" would explain opposition to the harsh penalties. Instead, quantitative and qualitative data showed that judges who disliked SB 260 feared the loss of judicial discretion and excessively harsh sentences for relatively less serious sex offenders. Opposing judges also perceived SB 260 as derived from cynical politics and popular ignorance. The potential value of consulting practitioner perspectives on sentencing enhancements and considerations for addressing moral panic–driven crime legislation in the long run are explored.
It has been argued that institutional misconduct is promulgated by the correctional environments associated with different security levels. In this article, the authors summarize the results of a study examining whether such an association was present among Canadian federally sentenced female offenders. A total of 964 security reviews of federally sentenced women were analyzed to determine the independent effects of assessed risk (on the basis of individual-level factors) and security placement on institutional behavior. The analyses revealed that institutional behavior was related to assessed risk, after controlling for the effect of security placement. No relationship between security placement and misbehavior remained after controlling for assessed risk. Together, these findings suggest that although individual-level variables influence behavior, security placement does not.
Prior research indicates that individual perceptions of the risk of punishment for criminal behavior are unrelated to actual risks of punishment in the areas in which individuals reside. It could be argued, however, that the relevant policy question is whether variation in actual punishment levels affects average perceptions of risk among aggregates. Scholars have argued that there is "collective wisdom" in the perceptions of collectivities of humans, even if the views of individuals are inaccurate. This thesis is tested using survey data on individual perceptions of the risks of legal punishment for crimes, aggregated up to the level of county populations. The authors find that the aggregate perceptions of county populations are generally not related to actual county levels of the certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment. Thus, neither the perceptions of individuals nor the average perceptions of populations have any significant association with actual risks of punishment.