Crime and Law-Enforcement
Brendan O'Flaherty & Rajiv Sethi
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
African-Americans are six times as likely as white Americans to die at the hands of a murderer, and roughly seven times as likely to murder someone. Young black men are fifteen times as likely to be murdered as young white men. This disparity is historic and pervasive, and cannot be accounted for by individual characteristics. Culture-of-violence and tail-of-the-distribution theories are also inadequate to explain the geographic and demographic pattern of the disparity. We argue that any satisfactory explanation must take into account the fact that murder can have a preemptive motive: people sometimes kill simply to avoid being killed. As a result, disputes can escalate dramatically in environments (endogenously) perceived to be dangerous, resulting in self-fulfilling expectations of violence for particular dyadic interactions, and significant racial disparities in rates of murder and victimization. Because of strategic complementarity, small differences in fundamentals can cause large differences in murder rates. Differences in the manner in which the criminal justice system treats murders with victims from different groups, and differences across groups in involvement in street vice, may be sufficient to explain the size and pattern of the racial disparity.
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Safe haven laws as crime control theater
Michelle Hammond, Monica Miller & Timothy Griffin
Child Abuse & Neglect, July 2010, Pages 545-552
Objectives: This article examines safe haven laws, which allow parents to legally abandon their infants. The main objective is to determine whether safe haven laws fit the criteria of crime control theater, a term used to describe public policies that produce the appearance, but not the effect, of crime control, and as such are essentially socially constructed "solutions" to socially constructed crime "problems."
Methods: The analysis will apply the principles of crime control theater to safe haven laws. Specifically, the term crime control theater applies to laws that are reactionary responses to perceived criminal threats and are often widely supported as a way to address the crime in question. Such laws are attractive because they appeal to mythic narratives (i.e., saving an innocent child from a predator); however they are likely ineffective due to the complexity of the crime. These laws can have deleterious effects when policymakers make false claims of success and stunt public discourse (e.g., drawing attention away from more frequent and preventable crimes). This analysis applies these criteria to safe haven laws to determine whether such laws can be classified as crime control theater.
Results: Many qualities inherent to crime control theater are present in safe haven laws. For example, the laws are highly publicized, their intentions lack moral ambiguity, rare cases of success legitimize law enforcement and other agencies, and they appeal to the public sense of responsibility in preventing crime. Yet the goal of saving infant lives may be unattainable. These qualities make the effectiveness of the laws questionable and suggest they may be counterproductive. This analysis determined that safe haven laws are socially constructed solutions to the socially constructed problem of child abandonment.
Conclusions: Safe haven laws are appropriately classified as crime control theater. It is imperative that further research be conducted to examine the effectiveness and collateral effects of safe haven laws.
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Interrogation strategies, evidence, and the need for Miranda: A study of police ideologies
Durant Frantzen
Police Practice and Research, June 2010, Pages 227-239
Abstract:
The results of this study are based on self-report data (N = 43) and face-to-face interviews (N = 18) with Texas police investigators reporting their perceptions of factors affecting the disposition of suspect interrogations. Results indicated that participants viewed the presence of physical evidence to be most important to clearing offenses, whereas testimonial evidence was deemed less critical. In the qualitative analysis, participants reported that confronting the suspect with evidence of their guilt and offering moral justifications were among the most effective interrogation techniques to eliciting suspect confessions. Seventy-seven percent of respondents believed that the Miranda requirement was not an impediment to police interrogations. Results were discussed in comparison to past research, and in light of methodological limitations.
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Latino Employment and Black Violence: The Unintended Consequence of U.S. Immigration Policy
Edward Shihadeh & Raymond Barranco
Social Forces, March 2010, Pages 1393-1420
Abstract:
U.S. immigration policies after 1965 fueled a rise in the Latino population and, thus, increased the competition for low-skill jobs. We examine whether Latino immigration and Latino dominance of low-skill industries increases black urban violence. Using city-level data for the year 2000, we find that (1. Latino immigration is positively linked to urban black violence, (2. the link is most prevalent where blacks lost ground to Latinos in low-skill markets, (3. not all low-skill sectors operate in unison; black violence rises only when jobs in agriculture, manufacturing and construction are in short supply and, (4. Latino immigration raises black violence by first increasing black unemployment. We discuss the implications of these findings.
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Bad moon on the rise? Lunar cycles and incidents of crime
Joseph Schafer, Sean Varano, John Jarvis & Jeffrey Cancino
Journal of Criminal Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Popular cultures in Western societies have long espoused the notion that phases of the moon influence human behavior. In particular, there is a common belief the full moon increases incidents of aberrant, deviant, and criminal behavior. Using police, astronomical, and weather data from a major southwestern American city, this study assessed whether lunar cycles related with rates of reported crime. The findings fail to support popular lore, which has suggested that lunar phase influenced the volume of crime reported to the police. Future research directions examining qualitative rather than quantitative aspects of this problem may yield further inform the understanding of whether lunar cycles appreciably influence demands for policing services.
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David Kirk & Mauri Matsuda
University of Texas Working Paper, March 2010
Abstract:
This study is motivated by an interest in explaining racial and ethnic differences in the frequency of arrest. This necessitates an understanding of whether the probability of arrest following the commission of a crime varies as a function of neighborhood context. Social theory offers numerous theoretical mechanisms for explaining geographic variation in the probability of arrest - including offending differences, benign neglect, minority threat, police workload, ecological contamination, and legal cynicism - yet extant research offers little insight into adjudicating between these competing theoretical perspectives. In the interest of providing resolution to this theoretical puzzle, we draw upon a unique data repository from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods which allows us to test the mechanisms core to these various theoretical perspectives. We find that in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of legal cynicism, crimes are much less likely to lead to an arrest than in neighborhoods where the police are viewed more favorably. Our findings suggest that residents of cynical neighborhoods are less likely to engage in collective efficacy and less likely to cooperate with the police because they assume that the police are unresponsive at best, and potentially corrupt and abusive at worst. Ultimately, if black, Latino, and white individuals lived, on average, in neighborhoods with similar probabilities of arrest following the commission of a crime, there would be an even greater arrest disparity between blacks and other race-ethnic groups than is already present.
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Police officers' opinions of the use of unnecessary force by other officers
Scott Phillips
Police Practice and Research, June 2010, Pages 197-210
Abstract:
This study examined the assumptions that the use of unnecessary force is acceptable to police officers and they are unlikely to report its use to a supervisor. Suspect characteristics, situational aspects, and examples of force were integrated into vignettes. Officers from three small departments responded to two vignettes. Officers accept unnecessary force if a suspect flees, but not the use of physical force. Police officers are doubtful that any other officer will report the use of force to a supervisor when a suspect appears to be involved in criminal behavior. Research limitations and directions for future research are discussed.
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The Hidden Consequences of Racial Salience in Videotaped Interrogations and Confessions
Jennifer Ratcliff, Daniel Lassiter, Victoria Jager, Matthew Lindberg, Jennifer Elek & Adam Hasinski
Psychology, Public Policy, and Law, May 2010, Pages 200-218
Abstract:
Evaluations of videotaped criminal confessions can be influenced by the camera perspective taken during recording. Interrogations and confessions recorded with the camera directing observers' visual attention onto the suspect lead to biased judgments of the suspect. Although a camera perspective that directs visual attention onto the suspect and interrogator equally appears to promote unbiased judgments, investigations to date have relied on videotapes that depict only Caucasian suspects and interrogators. We examined the possibility that even equal-focus videotapes may become problematic when the suspect is a minority (e.g., Chinese American or African American) and the interrogator is Caucasian. That is, to the extent that Caucasian observers are inclined to direct more of their attention onto minorities, an effect documented previously, we expected biased judgments of the suspect to also occur in equal-focus videotapes. Three experiments provided evidence of this racial salience bias. Implications are discussed, including a practical way of avoiding the bias.
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Aggression and attitudes to time and risk in weapon-using violent offenders
Iain Brennan, Simon Moore & Jonathan Shepherd
Psychiatry Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
The use of weapons in violence increases both the severity of harm to victims and the severity of legal consequences for offenders, but little is known of the characteristics of violent offenders who choose to use weapons. Levels of anger, attitude to risk, time discounting, and antisocial history among a sample of weapon-using violent offenders (n = 15) were compared to violent offenders who had not used a weapon (n = 10) and nonviolent offenders (n = 15). Results showed that weapon-using violent offenders displayed greater trait aggression and were more risk seeking than other offender types. In addition, weapon-using violent offenders were first convicted at an earlier age and truanted from school more frequently compared to other offender types. The results indicate that weapon users are more aggressive and more risk taking, but no more present focused than other violent and nonviolent offenders. Further research into the cognitive and social factors that influence weapon use is required if this dangerous behavior is to be reduced.
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Minority threat and police strength: An examination of the Golden State
Rick Ruddell & Matthew Thomas
Police Practice and Research, June 2010, Pages 256-273
Abstract:
This cross-sectional study examined the relationships between indicators of law enforcement spending, police strength, and minority threat in California in 2004. Controlling for economic conditions, crime, and indicators of social disruption we find that counties with higher populations of American Indians, Asians, or blacks and non-English speakers employ a greater number of sworn officers, or have increased spending on law enforcement. Further, this study also revealed that counties with less 'white flight' were likely to have a greater number of sworn officers. Implications for the study of formal social control, conflict theories, and policing are outlined.
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Juvenile arrest rates for burglary: A routine activities approach
Wendi Pollock, Hee-Jong Joo & Brian Lawton
Journal of Criminal Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Juveniles comprise a substantial portion of the offenders arrested for burglary in the United States each year. Using a Hierarchical Multivariate Linear Model, the current research examines juvenile burglars, by gender, utilizing a routine activities approach. This analysis was performed using data on the thirty five largest cities in Texas, between 1990 and 2004. Increased incidents of juvenile arrests for burglary, in both genders, occurred where there were high levels of poverty and low levels of female headed households. Juvenile males appeared to be arrested more for burglary in areas where there were high levels of unemployment and non-white individuals, while juvenile females were arrested for burglary in places where there were higher numbers of males between the ages of 19 and 24 years. Results suggest that the current measures of routine activities theory better explains variation in juvenile male arrests for burglary.