Crime Threat
Juvenility and Punishment: Sentencing Juveniles in Adult Criminal Court
Megan Kurlychek & Brian Johnson
Criminology, August 2010, Pages 725-758
Abstract:
The study outlined in this article addressed a key limitation of prior research on the punishment of juveniles transferred to adult court by employing propensity score matching techniques to create more comparable samples of juvenile and young adult offenders. Using recent data from the Maryland State Commission on Criminal Sentencing Policy, it tested competing theoretical propositions about the salience of juvenile status in adult court. Findings indicate that even after rigorous statistical matching procedures, juvenile offenders are punished more severely than their young adult counterparts. We found no evidence that this "juvenile penalty" is exacerbated by an offender's race or gender, but it does vary starkly across offense type and mode of transfer, being driven primarily by drug crimes and discretionary waivers. The import of these findings is discussed as they relate to the future of juvenile justice policy regarding the continued use of juvenile transfer to adult court.
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Bag theft in bars: An analysis of relative risk, perceived risk and modus operandi
Aiden Sidebottom & Kate Bowers
Security Journal, July 2010, Pages 206-224
Abstract:
Crime is often found to concentrate in and around bars. Although numerous studies have looked at the relationship between bars and violent crime, research concerned with acquisitive crime in bars is lacking. This study focuses on bag theft in bars and presents analyses of 1023 recorded bag thefts in 2005-2006 from 26 bars of 1 chain in central London. We also report analysis of 317 customer surveys conducted in 14 bars of the same chain. In most crime prevention studies, a denominator is used to allow for a generalizable calculation of risk. Typically that denominator is selected by considering the crime in question and the commensurate population at risk: burglary using households, car theft using cars. For bag theft in bars various denominators exist: the number of seats, the number of customers or the number of bags per bar. This type of information is rarely available, and its impact on understanding crime risk is discussed here. Furthermore, bags might be at differential levels of risk of theft depending upon where they are placed. By comparison with a relevant denominator, here we show that bags are most at risk when placed over a chair or on the floor. Although surveys indicate that the public tend to know this, their bag placement behaviour appears to be at odds with their (accurate) perception of risky bag theft locations. We therefore propose that targeted publicity and greater bag stowage options that enable customers to store bags off the floor are likely to be effective crime prevention measures to reduce bag theft in bars.
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Thieves, Thugs, and Neighborhood Poverty
David Bjerk
Journal of Urban Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper develops a model of crime analyzing how such behavior is associated with individual and neighborhood poverty. The model shows that even under relatively minimal assumptions, a connection between individual poverty and both property and violent crimes will arise, and moreover, "neighborhood" effects can develop, but will differ substantially in nature across crime types. A key implication is that greater economic segregation in a city should have no effect or a negative effect on property crime, but a positive effect on violent crime. Using IV methods, I show this implication to be consistent with the empirical evidence.
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Kristen Zgoba, Bonita Veysey & Melissa Dalessandro
Justice Quarterly, October 2010, Pages 667-691
Abstract:
This research measures group differences in recidivism before and after implementation of Megan's Law. The pre-post study consists of a total of 550 male sex offenders released during the years 1990 and 2000, of which 250 offenders were released during 1990 and 1994 (i.e., the pre-Megan's Law group) and 300 offenders were released between 1995 and 2000 (i.e., the post-Megan's Law group). Offenders were released from a general population setting and a sex offender specific treatment facility. The main variables of concern include: (1) recidivism levels, (2) days to first re-arrest, and (3) level of harm (i.e., number of sex offenses, violent offenses, and number of child victims). Statistical findings from chi-square and survival analysis testing indicate significant group differences on levels of general recidivism; however, no significant differences were identified on measures of sex offense recidivism. Implications of these findings on sex offender specific policies are discussed.
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Who by Accident? The Social Morphology of Car Accidents
Roni Factor, Gad Yair & David Mahalel
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Prior studies in the sociology of accidents have shown that different social groups have different rates of accident involvement. This study extends those studies by implementing Bourdieu's relational perspective of social space to systematically explore the homology between drivers' social characteristics and their involvement in specific types of motor vehicle accident. Using a large database that merges official Israeli road-accident records with socioeconomic data from two censuses, this research maps the social order of road accidents through multiple correspondence analysis. Extending prior studies, the results show that different social groups indeed tend to be involved in motor vehicle accidents of different types and severity. For example, we find that drivers from low socioeconomic backgrounds are overinvolved in severe accidents with fatal outcomes. The new findings reported here shed light on the social regularity of road accidents and expose new facets in the social organization of death.
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Emotion guided threat detection: Expecting guns where there are none
Jolie Baumann & David DeSteno
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Five experiments examine whether the ability of emotions to influence judgments of threat extends to a very basic process inherent in threat detection: object recognition. Participants experiencing different emotions were asked to make rapid judgments about whether target individuals were holding guns or neutral objects. Results across 4 experiments supported the hypothesis that anger increases the probability that neutral objects will be misidentified as ones related to violence, but not the converse. Of import, the findings demonstrate that this bias is not a simple function of the negative valence of an emotional state, but stems from specific threat-relevant cues provided by anger. Direct manipulation of participants' expectancies for encountering guns in the environment is shown not only to remove the bias among angry individuals when set to be low but also to produce a corresponding bias among neutral participants when set to be high. A 5th study demonstrates that the bias is amenable to correction given sufficient ability.
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"Snitches End Up in Ditches" and Other Cautionary Tales
Edward Morris
Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, August 2010, Pages 254-272
Abstract:
This article examines the "stop snitching" phenomenon in relation to teenagers and schooling. It shows evidence of a code against sharing information with formal authorities among students at two low-income schools: a predominately Black, urban school and a predominately White, rural school. Using Bourdieu's concept of habitus, the analysis demonstrates how antisnitching is woven into the social fabric of these communities, prompting student ambivalence toward school-sanctioned methods of conflict resolution. The findings highlight the broad reach of the antisnitching phenomenon, situating this mentality as the result of community-based distrust of formal authority. The article assesses implications of antisnitching for school discipline and climate.
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Immigration: America's nineteenth century "law and order problem"?
Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn Moehling & Anne Morrison Piehl
NBER Working Paper, August 2010
Abstract:
Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violent crime in cities and have relied on data with serious limitations regarding nativity information. We analyze administrative data from Pennsylvania prisons, with high quality information on nativity and demographic characteristics. The latter allow us to construct incarceration rates for detailed population groups using U.S. Census data. The raw gap in incarceration rates for the foreign and native born is large, in accord with the extremely high concern at the time about immigrant criminality. But adjusting for age and gender greatly narrows that observed gap. Particularly striking are the urban/rural differences. Immigrants were concentrated in large cities where reported crime rates were higher. However, within rural counties, the foreign born had much higher incarceration rates than the native born. The interaction of nativity with urban residence explains much of the observed aggregate differentials in incarceration rates. Finally, we find that the foreign born, especially the Irish, consistently have higher incarceration rates for violent crimes, but from 1850 to 1860 the natives largely closed the gap with the foreign born for property offenses.
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Ramiro Martinez, Jacob Stowell & Matthew Lee
Criminology, August 2010, Pages 797-829
Abstract:
Emerging research associated with the "immigration revitalization" perspective suggests that immigration has been labeled inaccurately as a cause of crime in contemporary society. In fact, crime seems to be unexpectedly low in many communities that exhibit high levels of the following classic indicators of social disorganization: residential instability, ethnic heterogeneity, and immigration. But virtually all research conducted to date has been cross-sectional in nature and therefore unable to demonstrate how the relationship between immigration and crime might covary over time. This limitation is significant, especially because current versions of social disorganization theory posit a dynamic relationship between structural factors and crime that unfolds over time. The current study addresses this issue by exploring the effects of immigration on neighborhood-level homicide trends in the city of San Diego, California, using a combination of racially/ethnically disaggregated homicide victim data and community structural indicators collected for three decennial census periods. Consistent with the revitalization thesis, results show that the increased size of the foreign-born population reduces lethal violence over time. Specifically, we find that neighborhoods with a larger share of immigrants have fewer total, non-Latino White, and Latino homicide victims. More broadly, our findings suggest that social disorganization in heavily immigrant cities might be largely a function of economic deprivation rather than forms of "neighborhood" or "system" stability.
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Anticipated shaming and criminal offending
Cesar Rebellon, Nicole Leeper Piquero, Alex Piquero & Stephen Tibbetts
Journal of Criminal Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Criminological research suggests that informal sanctions like shaming may have a stronger influence on crime than do formal sanctions, but research has yet to examine whether anticipated shaming may mediate the relationship between crime and variables derived from dominant micro-level theories. The present paper argues that variables derived from learning, control, strain, and deterrence theories influence criminal offending via their effect on anticipated shaming. Using data collected from a sample of young adults, results from both tobit and path analyses suggest that the prospect of shaming among friends and family bears a stronger direct relation to criminal intent than do more commonly examined variables and that the effect of such variables on criminal intent is largely indirect, mediated by anticipated shaming. We therefore suggest that crime control efforts might benefit from incorporating a greater role for Braithwaite's conception of reintegrative shaming.
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Determinants of Chicago Neighborhood Homicide Trajectories: 1965-1995
Brian Stults
Homicide Studies, August 2010, Pages 244-267
Abstract:
The homicide rate in Chicago nearly tripled between 1965 and 1992 and subsequently declined by more than 50% through 2005. However, is this trend representative of all areas in the city? Drawing on the social disorganization and concentrated disadvantage perspectives, this article uses semiparametric group-based trajectory modeling to examine homicide trajectories in Chicago neighborhoods from 1965 to 1995. Significant variability is found in homicide trajectories across neighborhoods. Multivariate results show that disadvantage increases the likelihood of having an increasing or persistently high homicide trajectory. Social disorganization and family disruption are also predictive of variation in homicide trajectories but only in communities with already low levels of homicide. Other theoretically relevant predictors are evaluated, and suggestions for theoretical refinement and future research are discussed.
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Kay Kei-ho Pih, Akihiko Hirose & KuoRay Mao
Trends in Organized Crime, September 2010, Pages 115-133
Abstract:
This paper examines the organizational structure and operations of Taiwanese organized crime and youth gangs in Southern California. In-depth interviews were used as the principle method of research. In contrast to transnational criminal conspiracy claims and the La Cosa Nostra model of vertically integrated organizations, our findings suggest that these criminal groups consist of discrete local Taiwanese youth gangs which operate as largely independent economic units that show no substantive and operational ties to criminal organizations in Taiwan. The formation of Taiwanese criminal organizations and gangs in Southern California is primarily governed by the availability of financial opportunities. Furthermore, both the inter-gang relations and intra-gang structures exhibit a distinct form of contractor arrangement which consists of market-like weak ties that are simultaneously circumscribed by the criminal embeddedness. We argue that that these economic weak ties, which seem to render conventionally understood criminal organizational boundaries administratively less meaningful, still function as an operationally significant governance mechanism of the organizational structures of American Taiwanese youth gangs. In addition, the paper discusses the implications that the embeddedness has on the somewhat paradoxical and incoherent organizational structure.
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Cognitive Skills, Adolescent Violence, and the Moderating Role of Neighborhood Disadvantage
Paul Bellair & Thomas McNulty
Justice Quarterly, August 2010, Pages 538-559
Abstract:
Numerous studies uncover a link between cognitive skills and adolescent violence. Overlooked is whether the relationship changes at varying levels of neighborhood disadvantage. We examine the issue by contrasting two models that place individual difference in cognitive skill within a social-structural framework. Using five waves of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth and a three-level hierarchical model, results indicate that cognitive skill is inversely associated with violence and that the relationship is strongest in non-disadvantaged neighborhoods. However, the cognitive skills-violence relationship is indistinguishable from zero in the most disadvantaged neighborhoods. The findings are therefore consistent with the hypothesis that social expression of developed ability is muted in disadvantaged contexts.
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Thomas Nilsson et al.
Psychiatry Research, 15 August 2010, Pages 525-530
Abstract:
Neurobiological markers in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) and in serum, previously found to co-vary with destructive personality traits in violent offenders, were explored in a general population sample of 21 patients undergoing knee surgery. Results on the Karolinska Scales of Personality (KSP) and the Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) were compared with CSF/serum albumin ratios and serum concentrations of beta-trace protein (βTP) (as markers for blood-brain barrier (BBB) permeability), to CSF/serum albumin ratios between the dopamine and serotonin metabolites homovanillic acid (HVA)/5-hydroxyindoleacetic acid (HIAA) and to CSF and serum ratios between activated thyroid hormone (T3) and its precursor T4. Serum βTP concentrations correlated with CSF/serum albumin ratios (P = 0.018), but not with preoperative serum creatinine concentrations. Serum βTP correlated significantly with Monotony Avoidance and Impulsiveness; CSF HVA/5-HIAA ratios with Irritability and low Cooperativeness. The βTP is a potential serum marker for the integrity of the BBB that does not necessitate lumbar puncture. Thyroid hormones did not correlate with personality traits. As reported in forensic psychiatric patients, aggressive, unempathic personality traits were thus associated with increased dopaminergic activity in relation to the serotonergic activity and impulsivity to increased BBB permeability also in a general population group.
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Consuming criminal corpses: Fascination with the dead criminal body
Ruth Penfold-Mounce
Mortality, August 2010, Pages 250-265
Abstract:
The body of the criminal has long held a macabre fascination. From the earliest times to the nineteenth century, the public execution of criminals in Britain and America drew large crowds to witness the punishment being carried out. Even after the termination of public executions, the fascination with death through the criminal corpse has continued. This is demonstrated by a tourist-like interest and curiosity emerging to the extent of celebrated status being attained by certain criminals and their deaths. This article engages with the macabre fascination and celebration of death and the criminal corpse by exploring the gruesome tourism and pursuit of souvenirs relating to specific dead criminals in Britain and America. Using a broad sweep of case studies dating between 1800 and the 1970s - including Scottish body snatchers Burke and Hare, and murderers, William Corder, and Gary Gilmore - the enthralment with the criminal corpse will be examined and conceptualised. I draw on Seltzer's notion of wound culture, whereby society is fascinated and thrilled with violence and death, to argue that the consumption of criminal corpses is a grisly aspect of contemporary consumer culture in which even the macabre can gain celebrated, or celebrity, status.
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Lyn Exum, Joseph Kuhns, Brad Koch & Chuck Johnson
Criminal Justice Policy Review, September 2010, Pages 269-295
Abstract:
Although the efficacy of situational crime prevention (SCP) strategies on convenience store safety has received considerable attention, the security of fast-food restaurants has been virtually ignored. This study was based on a population of convenience stores (n = 295) and fast-food restaurants (n = 321) in Charlotte, North Carolina. The study examined whether the crime control strategies commonly recommended to the convenience store industry were effective at reducing robbery in the fast-food industry. Relatedly, the study examined whether target-hardening strategies have similar effects on robbery prevalence rates across the two types of businesses. In general, the article found that many target-hardening strategies derived from the literature failed to impact robbery rates for either type of establishment. For those factors that did emerge as statistically significant predictors of robbery, the preventative effects generally appeared in one type of establishment or the other, but not in both. These findings suggest that effective SCP strategies are truly situation specific and not "one size fits all."