Trends in Crime
Short Criminals: Stature and Crime in Early America
Howard Bodenhorn, Carolyn Moehling & Gregory Price
NBER Working Paper, April 2010
Abstract:
This paper considers the extent to which crime in early America was conditioned on height. With data on inmates incarcerated in Pennsylvania state penitentiaries between 1826 and 1876, we estimate the parameters of Wiebull proportional hazard specifications of the individual crime hazard. Our results reveal that, consistent with a theory in which height can be a source of labor market disadvantage, criminals in early America were shorter than the average American, and individual crime hazards decreased in height.
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Merciful Justice: Lessons From 50 Years of New York Death Penalty Commutations
James Acker, Talia Harmon & Craig Rivera
Criminal Justice Review, June 2010, Pages 183-199
Abstract:
This article examines the reasons offered by seven New York governors in justification of their decisions to commute death sentences in 159 cases between 1920 and 1970. In doing so, it scrutinizes the common assertion that, in marked contrast to contemporary death penalty cases, merciful considerations once were bountiful in sparing condemned offenders from execution. An examination of the New York governors' reasons for granting clemency and the legal context within which their decisions were made suggests that mercy accounted for few death sentence commutations during this time period and that other considerations predominated. To the extent that the New York experience resembles that of other states historically, the analysis suggests that the comparatively infrequent use of executive clemency in contemporary capital cases may owe more to the significant differences in death penalty laws and their administration during the different eras than to a diminished role for mercy.
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Gary LaFree, Eric Baumer & Robert O'Brien
American Sociological Review, February 2010, Pages 75-100
Abstract:
More than four decades ago, the Kerner Report chronicled the violent disturbances of the 1960s and predicted that the United States was rapidly moving toward two racially separate and unequal societies. Resulting concerns about black and white inequality form a critical chapter in the history of sociological research. Few studies, however, explore trends in racial inequality in rates of violence. Has the gap between black and white violence rates significantly narrowed since 1960 and, if so, why? Drawing on recent work on assimilation and the literature on race inequality, we develop a set of hypotheses about black-white differences in violence rates and how these rates may have changed during the past four decades. We emphasize race differences in family structure, economic and educational inequality, residential integration, illicit drug involvement, and population composition. Using race-specific homicide arrest and census data on social, economic, and demographic conditions for 80 large U.S. cities from 1960 to 2000, we find substantial convergence in black-white homicide arrest rates over time, although this convergence stalled from the 1980s to the 1990s. Consistent with theoretical expectations, we find that, since the 1960s, the racial gap in homicide arrests declined more substantially in cities that had greater reductions in the ratio of black to white single-parent families, as well as in cities that experienced greater population growth and increases in the proportion of the population that is black. Also, as expected, the race gap in homicide arrests widened in cities that had an increasing ratio of black to white rates of drug arrests. Measures of racial integration, however, have no discernible impact on the black to white homicide arrest ratio.
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Inmate homicides: Killers, victims, motives, and circumstances
Mark Cunningham, Jon Sorensen, Mark Vigen & S.O. Woods
Journal of Criminal Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite popular media depictions, prison homicides are quite infrequent, averaging only four per one hundred thousand inmates annually in U.S. prisons during the current decade and declining over 90 percent in the past thirty years. Only a handful of studies had examined this most serious form of institutional violence. This study examined thirty-five inmate homicides, involving fifty-two perpetrators, occurring in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for 2000-2008. The majority of homicides occurred in inmates' cells, involved a single assailant, resulted from beatings, or was cross-racial. Often multiple motivations for the homicides were present. Hispanic inmates were overrepresented as perpetrators and victims. Perpetrators and victims were overwhelmingly male, and likely to have records of violent arrests and problematic prison adjustments. A substantial proportion of both perpetrators and victims had suspected or confirmed gang affiliations. Perpetrators were differentiated from victims by younger age, higher IQ scores, greater educational attainment, and sentences for armed robbery.
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Magdalena Cerdá, Steven Messner, Melissa Tracy, David Vlahov, Emily Goldmann, Kenneth Tardiff & Sandro Galea
American Journal of Public Health, forthcoming
Objectives: We assessed whether New York City's gun-related homicide rates in the 1990s were associated with a range of social determinants of homicide rates.
Methods: We used cross-sectional time-series data for 74 New York City police precincts from 1990 through 1999, and we estimated Bayesian hierarchical models with a spatial error term. Homicide rates were estimated separately for victims aged 15-24 years (youths), 25-34 years (young adults), and 35 years or older (adults).
Results: Decreased cocaine consumption was associated with declining homicide rates in youths (posterior median [PM]=0.25; 95% Bayesian confidence interval [BCI]=0.07, 0.45) and adults (PM=0.07; 95% BCI=0.02, 0.12), and declining alcohol consumption was associated with fewer homicides in young adults (PM=0.14; 95% BCI=0.02, 0.25). Receipt of public assistance was associated with fewer homicides for young adults (PM=-104.20; 95% BCI=-182.0, -26.14) and adults (PM=-28.76; 95% BCI=-52.65, -5.01). Misdemeanor policing was associated with fewer homicides in adults (PM=-0.01; 95% BCI=-0.02, -0.001).
Conclusions: Substance use prevention policies and expansion of the social safety net may be able to cause major reductions in homicide among age groups that drive city homicide trends.
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A traffic safety evaluation of California's traffic violator school citation dismissal policy
Michael Gebers
Journal of Safety Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study evaluated California's traffic violator school (TVS) citation dismissal policy. This study identified and compared two large samples of drivers either completing a TVS (N = 210,015) or convicted of a traffic citation (N = 168,563). Prior to adjudication, the TVS group had characteristics (e.g., lower prior conviction rate and smaller proportion of males) that were predictive of a lower subsequent crash risk. However, the TVS group exhibited significantly more crashes than did the convicted group in the subsequent one-year period. The difference (4.83%) increased to 10% after adjusting for the more favorable characteristics of the TVS group. The TVS group also had a higher adjusted subsequent crash rate at each prior driver record entry level, reflecting a loss in the general and specific deterrence of the non-conviction masked status of TVS dismissed citations. It was reported that the TVS dismissal policy results in approximately 12,300 additional crashes annually with an economic costs of approximately $398,000,000. The avoidance of licensing actions resulting from the dismissal policy assists in explaining why the driving public is exposed to an increased crash risk. A number of recommendations are offered to reduce the negative traffic safety impact of the TVS citation dismissal policy.
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To Know the Unknown: The Decline in Homicide Clearance Rates, 1980-2000
Graham Ousey & Matthew Lee
Criminal Justice Review, June 2010, Pages 141-158
Abstract:
Against the backdrop of the precipitous decline in urban homicide clearance over the past several decades, this study examines factors that may be linked to within-city, over-time variation in homicide clearance rates from 1980 to 2000. Conceptual arguments focusing on case-level characteristics of homicides as well as the broader macrosocial context are delineated and empirically tested. Results from a fixed-effects regression analysis reveal that changes in clearance rates are linked to changes in the situational characteristics of murder incidents such as the percentage of cases involving strangers, firearms, other felonies, and arguments. In addition, within-city changes in immigration are found to be associated with lower clearance rates, whereas drug market arrests are associated with higher clearance rates. Contrary to politically popular assertions, clearance rates do not appear to be a function of changes in police personnel or workload.
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Untangling race and class effects on juvenile arrests
Michael Tapia
Journal of Criminal Justice, May-June 2010, Pages 255-265
Abstract:
This study employed a synthesis of conflict and labeling theory to reexamine the often observed links between race, social class, and arrest. Using longitudinal data on a representative sample of U.S. teens, random effects negative binomial regressions detected direct and indirect effects of race and class on arrest. In support of main effects hypotheses, racial minority status and low SES increased arrests, controlling for demographic and legal items. Consistent with research on "out of place" effects for minority youth in high SES contexts, and counter to expectations, interactions showed that racial minority status increased arrest risk for high SES youth significantly more than it did for low SES youth. Somewhat reminiscent of research on the "Latino paradox," the effect of minority status on arrest at low-income levels did not exert the same interactive effect for Hispanics as it did for Blacks. Implications for theory, policy, and future research are discussed.
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Evidence in Context: Bayes' Theorem and Investigations
Pete Blair & Kim Rossmo
Police Quarterly, June 2010, Pages 123-135
Abstract:
Investigations require that detectives interpret what evidence tells them about the probability that a suspect committed a crime. Unfortunately, a large body of research suggests that people are generally unable to accurately assess what a specific element of information tells them about the likelihood of an outcome. Bayes' Theorem, however, can be used to overcome this difficulty. This article explores the use of Bayes' Theorem to assess the question, "What does evidence tell us about the probability that someone is guilty?" A variety of analyses are presented, the results of which are not always intuitive. Policy implications are discussed.
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The Impact of Traffic Stops on Calling the Police for Help
Chris Gibson, Samuel Walker, Wesley Jennings & Mitchell Miller
Criminal Justice Policy Review, June 2010, Pages 139-159
Abstract:
Using data from the Police-Public Contact Survey (PPCS), the current study examined how experiencing traffic stops affect the likelihood that Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics will contact the police for services. First, experiencing one or more traffic stops in the past year significantly decreased the likelihood of contacting the police for assistance and to report a neighborhood problem, net of other demographic characteristics. Second, traffic stop experiences had similar effects on Whites, Blacks, and Hispanics, each group less likely to have contacted the police for assistance and to report neighborhood problems if they had experienced one or more traffic stops in the past year. This study also discusses the reasons why experiencing traffic stops are related to contacting the police for help and provides some implications for police- community relationships.