Malefactor
The Effect of Police Contact: Does Official Intervention Result in Deviance Amplification?
Stephanie Wiley & Finn-Aage Esbensen
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.
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For Whom Do Sanctions Deter and Label?
Robert Morris & Alex Piquero
Justice Quarterly, September/October 2013, Pages 837-868
Abstract:
Deterrence and labeling theories make opposing predictions regarding the effect of sanctions on subsequent crime. Deterrence anticipates that sanctions deter, while labeling anticipates that sanctions amplify future crime. The knowledge base with respect to this question is vast, and while a handful of studies provide evidence of a deterrent effect, the majority of studies indicate a null effect. Our study examines whether an arrest leads to an increase in subsequent crime, but extends the knowledge base by considering whether an arrest has the same effect across offender trajectories and by employing techniques that deal with sample selection bias. Thus, we assess for whom sanctions deter or exacerbate subsequent offending. Results indicate that for greater risk youth, arrest amplifies subsequent delinquency, net of other effects, but not among lower risk youth. Thus, experiencing an arrest aggravates subsequent delinquency among some but not all persons. Implications and directions for future research are identified.
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Ling Ren, Yan Zhang & Jihong Solomon Zhao
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.
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Cause or Catalyst: The Interaction of Real World and Media Crime Models
Ray Surette
American Journal of Criminal Justice, September 2013, Pages 392-409
Abstract:
The effect of exposure to media content containing criminal models is unresolved with two perspectives currently competing. One perspective perceives media provided models of crime functioning as direct causes of criminality or as crime triggers; the other sees media crime models serving as crime forming catalysts or as crime rudders. A study of copycat crime provided an opportunity to simultaneously weigh evidence for both models by examining the comparative roles of real world versus media provided crime models. Data obtained from the anonymous surveys of 574 male and female correctional inmates was employed. Results show that individual offenders, particularly young males, exposed to both real world and media crime model sources were at higher risk for copying criminal behaviors. While both real world and media sources contributed to predicting past inmate copycat behaviors, they also interacted significantly. With the additional enhancement of real world models, the media appear to form crime by providing instructional models to inclined individuals. The results did not support strong direct media exposure effects and the model of media as stylistic catalysts for crime was more supported. The media remains best perceived as a rudder for crime more than as a trigger.
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Assessing the Cost of Electronically Monitoring High-Risk Sex Offenders
Marisa Omori & Susan Turner
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.
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Estimating a Dose-Response Relationship Between Time Served in Prison and Recidivism
Benjamin Meade et al.
Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, forthcoming
Objectives: Estimate the dose-response relationship between time served in prison and offenders' odds of recidivism.
Methods: Using a large, representative sample of adult offenders released from prison under postrelease supervision in the state of Ohio, we examine the relationship between the length of time these offenders served in prison and their odds of recidivism during the year following their release. Multivariate logistic regression and analyses involving propensity score matching for ordered doses are both used to estimate the time served-recidivism relationship.
Results: Analyses of these data revealed that offenders confined for longer periods of time had lower odds of recidivism, but these odds were only substantively lower for those offenders who served the longest periods of time in prison. Findings suggest the inverse effect of time served was not realized until after offenders have been confined for at least five years.
Conclusion: Study findings indicate that the specific deterrent effect of prison sentences may be limited, and sentences less than five years may be reduced in order to save costs without a substantial threat to public safety.
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Does the "Community Prosecution" Strategy Reduce Crime? A Test of Chicago's Experience
Thomas Miles
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
A new strategy of criminal prosecution, called "community prosecution," emerged in the past two decades. The strategy breaks with the traditional approach to prosecution in which a prosecutor works in an office adjacent to a criminal court, processes a large volume of cases, and measures success with conviction rates and sentence lengths. In community prosecution, a prosecutor works directly in a neighborhood, develops relationships with local groups, aligns enforcement priorities with residents' public safety concerns, and seeks solutions to prevent crime. This article presents the first estimates of community prosecution's impact on crime. Over a fifteen-year period, Chicago's top prosecutor twice applied the community prosecution strategy in some (but not all) neighborhoods, and this sequence of two "off/on" policy episodes permits plausible identification of the strategy's impact. Differences-in-differences estimates show that community prosecution reduced certain categories of crime, such as aggravated assault, but had no effect on other categories, such as larceny. The diversity of practices under the rubric of community prosecution makes generalization difficult, but the estimates from Chicago show that the strategy has the potential to produce cost-justified reductions in crime.
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Laura Haynes et al.
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
The collection of delinquent fines is a vast and ongoing public administration challenge. In the United Kingdom, unpaid fines amount to more than 500 million pounds. Managing noncompliant accounts and dispatching bailiffs to collect fines in person is costly. This paper reports the results of a large randomized controlled trial, led by the UK Cabinet Office's Behavioural Insights Team, which was designed to test the effectiveness of mobile phone text messaging as an alternative method of inducing people to pay their outstanding fines. An adaptive trial design was used, first to test the effectiveness of text messaging against no treatment and then to test the relative effectiveness of alternative messages. Text messages, which are relatively inexpensive, are found to significantly increase average payment of delinquent fines. We found text messages to be especially effective when they address the recipient by name.
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Deterrence and Macro-Level Perceptions of Punishment Risks: Is There a "Collective Wisdom"?
Gary Kleck & J.C. Barnes
Crime & Delinquency, October 2013, Pages 1006-1035
Abstract:
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.
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Tried as an Adult, Housed as a Juvenile: A Tale of Youth From Two Courts Incarcerated Together
Jordan Bechtold & Elizabeth Cauffman
Law and Human Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Research has questioned the wisdom of housing juveniles who are convicted in criminal court in facilities with adult offenders. It is argued that minors transferred to criminal court should not be incarcerated with adults, due to a greater likelihood of developing criminal skills, being victimized, and attempting suicide. Alternatively, it has been suggested that the other option, housing these youth with minors who have committed less serious crimes and who are therefore adjudicated in juvenile courts, might have unintended consequences for juvenile court youth. The present study utilizes a sample of youth incarcerated in one secure juvenile facility, with some offenders processed in juvenile court (n = 261) and others processed in adult court (n = 103). We investigate whether youth transferred to adult court engage in more institutional offending (in particular, violence) and experience less victimization than their juvenile court counterparts. Results indicate that although adult court youth had a greater likelihood of being convicted of violent commitment offenses than juvenile court youth, the former engaged in less offending during incarceration than the latter. In addition, no significant differences in victimization were observed. These findings suggest that the concern about the need for separate housing for adult court youth is unfounded; when incarcerated together, those tried in adult court do not engage in more institutional violence than juvenile court youth.
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Joana Arantes et al.
Legal and Criminological Psychology, September 2013, Pages 240-253
Purpose: Do criminal offenders discount future rewards more rapidly than non-offenders? Theories of criminality assume that impulsivity is a key predictor of offending and suggest an affirmative answer, but there are no prior relevant studies with adult offenders and the only previous study with juveniles failed to find that offenders discounted delayed rewards more steeply than controls (Wilson & Daly, 2006).
Method: We measured rates of delay discounting for adult offenders incarcerated in two medium-security facilities in New Zealand (n= 63) and non-offender controls (n= 70) using a questionnaire which asked participants to nominate an indifference point - an amount of money to be received after a delay that was equal in value to an immediate amount - for immediate rewards varying from $500 to $4,000. Indifference points were converted to annual discounting rates. Self-reported measures of alcohol and drug abuse were also obtained.
Results: Offenders discounted future rewards substantially more than non-offenders, and rates varied systematically with amount and delay for both groups, consistent with previous research. The difference in delay discounting between offenders and controls remained significant after controlling for self-reported drug and alcohol use. There were no significant gender differences.
Conclusions: These results suggest that offenders have a deficit in delay discounting, likely appearing in late adolescence or early adulthood, which may lead them to make suboptimal choices.
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Depictions of correctional officers in newspaper media: An ethnographic content analysis
Samuel Vickovic, Marie Griffin & Henry Fradella
Criminal Justice Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
The public relies on the media for most of its information about the criminal justice system. Unfortunately, media depictions of justice actors are not always accurate which, in turn, can lead to distorted images about the system and its operations. Using ethnographic content analysis to analyze 489 articles from major newspapers across the United States, this study seeks to discern how correctional officers and the jobs that they perform are portrayed in print media. The results suggest that correctional officers are overwhelmingly portrayed negatively, with 79.6% of the articles in the research sample presenting one of six distinct negative themes. A typology of these themes is explored in detail, along with its implications for societal support for corrections and correctional officers, especially with regard to the media's potential contributions to officers' job stress, burnout, and job dissatisfaction.
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The Effect of Sanctions on Police Misconduct
Christopher Harris & Robert Worden
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
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.
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Estimating the Impact of Mental Illness on Costs of Crimes: A Matched Samples Comparison
Michael Ostermann & Jason Matejkowski
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study uses a propensity scoring and matching approach to compare the costs of crimes committed by former inmates with mental illness (MI) and without MI. Our findings indicate that the recidivism costs of those with MI over the course of 3 years of follow-up are nearly 3 times as large as similar reintegrating former inmates without MI. However, prior to matching on mental health indicators, the costs of the reoffense patterns of the average reintegrating individual with MI are less than half those of the average former prisoner without MI. Our discussion centers on the identification of relevant groups that corrections officials should focus their rehabilitative resources on and whether those with MI should be a group they focus on during this process.
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Genetic and Nonshared Environmental Factors Predict Handgun Ownership in Early Adulthood
J.C. Barnes, Brian Boutwell & Kevin Beaver
Death Studies, forthcoming
Abstract:
Handgun ownership has been the focus of much criminological research due to the overinvolvement of handguns in violent crime. This literature has, however, overlooked the potential role genetic factors play in the decision to purchase a handgun. The current study analyzed the genetic and environmental influences on handgun ownership among a large sample of young adult twins from the United States. Analyses revealed a stronger concordance for gun ownership among identical twins as compared to fraternal twins and univariate ACE model results indicated genetic (57%) and nonshared environmental (43%) factors explained the variance in handgun ownership. A mediation analysis was performed and the results indicated a portion of the genetic influence on handgun ownership may be mediated by victimization experiences.
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Using Bayes' theorem in behavioural crime linking of serial homicide
Benny Salo et al.
Legal and Criminological Psychology, September 2013, Pages 356-370
Purpose: The study extends research by Santtila et al. (2008) by investigating the effectiveness of linking cases of serial homicide using behavioural patterns of offenders, analysed through Bayesian reasoning. The study also investigates the informative value of individual behavioural variables in the linking process.
Methods: Offender behaviour was coded from official documents relating to 116 solved homicide cases belonging to 19 separate series. The basis of the linkage analyses was 92 behaviours coded as present or absent in the case based on investigator observations on the crime scene. We developed a Bayesian method for linking crime cases and judged its accuracy using cross-validation. We explored the information added by individual behavioural variables, first, by testing if the variable represented purely noise with respect to classification, and second, by excluding variables from the original model, one by one, by choosing the behaviour that had the smallest effect on classification accuracy.
Results: The model achieved a classification accuracy of 83.6% whereas chance expectancy was 5.3%. In simulated scenarios of only one and two known cases in a series, the accuracy was 59.0 and 69.2%, respectively. No behavioural variable represented pure noise but the same level of accuracy was achieved by analysing a set of 15, as analysing all 92 variables.
Conclusion: The study illustrates the utility of analysing individual behavioural variables through Bayesian reasoning for crime linking. Feasible applied use of the approach is illustrated by the effectiveness of analysing a small set of carefully chosen variables.
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Situational Causes of Offending: A Fixed-Effects Analysis of Space-Time Budget Data
Wim Bernasco et al.
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Situational theories of crime assert that the situations that people participate in contain the proximal causes of crime. Prior research has not tested situational hypotheses rigorously, either for lack of detailed situational data or for lack of analytical rigor. The present research combines detailed situational data with analytical methods that eliminate all stable between-individual factors as potential confounds. We test seven potential situational causes: 1) presence of peers, 2) absence of adult handlers, 3) public space, 4) unstructured activities, 5) use of alcohol, 6) use of cannabis, and 7) carrying weapons. In a two-wave panel study, a general sample of adolescents completed a space-time budget interview that recorded, hour by hour over the course of 4 complete days, the activities and whereabouts of the subjects, including any self-reported offenses. In total, 76 individuals reported having committed 104 offenses during the 4 days covered in the space-time budget interview. Using data on the 4,949 hours that these 76 offenders spent awake during these 4 days, within-individual, fixed-effects multivariate logit analyses were used to establish situational causes of offending. The findings demonstrate that offending is strongly and positively related to all hypothesized situational causes except using cannabis and carrying weapons.
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Jail Inmates' Perceived and Anticipated Stigma: Implications for Post-release Functioning
Kelly Moore, Jeffrey Stuewig & June Tangney
Self and Identity, September/October 2013, Pages 527-547
Abstract:
Research shows that offenders perceive stigma, but the accuracy of these perceptions has not been assessed, nor their impact on successful reintegration. In a longitudinal study, jail inmates (N = 168) reported perceptions of stigma toward criminals and anticipated stigma just prior to release. A diverse college sample completed a parallel survey assessing stigmatizing attitudes toward criminals. Inmates' perceived stigma was significantly higher than students' stigmatizing attitudes. Perceived stigma positively predicted post-release employment for African-American inmates, but not for Caucasians. Anticipated stigma negatively predicted arrests for Caucasian inmates, but not for African Americans. Perceived and anticipated stigma may have different implications for reintegration, and these implications may vary across race.
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Sexual offenders' views of Canadian sex offender registries: A survey of a clinical sample
Lisa Murphy & J.P. Fedoroff
Canadian Journal of Behavioural Science, July 2013, Pages 238-249
Abstract:
High profile crimes involving child sexual abuse in Canada and the United States has evoked shock and anger among community members. Sex offender registries (SORs) were created to provide police with an investigative tool to assist in solving sex crimes and increase public safety. There is no published research assessing sexual offenders' views about being on Canada's two SORs. Ways that Canadian SORs could be improved to ensure maximum benefit to the public, the police, and registrants have never been investigated. In this study we collected sociodemographic information and used open-ended questionnaires to examine the accounts of 30 registered sex offenders with regard to their experiences of being a registrant on the National SOR and/or the Ontario SOR. Based on anecdotal reports of some registrants to the authors, it was hypothesised that sex offenders' opposition to SORs may be related primarily to the administration of conditions rather than specific features of the SOR. Results of this study indicated that the majority of registrants were not opposed to being on an SOR. Sixty-two percent of participants (13/21) felt that being on an SOR was not an onerous or intrusive experience. In fact 48% of participants (10/21) indicated registration was only a "minor irritant" or "slight inconvenience." Furthermore, 66% of participants (15/22) on SORs felt they understand the rationale and the need for a properly utilized system of registration. More research needs to be completed on Canadian SORs so that researchers and criminal justice officials can have a more comprehensive understanding of the impact and outcomes of registration from the perspective of the registrants, law enforcement, and the community.
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The Contribution of Illegal Activities to National Income in the Netherlands
Brugt Kazemier et al.
Public Finance Review, September 2013, Pages 544-577
Abstract:
Illegal activities such as smuggling, prostitution, and the production and sales of illicit drugs contribute to the national income of a country. In practice, however, they are not included in the statistics, because there are hardly any reliable estimates about these activities. Recently, Statistics Netherlands has started research into the share of illegal activities in the national income. This article presents the estimates for 1995 through 2008. The total contribution of illegal activities to the national income of the Netherlands increased from 1,800 million euro in 1995 to almost 3,500 million euro in 2008, equaling 0.6 percent of gross domestic product. Drugs accounted for more than 50 percent of the total income from illegal activities in 2001. In 2008, this was down to less than 40 percent, whereas finding illegal employment rose from about 10 percent in 1995 to 33 percent in 2008.
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Suburban neighbourhood design: Associations with fear of crime versus perceived crime risk
Sarah Foster et al.
Journal of Environmental Psychology, December 2013, Pages 112-117
Abstract:
Strategies that reduce fear of crime may contribute to improved health outcomes; however interventions require a better understanding of the neighbourhood correlates of both emotional responses to crime (i.e., fear of crime) and cognitive assessments of crime (i.e., perceived crime risk). This study explored the association between objective measures of suburban design and two safety outcomes: perceived crime risk and fear of crime, for participants who lived in new suburban housing developments in Perth, Western Australia. The characteristics of a walkable neighbourhood, particularly retail land, were associated with less fear of crime, but greater perceived crime risk. One interpretation is that 'strangers', attracted to the neighbourhood by diverse land-uses, might influence the emotional and cognitive aspects of 'fear of crime' differently. Researchers interested in the impact of the built environment on 'fear of crime', and any subsequent influence of these perceptions on health, should be mindful that the environment appears to impact these constructs differently.