Arresting
The Influence of Media on Penal Attitudes
Jared Rosenberger & Valerie Callanan
Criminal Justice Review, December 2011, Pages 435-455
Abstract:
This study examines the influence of crime-related media consumption on individuals' perceptions of the most important purpose of criminal sentencing, using a statewide survey of 4,245 California residents. Consumption of various forms of crime-related media was regressed on four goals of criminal sentencing (punishment, incapacitation, deterrence, and rehabilitation) using multinomial logistic regression. The results suggest that consumption of television news and crime-based reality programs increased the odds of selecting punishment as the most important goal of criminal sentencing as opposed to rehabilitation. The more hours of television watched, irrespective of genre, the more likely respondents were to support punishment, deterrence, or incapacitation rather than rehabilitation. These results hold even after controlling for various sociodemographic characteristics and experiences with crime such as fear, past victimization, and prior arrests.
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David Deming
Quarterly Journal of Economics, November 2011, Pages 2063-2115
Abstract:
I estimate the impact of attending a first-choice middle or high school on adult crime, using data from public school choice lotteries in Charlotte-Mecklenburg school district (CMS). Seven years after random assignment, lottery winners had been arrested for fewer serious crimes and had spent fewer days incarcerated. The gain in school quality as measured by peer and teacher inputs was equivalent to moving from one of the lowest-ranked schools to one at the district average. The reduction in crime comes largely from years after enrollment in the preferred school is complete. The impacts are concentrated among high-risk youth, who commit about 50% less crime across several different outcome measures and scalings of crime by severity. I find suggestive evidence that school quality explains more of the impact in high school, whereas peer effects are more important in middle school.
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The Impact of Unilateral Divorce on Crime
Julio Cáceres-Delpiano & Eugenio Giolito
Journal of Labor Economics, January 2012, Pages 215-248
Abstract:
Using data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's Uniform Crime Report program and differences in the timing of the reform's introduction, we find that unilateral divorce caused an increase in violent crime rates of approximately 9% during the period 1965-96. When we use age at the time of the reform as an additional source of variation, our findings suggest that young adult cohorts, who were children at the time of the reform, were particularly affected. Finally, we show evidence that a potential channel behind our findings is an increase in poverty and inequality among mothers who were "surprised" by the reform.
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John Hipp & Daniel Yates
Criminology, November 2011, Pages 955-990
Abstract:
Theories make varying predictions regarding the functional form of the relationship between neighborhood poverty and crime rates, ranging from a diminishing positive effect, to a linear positive effect, to an exponentially increasing or even threshold effect. Nonetheless, surprisingly little empirical evidence exists testing this functional form. This study estimates the functional form of the relationship between poverty and various types of serious crime in a sample of census tracts for 25 cities, and it finds that a diminishing positive effect most appropriately characterizes this relationship whether estimating the models nonparametrically or parametrically. Only for the crime of murder does some evidence exist of an accelerating effect, although this occurs in the range of 20 to 40 percent in poverty, with a leveling effect on crime beyond this point of very high poverty. Thus, no evidence is found here in support of the postulate of scholars extending William Julius Wilson's (1987) insight that neighborhoods with very high levels of poverty will experience an exponentially higher rate of crime compared with other neighborhoods.
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Distinguishing Race Effects on Pre-Trial Release and Sentencing Decisions
John Wooldredge
Justice Quarterly, January/February 2012, Pages 41-75
Abstract:
Racial disparities in court dispositions and sentences might reflect systemic biases toward minorities, but they might also stem from race group differences in legal or other extra-legal factors linked to a defendant's risk for future criminality. Analyses of over 5,000 felony defendants from an urban Ohio jurisdiction revealed that significant main effects of a defendant's race on release on one's own recognizance (ROR), bond amounts, and prison sentences were rendered nonsignificant when controlling for legal factors, such as offense severity. Analyses of interaction effects, on the other hand, revealed that African American males age 18-29 experienced lower odds of ROR, higher bond amounts, and higher odds of incarceration in prison relative to other demographic subgroups, even with the inclusion of rigorous controls for legally relevant criteria. The relevance of these findings for understanding disparate treatment at different stages of case processing is discussed.
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Cumulative Prevalence of Arrest From Ages 8 to 23 in a National Sample
Robert Brame et al.
Pediatrics, January 2012, Pages 21-27
Objective: To estimate the cumulative proportion of youth who self-report having been arrested or taken into custody for illegal or delinquent offenses (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from ages 8 to 23 years.
Methods: Self-reported arrest history data (excluding arrests for minor traffic violations) from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 (N = 7335) were examined from 1997 to 2008.
Results: By age 18, the in-sample cumulative arrest prevalence rate lies between 15.9% and 26.8%; at age 23, it lies between 25.3% and 41.4%. These bounds make no assumptions at all about missing cases. If we assume that the missing cases are at least as likely to have been arrested as the observed cases, the in-sample age-23 prevalence rate must lie between 30.2% and 41.4%. The greatest growth in the cumulative prevalence of arrest occurs during late adolescence and the period of early or emerging adulthood.
Conclusions: Since the last nationally defensible estimate based on data from 1965, the cumulative prevalence of arrest for American youth (particularly in the period of late adolescence and early adulthood) has increased substantially. At a minimum, being arrested for criminal activity signifies increased risk of unhealthy lifestyle, violence involvement, and violent victimization. Incorporating this insight into regular clinical assessment could yield significant benefits for patients and the larger community.
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Michael Roettger & Raymond Swisher
Criminology, November 2011, Pages 1109-1147
Abstract:
Nearly 13 percent of young adult men report that their biological father has served time in jail or prison; yet surprisingly little research has examined how a father's incarceration is associated with delinquency and arrest in the contemporary United States. Using a national panel of Black, White, and Hispanic males, this study examines whether experiencing paternal incarceration is associated with increased delinquency in adolescence and young adulthood. We find a positive association with paternal incarceration that is robust to controls for several structural, familial, and adolescent characteristics. Relative to males not experiencing a father's incarceration, our results show that those experiencing a father's incarceration have an increased propensity for delinquency that persists into young adulthood. Using a national probability sample, we also find that a father's incarceration is highly and significantly associated with an increased risk of incurring an adult arrest before 25 years of age. These observed associations are similar across groups of Black, White, and Hispanic males. Taken as a whole, our findings suggest benefits from public policies that focus on male youth "at risk" as a result of having an incarcerated father.
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The Efficacy of the Trafficking in Persons Report: A Review of the Evidence
Alese Wooditch
Criminal Justice Policy Review, December 2011, Pages 471-493
Abstract:
Anti-trafficking efforts have been adopted globally to curb human trafficking, yet many nations have failed to put initiatives into practice. As a consequence, the U.S. Department of State implemented the Trafficking in Persons (TIP) Report to monitor and increase efforts worldwide and serve as a guide to funding anti-trafficking programs aboard. This exploratory study investigates the efficacy of this policy initiative by means of a longitudinal assessment of the TIP Report's tier classifications, a system that grades countries based on anti-trafficking initiatives, and determines if U.S. funded anti-trafficking initiatives internationally target those countries in need. The findings suggest that tier ranking has not improved over time, and the United States has failed to systematically allocate funds based on the recommendations of the tier classification system. Policy recommendations and implications for future research are discussed.
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Inequality and Crime across England: A Multilevel Modelling Approach
Adam Whitworth
Social Policy and Society, January 2012, Pages 27-40
Abstract:
The link between inequality and negative social outcomes has been the subject of much debate recently, brought into focus by the publication of The Spirit Level. This article uses multilevel modelling to explore the relationship between inequality and five crime types at sub-national level across England. Controlling for other factors, inequality is positively associated with higher levels of all five crime types and findings are robust to alternative inequality specifications. Findings support the sociological - but not economic - theories and highlight the importance of policies to tackle broader social and economic inequalities.
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Matthew Snodgrass et al.
Criminology, November 2011, Pages 1149-1194
Abstract:
This work uses a sample of Dutch offenders, serving an average of 6.7 months of confinement, to examine the relationship between time served in prison and future criminality. To overcome the selection issues inherent in this examination, this article introduces a new method to the criminological literature that relies on a generalization of the propensity score to control for observed differences in offenders sentenced to different periods of confinement. On the whole, very little evidence of a relationship between time served and future offending was found. In particular, 3-year reconviction rate and the proportion of offenders reconvicted in the next 3 years do not seem to depend on incarceration length. Although a relationship between time served and future sentence length was found, the evidence is modest.
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Laurie Gould & Matthew Pate
International Criminal Justice Review, December 2011, Pages 443-461
Abstract:
Worldwide, the punishment of law violators takes many forms, with some countries relying heavily on incarceration and others favoring a mix of punishments including incarceration, corporal punishment, and the death penalty. Determining why a nation chooses to implement one sanction over another requires an examination of political factors. While some notable research has examined the correlations between incarceration rates, death penalty retention, and various measures of political power and repression, the influence of political factors on punishment needs a fuller explication. Specifically, the use of corporal punishment as a criminal sanction has not been fully examined within the political repression and punishment literature. To address this gap, authors employ a cross-national comparative approach to examine how repressive governments and failing regimes influence the use of corporal punishment by the formal justice system. Findings reveal that more repressive and failing regimes are more likely to use corporal punishment, compared to freer and more sustainable nations.
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A Difference-in-Differences Analysis of Health, Safety, and Greening Vacant Urban Space
Charles Branas et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, 1 December 2011, Pages 1296-1306
Abstract:
Greening of vacant urban land may affect health and safety. The authors conducted a decade-long difference-in-differences analysis of the impact of a vacant lot greening program in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on health and safety outcomes. "Before" and "after" outcome differences among treated vacant lots were compared with matched groups of control vacant lots that were eligible but did not receive treatment. Control lots from 2 eligibility pools were randomly selected and matched to treated lots at a 3:1 ratio by city section. Random-effects regression models were fitted, along with alternative models and robustness checks. Across 4 sections of Philadelphia, 4,436 vacant lots totaling over 7.8 million square feet (about 725,000 m2) were greened from 1999 to 2008. Regression-adjusted estimates showed that vacant lot greening was associated with consistent reductions in gun assaults across all 4 sections of the city (P < 0.001) and consistent reductions in vandalism in 1 section of the city (P < 0.001). Regression-adjusted estimates also showed that vacant lot greening was associated with residents' reporting less stress and more exercise in select sections of the city (P < 0.01). Once greened, vacant lots may reduce certain crimes and promote some aspects of health. Limitations of the current study are discussed. Community-based trials are warranted to further test these findings.
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"Deviants" and Democracy: Punitive Policy Designs and the Social Rights of Felons as Citizens
Michael Leo Owens & Adrienne Smith
American Politics Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Punitive policy designs diminish felons as citizens. Scholars know much about the designs' influence on felons' political and civil rights. They know little of how policy influences felons' social rights. Examining the discretion of states to retain or reform federal bans on drug felons receiving cash and food assistance between 1997 and 2004, we explain the choices states make about extending social rights to "deviants." We draw from theories of neoinstitutional organization, group threat, and political incorporation. Multivariate analysis suggest that the severity of states' penal regimes and the degree to which felons and poor people threaten social order have the greatest influence on states' responses to the federal sanctions on drug felons. Our study informs understandings of why some states take a "punitive turn" while other states may counter convention, exercising discretion to reduce rather than increase their punitiveness toward felons specifically and lawbreaking generally.
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Public opinion on crime causation: An exploratory study of Philadelphia area residents
Shaun Gabbidon & Danielle Boisvert
Journal of Criminal Justice, January-February 2012, Pages 50-59
Purpose: This study examined the views on crime causation from a sample of randomly selected Philadelphia area residents.
Methods: Through the use of a phone survey, residents (N = 359) were asked thirty seven questions related to their level of support for several criminological theories, including classical theory, biological theory, psychological theory, social disorganization theory, strain/general strain theory, subcultural theory, social learning theory, social control/general theory, labeling theory, critical theory, and environmental criminology theory. The analyses assessed whether the views of respondents differed by race, gender, and political ideology. Both across-race and within-race analyses were also conducted to determine the nuances of the support for specific criminological perspectives.
Results: The results pointed to numerous significant gender differences and across-race differences in public opinion on crime causation but few within-race differences. The results also confirmed previous research that supported the notion that one's political ideology is tied to the level of support for certain criminological theories.
Conclusion: Overall, the results point to the merits of including the views of lay persons when there are discussions pertaining to crime causation.
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Rosie Travers et al.
Legal and Criminological Psychology, forthcoming
Purpose: Enhanced Thinking Skills (ETS) has been the most widely delivered cognitive skills programme in the prisons of England and Wales. Four quasi-experimental outcome studies have produced mixed results, a qualitative survey of offenders' and facilitators' experience on the programme proved useful in programme refinement, and a study using random allocation provided evidence that ETS impacts significantly and positively on short-term attitudinal change. This study aims to make a further contribution, using another methodology, to the accumulation of evidence.
Methods: This was a real-world evaluation, comparing the reconviction outcomes of the population of 17,047 ETS participants in custody from 2000 to 2005 with a national cohort of 19,792 prisoners released over the same period.
Results: Overall, prisoners who had attended ETS were found to reoffend at a rate 6.4 percentage points less than the cohort (rising to 7.5 percentage points for programme completers) and 9.5 percentage points less than the predicted rate. In all but the very highest risk group and in every sentence length band, the reoffending outcomes for ETS participants were significantly better than for prisoners in the cohort.
Conclusions: It is argued that this non-experimental methodology makes a contribution to the ‘What Works' evidence.
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Ling Ren, Jihong Zhao & Nicholas Lovrich
Criminal Justice Policy Review, December 2011, Pages 448-470
Abstract:
To date, few criminological studies have explored the patterned ways in which local political structures might affect crime. The purpose of this study is to assess the impact of local political structures on variations in violent crime rates in U.S. cities. A longitudinal data set collected from the same 280 cities in 1993, 1996, 2000, and 2003 is used to look into this question. Results from negative binomial fixed-effects panel analyses indicate that local government structures make only a limited contribution to variation in violent crime and that impact on violent crime is a conditioned effect in association with a relative deprivation index. Socioeconomic variables associated with relative deprivation consistently predict violent crime levels across U.S. cities, largely irrespective of the character of their local political structures.
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Christina Mancini, Amy Reckdenwald & Eric Beauregard
Journal of Criminal Justice, January 2012, Pages 21-30
Purpose: Extant scholarship has examined pornography's putative link to the commission of sex crime. Yet, virtually no research speaks to whether an offender's exposure to pornography during many different stages of life elevates the violence of a sex offense. The current study addresses this gap.
Methods: Using retrospective longitudinal data, we systematically investigate the effect of offender pornography exposure during adolescence, adulthood, and immediately prior to the offense on the level of physical injury as well as the extent of humiliation experienced by sex crime victims.
Results: Findings indicate that adolescent exposure was a significant predictor of the elevation of violence - it increased the extent of victim humiliation. Results also suggest a tempering, or cathartic effect of pornography - using pornography just prior to the offense was correlated with reduced victim physical injury. No effects, however, were observed for adult pornography exposure.
Conclusion: Pornography use may differentially influence offenders' propensity to harm or degrade victims over the life course.