Correction
Does Crime Cause Punitiveness?
Gary Kleck & Dylan Baker Jackson
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Why are Americans so punitive toward criminals? Some theories of punitiveness suggest that exposure to crime makes people more supportive of punitive policies toward criminals. We analyzed national survey data and found that neither support for longer prison sentences for four different crimes nor support for the death penalty had a significant positive association with crime rates, prior victimization, vicarious victimization, higher perceived risk of victimization, or fear of crime. Instead, punitiveness was related to how often people watched local TV news, the percent Republican of the person’s county, and race. Support for harsh treatment of criminals therefore appears to be more a product of race, ideology, and news media presentations of crime than of the reality of crime.
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Is Downsizing Prisons Dangerous? The Effect of California's Realignment Act on Public Safety
Jody Sundt, Emily Salisbury & Mark Harmon
Criminology & Public Policy, forthcoming
Abstract:
Recent declines in imprisonment raise a critical question: Can prison populations be reduced without endangering the public? This question is examined by testing the effect of California's dramatic efforts to comply with court-mandated targets to reduce prison overcrowding using a pretest-posttest design. The results showed that California's Realignment Act had no effect on violent or property crime rates in 2012, 2013, or 2014. When crime types were disaggregated, a moderately large, statistically significant association between Realignment and auto theft rates was observed in 2012. By 2014, however, this effect had decayed and auto theft rates returned to pre-Realignment levels.
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A test of life history strategy theory as a predictor of criminal violence across 51 nations
Michael Minkov & Kevin Beaver
Personality and Individual Differences, July 2016, Pages 186–192
Abstract:
Proponents of life history strategy (LHS) theory propose that it is an explanation of intra-societal non-political violence, such as homicide and assault. Criminologists usually prefer a different explanation: variation in national violent crime rates is a function of differences in social–structural characteristics, such as absolute or relative poverty (socioeconomic inequality). We found that national homicide rates and prevalence of muggings and attacks on people define a strong single criminal violence factor at the national level. We tested the predictive properties of various plausible predictors of this factor and, separately, of national murder rates. Only the two LHS variables (paternal absenteeism and adolescent fertility) predict the complex factor independently, whereas socioeconomic inequality (Gini), IQ, GDP, infant mortality, and pathogen prevalence do not. National murder rates are predicted by the two LHS variables and inequality but not by any other variables. This supports LHS theory as an explanation of national differences in criminal violence.
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Michael Sierra-Arevalo, Yanick Charette & Andrew Papachristos
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Beginning in November 2012, New Haven, Connecticut, served as the pilot site for Project Longevity, a statewide focused deterrence gun violence reduction strategy. The intervention brings law enforcement, social services, and community members together to meet with members of violent street groups at program call-ins. Using autoregressive integrated moving average models and controlling for the possibility of a non-New Haven–specific decline in gun violence, a decrease in group offending patterns, and the limitations of police-defined group member involved (GMI) categorization of shootings and homicides, the results of our analysis show that Longevity is associated with a reduction of almost five GMI incidents per month. These findings bolster research confirming the efficacy of focused deterrence approaches to reducing gun violence.
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Externalities of Public Housing: The Effect of Public Housing Demolitions on Local Crime
Danielle Sandler
U.S. Census Bureau Working Paper, March 2016
Abstract:
This paper evaluates the potential for negative externalities from public housing by examining crime rates before and after demolition of public housing projects in Chicago between 1995 and 2010. Using data on block-level crimes by type of crime merged to detailed geographic data on individual public housing demolitions, I find evidence that Chicago's public housing imposed significant externalities on the surrounding neighborhood. Using a difference in difference approach comparing neighborhoods around public housing projects to nearby neighborhoods I find that crime decreases by 8.8% after a demolition. This decrease is concentrated in violent crime. I use an event study to show that the decrease occurs at the approximate date of the eviction of the residents and persists for at least 5 years after the demolition. Neighborhoods with large demolitions and demolitions of public housing that had been poorly maintained display the largest crime decreases.
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Michael Light & Jeffery Ulmer
American Sociological Review, April 2016, Pages 290-315
Abstract:
While group differences in violence have long been a key focus of sociological inquiry, we know comparatively little about the trends in criminal violence for whites, blacks, and Hispanics in recent decades. Combining geocoded death records with multiple data sources to capture the socioeconomic, demographic, and legal context of 131 of the largest metropolitan areas in the United States, this article examines the trends in racial/ethnic inequality in homicide rates since 1990. In addition to exploring long-established explanations (e.g., disadvantage), we also investigate how three of the most significant societal changes over the past 20 years, namely, rapid immigration, mass incarceration, and rising wealth inequality affect racial/ethnic homicide gaps. Across all three comparisons — white-black, white-Hispanic, and black-Hispanic — we find considerable convergence in homicide rates over the past two decades. Consistent with expectations, structural disadvantage is one of the strongest predictors of levels and changes in racial/ethnic violence disparities. In contrast to predictions based on strain theory, racial/ethnic wealth inequality has not increased disparities in homicide. Immigration, on the other hand, appears to be associated with declining white-black homicide differences. Consistent with an incapacitation/deterrence perspective, greater racial/ethnic incarceration disparities are associated with smaller racial/ethnic gaps in homicide.
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To Serve and Collect: The Fiscal and Racial Determinants of Law Enforcement
Michael Makowsky, Thomas Stratmann & Alexander Tabarrok
George Mason University Working Paper, March 2016
Abstract:
We examine the fiscal determinants of arrest rates for violent and non-violent crimes across the United States between 2002 and 2012. We find that drug arrest rates for African-Americans increase with local government deficits where state tax and expenditure limitations (TELs) allow the retention of revenues generated by arrests. We find similar effects of fiscal distress on both black and white drug arrests, as well as an increase in black DUI arrests, in a separate analysis of Colorado where municipalities have the option to exempt themselves from the nation’s strictest TELs via general referendum. Our findings support a revenue-driven model of law enforcement.
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Race, Wealth and Incarceration: Results from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth
Khaing Zaw, Darrick Hamilton & William Darity
Race and Social Problems, March 2016, Pages 103-115
Abstract:
Using the 1979 cohort of the National Longitudinal Study of Youth to explore the interwoven links between race, wealth and incarceration, this study examines the data on race and wealth status before and after incarceration. Data indicate that although higher levels of wealth were associated with lower rates of incarceration, the likelihood of future incarceration still was higher for blacks at every level of wealth compared to the white likelihood, as well as the Hispanic likelihood, which fell below the white likelihood for some levels of wealth. Further, we find that racial wealth gaps existed among those who would be incarcerated in the future and also among the previously incarcerated.
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Altering the Life Course: Military Service and Contact with the Criminal Justice System
Jay Teachman & Lucky Tedrow
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Using data taken from the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we examine the relationship between military service and contact with the criminal justice system. Drawing on the life course concept of a turning point, we show that military service does little to affect the risk of being arrested or being convicted of crimes involving violence or destructive behavior, while at the same time significantly reducing the risk of being arrested or being convicted of non-violent crimes. We find no evidence that service in a combat zone alters these relationships. Our results demonstrate how participation in a large-scale institution can serve as a turning point, altering the life course trajectories of young persons.
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Camilo García-Jimeno
Econometrica, March 2016, Pages 511–570
Abstract:
The U.S. Prohibition experience shows a remarkable policy reversal. In only 14 years, a drastic shift in public opinion required two constitutional amendments. I develop and estimate a model of endogenous law enforcement, determined by beliefs about the Prohibition-crime nexus and alcohol-related moral views. In turn, the policy outcomes shape subsequent learning about Prohibition enforcement costs. I estimate the model through maximum likelihood on Prohibition Era city-level data on police enforcement, crime, and alcohol-related legislation. The model can account for the variation in public opinion changes, and the heterogeneous responses of law enforcement and violence across cities. Results show that a 15% increase in the homicide rate can be attributed to Prohibition enforcement. The subsequent learning-driven adjustment of local law enforcement allowed for the alcohol market to rebound to 60% of its pre-Prohibition size. I conclude with counterfactual exercises exploring the welfare implications of policy learning, prior beliefs, preference polarization, and alternative political environments. Results illustrate the importance of incorporating the endogenous nature of law enforcement into our understanding of policy failure and policy success.
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Intervention time series analysis of crime rates: The case of sentence reform in Virginia
Sunčica Vujić, Jacques Commandeur & Siem Jan Koopman
Economic Modelling, forthcoming
Abstract:
We review the basic concepts of intervention analysis in the context of structural time series models and we apply this methodology to investigate the possible reduction in monthly crime rates reported from January 1984 up to and including December 2010 after Virginia abolished parole and reformed sentencing in January 1995. We find that the change in legislation has significantly reduced the burglary rates and to a lesser extent the murder rates in Virginia. The robustness of our results is investigated with an automatic detection of breaks procedure as well as with analyses of quarterly rather than monthly data.
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Is human trafficking the dark side of economic freedom?
Lauren Heller et al.
Defence and Peace Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Economic freedom has increased living standards worldwide. Concurrent with such gains are rising concerns about potential human costs associated with free markets. This paper uses data on human trafficking and anti-trafficking policies, in conjunction with a measure of economic freedom, to examine whether free markets exacerbate or attenuate the incidence of human trafficking and policies designed to combat it. We do not find evidence suggesting that economic freedom is associated with human trafficking. In addition, our results suggest that economically free countries are more likely to enact and enforce policies to fight human trafficking.
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Procedural Injustice, Risky Lifestyles, and Violent Victimization
Scott Wolfe & Kyle McLean
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Participation in risky lifestyles is a well-established predictor of victimization. Several variables have been identified as key predictors of risky activities (e.g., low self-control) but there may be additional sources not considered in the literature to date. We argue that perceptions of procedural unfairness represent a break in social control, thereby opening the door for participation in risky lifestyles that are conducive to victimization. Using three waves of data from the Gang Resistance Education and Training (GREAT) program, we demonstrated that police procedural injustice was positively associated with risky lifestyles, which partially mediated the relationship between procedural injustice and violent victimization. This study advances the literature by demonstrating that our understanding of victimization is enhanced by including procedural injustice into its explanation.
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“I Would Be a Bulldog”: Tracing the Spillover of Carceral Identity
Patrick Lopez-Aguado
Social Problems, forthcoming
Abstract:
The socializing power of the prison is routinely discussed as a prisonization process in which inmates learn to conform to life in the correctional facility. However, the impact that identities socialized in the prison may have outside of the institution itself remains an under-researched aspect of mass incarceration’s collateral consequences. In this article, I use ethnographic data collected over 15 months in two juvenile justice facilities and interviews with 24 probation youth to examine how the identities socialized among Latino prison inmates spill over into high-incarceration Latina/o neighborhoods. Strict segregation practices in California’s prison system categorize and separate Latino inmates as coming from either Northern, Southern, or Central California, respectively institutionalizing Norteño, Sureño, and Bulldog collective identities in the process. I argue that these identities have come to frame how criminalized Latina/o youth understand the prison’s influence on their community. As youth enter the juvenile justice system, they encounter facilities that have appropriated the prison’s sorting practices by categorizing youth and policing the boundaries between them. Carceral group identities become instrumental in young people’s daily lives in this context, mirroring what they have heard from the experiences of incarcerated loved ones and confirming where they would fit in the prison’s social order. This process not only labels youth as gang members but instills in them identities and worldviews that rationalize their own incarceration, extending the prison’s ability to categorize people as carceral subjects far beyond the penitentiary gates.
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Criminals' Response to Changing Crime Lucre
George Shoukry
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
How do criminals respond to changes in the benefit from committing a successful crime? This question is relevant for understanding the effectiveness of crime-fighting policies that reduce demand for illegal goods, disrupt black markets, and otherwise eliminate cheaper avenues to illicit gain. However, the literature has not sufficiently addressed this question, partly because finding a reliable measure of crime lucre is difficult. Using proprietary data on cargo theft, I match historical prices of various goods with their thefts and estimate the price elasticity of theft to be 1.225 over a cumulative 7-month horizon.
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Voluntary Organizations and Neighborhood Crime: A Dynamic Perspective
James Wo, John Hipp & Adam Boessen
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although numerous theories suggest that voluntary organizations contribute to lower crime rates in neighborhoods, the evidence for this proposition is weak. Consequently, we propose a dynamic perspective for understanding the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime that involves longitudinal analyses and the measurement of the age of organizations. By using longitudinal data on a sample of census blocks (N= 87,641) located across 10 cities, we test the relationship between age-graded measures of different types of voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime rates. We use fixed-effects negative binomial regression models that focus on change within neighborhoods of the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime. Our results show that although each type of voluntary organization is found to exhibit crime-reducing behavior in neighborhoods, we find that many of them are consistent with what we refer to as the “delayed impact scenario” — there is a pronounced delay between the placement of a voluntary organization and a neighborhood subsequently experiencing a reduction in crime. With protective effects of organizations typically not demonstrated until several years after being in the neighborhood, these patterns suggest a need for long-term investment strategies when examining organizations.