Criminal minds
Carl Kitchens
Economic Inquiry, forthcoming
Abstract:
Between the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 seasons, the National Football League (NFL) repositioned one of its officials in order to prevent injuries among officials. This creates a quasi-experiment for studying how a change in the extent of policing affects detection of offenses. Using play-by-play data from the 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 NFL season, I estimate how the detection of offensive holding changes when the positioning of an official changes. I find that there is approximately a 20 increase in the number of offensive holding penalties called after the NFL repositioned the official. Penalties called on defensive linemen fell as a result of the repositioning. Overall, there was no change in the total number of penalties called. Using the estimated change in the probability of a penalty, I estimate the probability of an official calling a penalty. I infer that NFL officials detect approximately 60% of crimes committed on the field.
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Kendall Weir
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We observe all 1,273 players drafted into the National Football League between 2005 and 2009 to determine the effects of character concerns on draft status and performance in the National Football League. Prospects that have a history of formal criminal charges or are suspended for team or university violations fall between 16 and 22 spots in the draft. The impacts of character concerns on performance depend on the nature of the issue. Players who have a history of suspension (noncriminal related) perform worse than other players but having an encounter with law enforcement does not negatively predict performance.
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In School and Out of Trouble? The Minimum Dropout Age and Juvenile Crime
Mark Anderson
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper examines the relationship between the minimum high school dropout age and juvenile arrest rates by exploiting state-level variation in dropout age laws. Using county-level arrest data for the period 1980-2008, a difference-in-difference-in-difference-type empirical strategy compares the arrest behavior over time of various age groups within counties that differ by their state's minimum dropout age. The evidence suggests that minimum dropout age requirements have a significant and negative effect on property and violent crime arrest rates for individuals aged 16 to 18 years-old. The results are consistent with an incapacitation effect; school attendance decreases the time available for crime.
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The minimum dropout age and student victimization
Mark Anderson, Benjamin Hansen & Mary Beth Walker
Economics of Education Review, August 2013, Pages 66-74
Abstract:
Over the years, the minimum dropout age has been raised to 18 in 21 states. Although these policy changes are promoted for their educational benefits, they have been shown to reduce crimes committed by youths in the affected age groups. However, an unintended consequence of increasing the minimum dropout age could be the displacement of crime from the streets to schools. We use data from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveys to estimate the relationship between minimum dropout age laws and student victimization. Our results suggest that higher minimum dropout ages increase the likelihood that females and younger students report missing school for fear of their safety and younger students are more likely to report being threatened or injured with a weapon on school property. Our results also yield some evidence that students are more likely to report being victims of in-school theft when the minimum dropout age is higher.
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Preventing Youth Violence and Dropout: A Randomized Field Experiment
Sara Heller et al.
NBER Working Paper, May 2013
Abstract:
Improving the long-term life outcomes of disadvantaged youth remains a top policy priority in the United States, although identifying successful interventions for adolescents - particularly males - has proven challenging. This paper reports results from a large randomized controlled trial of an intervention for disadvantaged male youth grades 7-10 from high-crime Chicago neighborhoods. The intervention was delivered by two local non-profits and included regular interactions with a pro-social adult, after-school programming, and - perhaps the most novel ingredient - in-school programming designed to reduce common judgment and decision-making problems related to automatic behavior and biased beliefs, or what psychologists call cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). We randomly assigned 2,740 youth to programming or to a control group; about half those offered programming participated, with the average participant attending 13 sessions. Program participation reduced violent-crime arrests during the program year by 8.1 per 100 youth (a 44 percent reduction). It also generated sustained gains in schooling outcomes equal to 0.14 standard deviations during the program year and 0.19 standard deviations during the follow-up year, which we estimate could lead to higher graduation rates of 3-10 percentage points (7-22 percent). Depending on how one monetizes the social costs of crime, the benefit-cost ratio may be as high as 30:1 from reductions in criminal activity alone.
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Guns, germs, and stealing: Exploring the link between infectious disease and crime
Ilan Shrira, Arnaud Wisman & Gregory Webster
Evolutionary Psychology, March 2013, Pages 270-287
Abstract:
Can variation in crime rates be traced to the threat of infectious disease? Pathogens pose an ongoing challenge to survival, leading humans to adapt defenses to manage this threat. In addition to the biological immune system, humans have psychological and behavioral responses designed to protect against disease. Under persistent disease threat, xenophobia increases and people constrict social interactions to known in-group members. Though these responses reduce disease transmission, they can generate favorable crime conditions in two ways. First, xenophobia reduces inhibitions against harming and exploiting out-group members. Second, segregation into in-group factions erodes people's concern for the welfare of their community and weakens the collective ability to prevent crime. The present study examined the effects of infection incidence on crime rates across the United States. Infection rates predicted violent and property crime more strongly than other crime covariates. Infections also predicted homicides against strangers but not family or acquaintances, supporting the hypothesis that in-group-out-group discrimination was responsible for the infections-crime link. Overall, the results add to evidence that disease threat shapes interpersonal behavior and structural characteristics of groups.
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The Transformation of America's Penal Order: A Historicized Political Sociology of Punishment
Michael Campbell & Heather Schoenfeld
American Journal of Sociology, March 2013, Pages 1375-1423
Abstract:
Comparative historical methods are used to explain the transformation of the U.S. penal order in the second half of the 20th century. The analysis of multiple state-level case studies and national-level narratives suggests that this transformation has three distinct, but interconnected, historical periods and reveals that the complex interaction between national and state-level politics and policy helps explain the growth in imprisonment between 1970 and 2001. Specifically, over time, national political competition, federal crime control policy, and federal court decisions helped create new state-level political innovation and special interest groups that compelled lawmakers to increasingly define the crime problem as a lack of punishment and to respond by putting more people in prison for longer periods of time. In turn, state-level developments facilitated increasingly radical crime control politics and policies at the national level that reflected historical traditions found in Sun Belt states.
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Criminal Recidivism after Prison and Electronic Monitoring
Rafael Di Tella & Ernesto Schargrodsky
Journal of Political Economy, February 2013, Pages 28-73
Abstract:
We study criminal recidivism in Argentina by focusing on the rearrest rates of two groups: individuals released from prison and individuals released from electronic monitoring. Detainees are randomly assigned to judges, and ideological differences across judges translate into large differences in the allocation of electronic monitoring to an otherwise similar population. Using these peculiarities of the Argentine setting, we argue that there is a large, negative causal effect on criminal recidivism of treating individuals with electronic monitoring relative to prison.
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A Tip of the Iceberg? The Probability of Catching Cartels
Peter Ormosi
Journal of Applied Econometrics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Reliable estimates of crime detection probabilities could help in designing better sanctions and improve our understanding of the efficiency of law enforcement. For cartels, we only have limited knowledge on the rate at which these illegal practices are discovered. In comparison to previous works, this paper offers a more parsimonious and simple-to-use method to estimate time-dependent cartel discovery rates, while allowing for heterogeneity across firms. It draws on capture-recapture methods that are frequently used in ecology to make inferences on various wildlife population characteristics. An application of this method provides evidence that less than a fifth of cartelising firms are discovered.
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Ryang Hui Kim & David Clark
Journal of Criminal Justice, May-June 2013, Pages 196-204
Purpose: Most prior research reports that prison-based college education reduces recidivism, but fails to address the potential problem of self-selection bias. The primary purpose of this study is to examine the true treatment effect of prison-based college education on recidivism.
Methods: Using data acquired from New York State, we use the Propensity Score Matching (PSM) method to control for self-selection bias. The recidivism rate is compared between the treatment and matched comparison group. Also, fixed-effects logistic regression and Cox regression models are utilized to measure the effect of prison-based college programs on recidivism.
Results: We find that the recidivism rates within three years after release for college program completers and a PSM derived comparison group were 9.4% and 17.1% respectively. However, the recidivism rate for a comparison group not derived by the PSM method was more than double the rate of the PSM derived comparison group. Fixed-effects logistic regression and Cox regression models also confirm that prison-based college programs have a positive effect on reducing recidivism.
Conclusions: The results of this study suggest that inflated estimates of the treatment effect may result when research does not take self-selection bias into account and apply appropriate methods to compensate for that bias.
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Blessed Be the Social Tie That Binds: The Effects of Prison Visitation on Offender Recidivism
Grant Duwe & Valerie Clark
Criminal Justice Policy Review, May 2013, Pages 271-296
Abstract:
Following recent studies in Florida and Canada, we examine the effects of prison visitation on recidivism among 16,420 offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2003 and 2007. Using multiple measures of visitation (any visit, total number of visits, visits per month, timing of visits, and number of individual visitors) and recidivism (new offense conviction and technical violation revocation), we found that visitation significantly decreased the risk of recidivism, a result that was robust across all of the Cox regression models that were estimated. The results also showed that visits from siblings, in-laws, fathers, and clergy were the most beneficial in reducing the risk of recidivism, whereas visits from ex-spouses significantly increased the risk. The findings suggest that revising prison visitation policies to make them more "visitor friendly" could yield public safety benefits by helping offenders establish a continuum of social support from prison to the community. We anticipate, however, that revising existing policies would not likely increase visitation to a significant extent among unvisited inmates, who comprised 39% of our sample. Accordingly, we suggest that correctional systems consider allocating greater resources to increase visitation among inmates with little or no social support.
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Jonathan Rolison, Yaniv Hanoch & Michaela Gummerum
Risk Analysis, forthcoming
Abstract:
Risk-taking tendencies and environmental opportunities to commit crime are two key features in understanding criminal behavior. Upon release from prison, ex-prisoners have a much greater opportunity to engage in risky activity and to commit criminal acts. We hypothesized that ex-prisoners would exhibit greater risk-taking tendencies compared to prisoners who have fewer opportunities to engage in risky activity and who are monitored constantly by prison authorities. Using cumulative prospect theory to compare the risky choices of prisoners and ex-prisoners our study revealed that ex-prisoners who were within 16 weeks of their prison release made riskier choices than prisoners. Our data indicate that previous studies comparing prisoners behind bars with nonoffenders may have underestimated the risk-taking tendencies of offenders. The present findings emphasize the central role played by risk-taking attitudes in criminal offending and highlight a need to examine offenders after release from prison.
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Gordon Crews, Angela Crews & Catherine Burton
American Journal of Criminal Justice, June 2013, Pages 183-199
Abstract:
With the recent tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, CT, the public and the government are looking for solutions to school violence. The National Rifle Association (NRA), a Second Amendment, pro-gun advocacy group, has proposed an "education and training emergency response program" called The National School Shield, which advocates the placement of armed security in schools. Although the program sounds provocative, serious questions complicate its plausibility, necessity, motive, and effectiveness. Furthermore, the potential policy and practical ramifications of encouraging armed security forces in U.S. schools are complex. The authors examined the proposal's key elements from a public policy perspective and determined that the NRA program would be expensive in terms of both implementation and civil and/or criminal liability, would increase juvenile contact with the criminal justice system, would increase the potential for injuries and deaths from firearms, and would potentially only serve to increase profits for those invested in security industries. More potentially effective and safe policy alternatives are offered.
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What's Yours Is Now Mine: Deviant Consumption Through Acquisitive Crime
Kelly Martin, John Cullen & Michael Martin
Journal of Public Policy & Marketing, May 2013, Pages 140-157
Abstract:
Deviant consumption in the form of acquisitive crime, or the theft of material possessions by one person from another person or household, is prevalent in countries across the globe. Anomie theory provides a multilevel framework for understanding this prevalent and damaging form of consumer misbehavior, highlighting the societal factors propagating it. The authors conduct a multilevel study that analyzes reports from more than 58,000 households in 26 countries worldwide. Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling, they contrast household-level crime reports with country data on inequality and cultural values. The findings reveal that wealth inequality, achievement orientation, individualism, future orientation, and uncertainty - both individually and in combination - influence acquisitive crime prevalence. In particular, greater societal wealth inequality increases the positive effects of achievement orientation and uncertainty to promote acquisitive crime. The negative effects of a low future orientation in promoting acquisitive crime are also enhanced under greater inequality. The findings suggest public policy implications at both societal and individual household levels of analysis. Specifically, policies directed at underground markets coupled with consumption adequacy efforts may prove effective in curbing acquisitive crime.
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Mass Incarceration, Macrosociology, and the Poor
Bruce Western & Christopher Muller
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 2013, Pages 166-189
Abstract:
The U.S. prison and jail population has grown fivefold in the 40 years since the early 1970s. The aggregate consequences of the growth in the penal system are widely claimed but have not been closely studied. We survey evidence for the aggregate relationship among the incarceration rate, employment rates, single-parenthood, public opinion, and crime. Employment among very low-skilled men has declined with rising incarceration. Punitive sentiment in public opinion has also softened as imprisonment increased. Single-parenthood and crime rates, however, are not systematically related to incarceration. We conclude with a discussion of the conceptual and empirical challenges that come with assessing the aggregate effects of mass incarceration on American poverty.
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Martin Hällsten, Ryszard Szulkin & Jerzy Sarnecki
British Journal of Criminology, May 2013, Pages 456-481
Abstract:
We examine the gap in registered crime between the children of immigrants and the children of native Swedes. We follow all individuals who completed compulsory schooling during the period 1990-93 in the Stockholm Metropolitan area (N = 63,462) up to their thirties and analyse how family of origin and neighbourhood segregation during adolescence, subsequent to arriving in Sweden, influence the gap in recorded crimes. For males, we are able to explain between half and three-quarters of the gap in crime by reference to parental socio-economic resources and neighbourhood segregation. For females, we can explain even more, sometimes the entire gap. In addition, we tentatively examine the role of co-nationality or culture by comparing the crime rates of randomly chosen pairs of individuals originating from the same country. We find only a small correlation in the crime of individuals who share the same origin, indicating that culture is unlikely to be a strong cause of crime among immigrants.
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Institutional Isolation And Crime: The Mediating Effect Of Disengaged Youth On Levels Of Crime
Shaun Thomas & Edward Shihadeh
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We propose that structural resource deprivation and a weak civic participatory culture foster institutional isolation among youth, which, in turn, elevates rates of crime. Robust institutional attachments are essential to mainstream cultural learning, the internalization of mainstream values, the development of local network ties, and pro-social behavior. Communities that fail to embed residents, particularly youth, within a conventional institutional framework are ill-equipped for concerted action and unable to defend community interest and solve common problems, including crime. Using county-level census data we identify a group of youth who are simultaneously disengaged from a wide swath of mainstream social institutions, those we term "floaters." Analyses of aggregate levels of homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, and burglary around 2000 offer strong support for a mediation model indicating that structural deprivation and a weak civic participatory culture increase the presence of floaters which, in turn, raises levels of violent and property crime. We discuss the implications of our findings.
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Egohoods as Waves Washing across the City: A New Measure of "Neighborhoods"
John Hipp & Adam Boessen
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Defining "neighborhoods" is a bedeviling challenge faced by all studies of neighborhood effects and ecological models of social processes. Although scholars frequently lament the inadequacies of the various existing definitions of "neighborhood," we argue that previous strategies relying on nonoverlapping boundaries such as block groups and tracts are fundamentally flawed. The approach taken here instead builds on insights of the mental mapping literature, the social networks literature, the daily activities pattern literature, and the travel to crime literature to propose a new definition of neighborhoods: egohoods. These egohoods are conceptualized as waves washing across the surface of cities, as opposed to independent units with nonoverlapping boundaries. This approach is illustrated using crime data from nine cities: Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, St. Louis, and Tucson. The results show that measures aggregated to our egohoods explain more of the variation in crime across the social environment than do models with measures aggregated to block groups or tracts. The results also suggest that measuring inequality in egohoods provides dramatically stronger positive effects on crime rates than when using the nonoverlapping boundary approach, highlighting the important new insights that can be obtained by using our egohood approach.
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White supremacist groups and hate crime
Sean Mulholland
Public Choice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Hate group activity may incite criminal behavior or serve as protection from bias-based violence. I find that the presence of one or more active white supremacist chapters is associated with higher hate crime rates. I reject the hypothesis that chapter presence and hate crimes are symptomatic of the overall level of bias-based violence. Moreover, I reject the hypothesis that white supremacist groups form in response to an increase in antiwhite hate crimes, particularly those perpetrated by nonwhites.
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Infanticide/Neonaticide: The Outlier Situation in the United States
Carl Malmquist
Aggression and Violent Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
Comparing the contemporary situation of neonaticides and infanticides in the United States with other countries reveals two salient factors: (1) The punishment and disposition exacted on women in the United States is often extreme, and (2) The unpredictability of the legal disposition in such cases is pervasive, varying from a homicide conviction to probation. This is partly due, at least initially, to cases being classified under some degreee of homicide. Although the focus in this article is on neonaticides, none of the 50 states have any special infanticide or neonaticide stautes in contrast to the majority of other countries. Statutes of 50 other countries are provided in an Appendix. A review of earlier historical and cultural approaches is given preliminary to discussion of the outlier situation presently existing in the United States.
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Genital Abnormalities in Early Childhood in Sexual Homicide Perpetrators
Martin Rettenberger et al.
Journal of Sexual Medicine, April 2013, Pages 972-980
Introduction: The present study investigates the relevance of genital abnormalities (GA) like cryptorchidism, hypospadias, and phimosis usually diagnosed in early childhood for the development of psychosexual problems and deficits in a sample of N = 163 convicted sexual homicide perpetrators.
Aims: The first aim was to investigate the prevalence of early childhood GA in a sample of sexual homicide perpetrators. The second was to explore differences in the psychosexual development of participants with GA in early childhood compared with those without GA. It was expected that offenders with GA show specific problems in their psychosexual development compared with offenders without GA.
Methods: The data for the present study were obtained by reanalyzing an existing database derived from a large-scale research project about sexual homicide. Using a predominantly exploratory design we, therefore, divided the total sample into two subgroups (with vs. without indicators of GA).
Main Outcome Measures: Main outcome measures were the number of sexual homicide perpetrators showing GA in early childhood and the differences of subjects with and without GA with regard to their psychosexual development (i.e., according to sexual deviant interests or sexual dysfunctions).
Results: The prevalence of GA is substantially higher in this sample than epidemiological studies indicated in the normal population. This result provided first support for the importance of GA in the population of sexual homicide perpetrators. Further analyses indicate significant differences between both subgroups: Offenders with GA in early childhood showed indicators for more sexual dysfunctions (e.g., erectile dysfunction) in adulthood and a distinct tendency of more masochistic sexual interests.
Conclusion: Even if the exploratory design of the present investigation allows no causal conclusions between GA and sexual homicide offenses, the result provided support for the relevance of early childhood sexual diseases in the assessment (and treatment) of offenders who have committed severe sexual violence.
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Official Bias in Intergenerational Transmission of Criminal Behaviour
Sytske Besemer, David Farrington & Catrien Bijleveld
British Journal of Criminology, May 2013, Pages 438-455
Abstract:
We investigated to what extent children of convicted parents might have a higher risk of a conviction themselves because criminal justice systems, such as the police and courts, focus more attention towards certain criminal families - a concept called official bias. Bias was measured using several variables: a convicted parent, low family income, low family socio-economic status, poor housing and a father's poor job record. A convicted parent as well as poorer social circumstances such as a father's poor job record, low family income and poor housing predicted an increased conviction risk while controlling for self-reported offending. The results support the official bias mechanism, but also suggest that other mechanisms are needed to explain intergenerational transmission of criminal convictions.
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Can student-perpetrated college crime be predicted based on precollege misconduct?
Carol Runyan et al.
Injury Prevention, forthcoming
Objectives: Many colleges assess criminal histories during the admissions process, in part, to address violence on campus. This study sought to examine the utility of screening as a means of reducing violence.
Methods: Using cohort and case-control analyses, we identified college misconduct through college records and self-reports on a confidential survey of graduating seniors, and examined precollege behaviour as indicated on admissions records, a survey and criminal background checks.
Results: One hundred and twenty students met our case definition of college misconduct, with an estimated OR of 5.28 (95% CI 1.92 to 14.48) associated with precollege misconduct revealed on the college application. However, only 3.3% (95% CI 1.0% to 8.0%) of college seniors engaging in college misconduct had reported precollege criminal behaviours on their applications and 8.5% (95% CI 2.4% to 20.4%) of applicants with a criminal history engaged in misconduct during college.
Discussion: Though precollege behaviour is a risk factor for college misconduct, screening questions on the application are not adequate to detect which students will engage in college misconduct. This pilot work would benefit from replication to determine the utility of criminal background investigations as part of admissions.