From the Street
Neighborhood stressors and cardiovascular health: Crime and C-reactive protein in Dallas, USA
Christopher Browning, Kathleen Cagney & James Iveniuk
Social Science & Medicine, forthcoming
Abstract:
We apply neighborhood-based theories of social organization and environmental stress to examine variation in a key indicator of inflammation-related cardiovascular risk - C-reactive protein (CRP). Specifically, we emphasize the potentially health-compromising role of rapid increases in the crime rate or "crime spikes" (focusing on a particularly fear-inducing crime - burglary). We also consider the extent to which the magnitude and significance of the association between burglary rate change and inflammatory processes varies by gender. Data on CRP, neighborhood of residence, and individual level characteristics for adult women and men ages 30-65 are drawn from the 2000-2002 Dallas Heart Study. Results from a neighborhood fixed effects model using piecewise linear splines to estimate short-term burglary rate change offers support for the hypothesis that crime spikes are associated with CRP. Specifically, we find that short-term burglary rate change is independently associated with CRP for men. Short-term burglary rate change was not associated with CRP for women. These findings shed light on the contextual processes that influence cardiovascular health and point to the potentially important role of short-term changes in environmental stressors in shaping health outcomes.
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More inequality, more crime? A panel cointegration analysis for the United States
Pandej Chintrakarn & Dierk Herzer
Economics Letters, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study employs state-level panel data to examine the effect of income inequality on crime in the United States. Using panel cointegration techniques, we find a significant negative effect of inequality on crime.
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The Political Economy of Neighbourhood Homicide in Chicago: The Role of Bank Investment
María Vélez & Kelly Richardson
British Journal of Criminology, May 2012, Pages 490-513
Abstract:
The urban political-economy perspective contends that the actions of elites have made certain neighbourhoods susceptible to deleterious conditions. We draw on this logic to argue neighbourhoods that are winners of the political economy of place are rewarded with relatively higher levels of home mortgage lending and thus enjoy lower levels of homicide. Neighbourhoods that are the losers of the political economy receive relatively little bank lending and have relatively higher levels of homicide. We find that Chicago neighbourhoods during the mid-1990s experience lower homicide per capita rates if banks have awarded them relatively higher home mortgage loan dollars and they are surrounded by relatively higher infusions of home mortgage loan dollars. Results underscore the importance of economic elites in providing resources like home mortgage lending capital to neighbourhoods.
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Elisabeth Dettbarn
International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, May 2012, Pages 236-239
Abstract:
Several studies have been conducted on the effects of long-term imprisonment on mental health but only few with a longitudinal study design. Those with longitudinal design often have a very short observation period. In this study the data of 87 long-term prisoners have been compared over an average period of 14.6 years. A statistical comparison of two expert assessments of two experts at the beginning and the end of incarceration was made. Changes of mental disorders, of personality and intelligence tests and of physical diseases amongst others have been included in the analysis. The overall rate of psychological disorders decreased. Adjustment disorder had been initially identified in 25.2%. Personality test results described a stabilization of traits like depressive attitude, emotional instability and a decrease of hostility. Neither significant changes on the outcomes of the intelligence test nor significant changes of physical health were found. Though a decrease of psychological morbidity is described, the overall numbers of psychological disorders remain high compared to the non-incarcerated population. A damaging effect of long-term imprisonment could not be proven by this study.
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Differential Susceptibility? Immigrant Youth and Peer Influence
Stephanie Dipietro & Jean Marie Mcgloin
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is reason to suspect that lower levels of exposure to criminogenic peer-based risks help explain why immigrant youth are less involved in crime and violence. However, it also is possible that if and when they do encounter these risks, immigrant youth are more vulnerable to them than are native-born youth. Drawing from literature on the adaptation experiences of immigrant adolescents, we hypothesize that immigrant youth will be relatively more susceptible to the effects of both 1) exposure to deviant peers and 2) unstructured and unsupervised socializing with peers when compared with their nonimmigrant counterparts. Using a sample of approximately 1,800 adolescents from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) study, we find support for our first hypothesis but not the second. Specifically, in both cross-sectional and longitudinal models, we find that exposure to deviant peers has a greater impact on violence among immigrant youth than it does for native-born youth. Furthermore, this pattern of results is supported with supplemental, sensitivity analysis using the AddHealth data. In contrast, there are no statistically significant differences across immigrant generation status with regard to the effect of informal socializing with peers on violence.
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Can Wages Buy Honesty? The Relationship between Relative Wages and Employee Theft
Clara Xiaoling Chen & Tatiana Sandino
Journal of Accounting Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
In this study we examine whether, for a sample of retail chains, high levels of employee compensation can deter employee theft, an increasingly common type of fraudulent behavior. Specifically, we examine the extent to which relative wages (i.e., employee wages relative to the wages paid to comparable employees in competing stores) affect employee theft as measured by inventory shrinkage and cash shortage. Using two store-level datasets from the convenience store industry, we find that relative wages are negatively associated with employee theft after we control for each store's employee characteristics, monitoring environment, and socio-economic environment. Moreover, we find that relatively higher wages also promote social norms such that coworkers are less (more) likely to collude to steal inventory from their company when relative wages are higher (lower). Our research contributes to an emerging literature in management control that explores the effect of efficiency wages on employee behavior and social norms.
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Prosecution Associations in Industrial Revolution England: Private Providers of Public Goods?
Mark Koyama
Journal of Legal Studies, January 2012, Pages 95-130
Abstract:
In early nineteenth-century England, there was no professional police force and most prosecutions were private. This paper examines how associations for the prosecution of felons arose to internalize the positive externalities produced by private prosecutions. Drawing upon new historical evidence, it examines how the internal governance and incentive structures of prosecution associations enabled them to provide public goods. Consistent with the reasoning of Demsetz (1970), I find that prosecution associations were economic clubs that bundled the private good of insurance with the public good of deterrence. Associations used local newspapers to advertise rewards and attract new members. Price discrimination was employed in order to elicit contributions from individuals with different security demands. Selective incentives helped to overcome free-rider problems between members.
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Paul Knepper
Criminology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite increasing concern about the threat of global crime, it remains difficult to measure. During the 1920s and 1930s, the League of Nations conducted the first social-scientific study of global crime in two studies of the worldwide traffic in women. The first study included 112 cities and 28 countries; researchers carried out 6,500 interviews in 14 languages, including 5,000 with figures in the international underworld. By drawing on archival materials in Geneva and New York, this article examines the role of ethnography in developing a social-science measure of global crime threats. The discussion covers the Rockefeller grand jury and formation of the Bureau of Social Hygiene; the League's research in Europe, the Americas, and the Mediterranean; controversy concerning the use of undercover researchers; the League's research in Asia; and the end of the Bureau. The League's experience demonstrates the promise of multisite ethnography in research about global crime as well as the difficulty of mapping crime on a global scale.
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Murder in Black: A Media Distortion Analysis of Homicides in Baltimore in 2010
Jaclyn Schildkraut & Amy Donley
Homicide Studies, May 2012, Pages 175-196
Abstract:
Crime stories, particularly homicide, are extremely prevalent in the media. The current study builds on previous literature by examining a nearly homogenous victim population (N = 223) to identify salient predictors of newsworthiness, particularly celebrated coverage, using The Baltimore Sun, the city's largest newspaper. Contrary to prior research, in this analysis, neither race nor gender were found to be consistent significant factors in receiving media coverage. Various factors, including females, older victims, White victims, and homicides by stabbings, asphyxiation, or other circumstances, were found to be indicators of several types of celebrated coverage.
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Reducing Violence by Transforming Neighborhoods: A Natural Experiment in Medellín, Colombia
Magdalena Cerdá et al.
American Journal of Epidemiology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Neighborhood-level interventions provide an opportunity to better understand the impact that neighborhoods have on health. In 2004, municipal authorities in Medellín, Colombia, built a public transit system to connect isolated low-income neighborhoods to the city's urban center. Transit-oriented development was accompanied by municipal investment in neighborhood infrastructure. In this study, the authors examined the effects of this exogenous change in the built environment on violence. Neighborhood conditions and violence were assessed in intervention neighborhoods (n = 25) and comparable control neighborhoods (n = 23) before (2003) and after (2008) completion of the transit project, using a longitudinal sample of 466 residents and homicide records from the Office of the Public Prosecutor. Baseline differences between these groups were of the same magnitude as random assignment of neighborhoods would have generated, and differences that remained after propensity score matching closely resembled imbalances produced by paired randomization. Permutation tests were used to estimate differential change in the outcomes of interest in intervention neighborhoods versus control neighborhoods. The decline in the homicide rate was 66% greater in intervention neighborhoods than in control neighborhoods (rate ratio = 0.33, 95% confidence interval: 0.18, 0.61), and resident reports of violence decreased 75% more in intervention neighborhoods (odds ratio = 0.25, 95% confidence interval 0.11, 0.67). These results show that interventions in neighborhood physical infrastructure can reduce violence.
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A contemporary study of the decision to incarcerate white‐collar and street property offenders
Shanna Van Slyke & William Bales
Punishment & Society, April 2012, Pages 217-246
Abstract:
Conventional wisdom holds that white‐collar offenders operate with relative impunity because of widespread public and governmental apathy. The present study, however, examines whether public tolerance and governmental leniency toward white‐collar offenders have endured the series of national white‐collar crime scandals emerging in 2001-2002. This study analyzes sentencing guidelines data from Florida for the period 1994 to 2004, modeling legal and extra-legal factors related to the decision to incarcerate white‐collar and street property offenders. In/out incarceration sentences imposed upon white‐collar offenders are compared with those imposed upon burglars and thieves to determine whether 21st‐century white‐collar offenders are treated more leniently than street‐level property offenders. Additional analyses consider the roles of social status and of recent corporate scandals in influencing sentencing disparities. Findings indicate that, despite operating under sentencing guidelines designed to reduce disparities, white‐collar offenders are afforded greater leniency, though this relationship varies by the type of white‐collar crime considered, the offender's social status, and whether the sentencing occurred before or after the Enron scandal. Conclusions emphasize the salience of the definition of white‐collar crime when discussing punitiveness disparities and the relationship between white‐collar crime scandals and punishment.
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Travis Taniguchi & Christopher Salvatore
Security Journal, April 2012, Pages 95-115
Abstract:
Siting of drug and alcohol treatment facilities is often met with negative reactions because of the assumption that these facilities increase crime by attracting drug users (and possibly dealers) to an area. This assumption, however, rests on weak empirical footings that have not been subjected to strong empirical analyses. Using census block groups from Philadelphia, PA, it was found that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities in and near a neighborhood on its violent and property crime rates may be contingent on the socioeconomic status (SES) of the neighborhood. Paying attention to both the density and proximity of facilities in and around neighborhoods, results showed that the criminogenic impact of treatment facilities depended largely on neighborhood SES. Under some conditions more treatment facilities nearby was associated with lower crime. Reasons why the presumed criminogenic impact of treatment facilities appears only under some conditions were suggested.
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Prevalence of ADHD and Its Subtypes in Male and Female Adult Prison Inmates
Brian Cahill et al.
Behavioral Sciences & the Law, March/April 2012, Pages 154-166
Abstract:
There are few published studies of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adult inmates, and even fewer studies that have considered ADHD in adult inmates by gender. The present study examined the prevalence of ADHD, its subtypes, and associated psychological and neuropsychological comorbidity as a function of gender in a sample of 3,962 inmates (3,439 men and 523 women; mean age = 33.6 years, range 17-73) who had completed the 250-item, self-report, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (Text Revision) (DSM-IV-TR)-aligned Coolidge Correctional Inventory (CCI). The overall ADHD prevalence rate found was 10.5%, which is substantially higher than the rate among adults in the general population (2-5%). The female inmate ADHD prevalence rate (15.1%) was higher than the male inmate ADHD rate (9.8%), consistent with some previous studies. The most prevalent ADHD subtype for both genders was the hyperactive-impulsive subtype. The combined and inattentive ADHD subtypes had higher levels of comorbid psychopathology than the hyperactive-impulsive ADHD subtype. As the presence of ADHD and associated gender differentials may impact the success of rehabilitation and educative programs with inmates, the assessment of ADHD and comorbid psychopathology should be a priority in initial inmate screening and evaluation.
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Michael Vaughn et al.
Journal of Criminal Justice, May-June 2012, Pages 165-173
Objective: This study explicitly articulates a criminal justice epidemiology by examining the behavioral and physical health of probationers and parolees derived from a nationally representative sample of adults in the United States.
Methods: Using public-use data from the 2009 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), this study employed binary logistic regression with adjustments for complex survey sampling and compared probationers and parolees to the general population with respect to past-year substance use, risk perception, treatment experiences, and health.
Results: After controlling for the effects of age, gender, race, income, and education probationers and parolees are far more likely to report using alcohol and drugs in the past year, have reduced risk perception, and are far more likely to have had some kind of treatment for substance abuse or dependence. Probationers and parolees are also significantly more likely to experience anxiety and depression, asthma, and sexually transmitted diseases.
Conclusions: This criminal justice epidemiology study indicates that the behavioral health of probationers and parolees hamper efforts to increase public safety goals. Forging closer ties between criminal justice and public health systems is necessary to reach these goals.
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Indirect Effects of a Policy Altering Criminal Behavior: Evidence from the Italian Prison Experiment
Francesco Drago & Roberto Galbiati
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, April 2012, Pages 199-218
Abstract:
We exploit the 2006 Italian prison pardon to evaluate peer effects in criminal behavior. The pardon randomly commutes actual sentences to expected sentences for 40 percent of the Italian prison population. Using prison and geographical origin to construct reference groups for former inmates, we find large indirect effects of this policy. In particular, we find that the reduction in the individuals' recidivism due to an increase in their peers' residual sentence is at least as large as their response to an increase in their own residual sentence. From this result we estimate a social multiplier in crime of two.
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Dewey Cornell, Korrie Allen & Xitao Fan
School Psychology Review, Winter 2012, Pages 100-115
Abstract:
This randomized controlled study examined disciplinary outcomes for 201 students who made threats of violence at school. The students attended 40 schools randomly assigned to use the Virginia Student Threat Assessment Guidelines or follow a business-as-usual disciplinary approach in a control group. Logistic regression analyses found, after controlling for student gender, race, school level, and threat severity, that the 100 students in the threat assessment group schools were more likely to receive counseling services (odds ratio [OR] = 3.98) and a parent conference (OR = 2.57), and less likely to receive a long-term suspension (OR = 0.35) or alternative school placement (OR = 0.13) than the 101 students in the control group schools. Implementation fidelity was associated with decreased long-term suspension (OR = 0.73). These results provide strong empirical support for the use of student threat assessment in primary and secondary schools.
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Kathleen Custers & Jan Van den Bulck
Communication Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
Even though sexual violence has become more prevalent on television and is the crime women fear most in real life, the association between viewing and fear of sexual violence has received scant attention. Structural equation modeling of data from a random sample of 546 Flemish women supported a model in which fear of sexual violence was predicted by perceived risk, perceived control, and perceived seriousness. Flemish crime drama viewing predicted higher perceived risk. This relationship was stronger in women with high socioeconomic status and in those with no direct experience with crime. This suggests that identification may be an important mediator. News viewing predicted lower perceived risk. It is hypothesized that the relative lack of exemplars in news and victim blaming gives viewers the impression that the risk of sexual victimization does not apply to them.
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Ronald Burns, Patrick Kinkade & Michael Bachmann
Social Science Journal, forthcoming
Abstract:
The present study examines the applicability of routine activities theory to petty theft. Using an experimental field research design, the researchers tested the frequency with which apparently uncounted smaller currency was stolen during full-service car wash cycles. Experimental conditions were varied so that one condition suggested a more deviant driver. A considerable amount of money was removed in thirty percent of all car washes. The number of total thefts and amount of money stolen were higher in the experimental condition in which the driver appeared to be more deviant. Findings suggest that the mere appearance of the victim as more deviant triggers the perception of targets as more suitable, and provide support for social proximity as a suitability criterion.
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Kathleen Fox, Katrina Rufino & Glen Kercher
Victims & Offenders, Spring 2012, Pages 208-225
Abstract:
The current study examines whether the relationship between gang membership and crime victimization exists among a sample of prison inmates, and if perceptions of social disorganization influences this relationship. More specifically, we examine whether (1) gang members are more likely to be victimized compared to nongang members, (2) perceptions of social disorganization are associated with victimization, and (3) accounting for inmates' offending mediates the relationship between social disorganization and victimization. A sample of gang and nongang members incarcerated in prison were interviewed about their involvement in crime, experiences with victimization, and perceptions of neighborhood disorganization. Results indicate that gang members are significantly more likely to be victimized compared to nongang members and perceptions of social disorganization explain the likelihood of victimization among gang members only. Crime perpetration mediates the relationship between perceptions of social disorganization and victimization among gang members.
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Improving Firearm Storage in Alaska Native Villages: A Randomized Trial of Household Gun Cabinets
David Grossman et al.
American Journal of Public Health, May 2012, Pages S291-S297
Objectives: We determined if the installation of gun cabinets improved household firearm storage practices.
Methods: We used a wait list, randomized trial design with 2 groups. The "early" group received the intervention at baseline, and the "late" group received it at 12 months. Up to 2 gun cabinets were installed in each enrolled home, along with safety messages. In-person surveys were conducted at 12 and 18 months to determine the proportion of households reporting unlocked guns or ammunition. Direct observations of unlocked guns were also compared.
Results: At baseline, 93% of homes reported having at least 1 unlocked gun in the home, and 89% reported unlocked ammunition. At 12 months, 35% of homes in the early group reported unlocked guns compared with 89% in the late group (P < .001). Thirty-six percent of the early homes reported unlocked ammunition compared with 84% of late homes (P < .001). The prevalence of these storage practices was maintained at 18 months. Observations of unlocked guns decreased significantly (from 20% to 8%) between groups (P < .03).
Conclusions: Gun cabinet installation in rural Alaskan households improved the storage of guns and ammunition. If these gains are sustained over time, it may lead to a reduction in gun-related injuries and deaths in this population.