Grinches
Americans’ Changing Views on Crime and Punishment
Mark Ramirez
Public Opinion Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
Despite a decline in crime rates, the size of America’s criminal justice system has continued to expand in both expenditures and the number of citizens under correctional supervision. Polls examined here show that the public viewed national crime as declining since the 1990s, while viewing local crime rates as stable. Moreover, the polls show that public support for “get tough” crime policies, once seen as unwavering, has declined substantially. The decline in support occurred across a range of policies, from judicial sentencing to the death penalty to increasing expenditures for law enforcement agencies. Finally, polls show fluctuations in public views regarding which political party was better suited to deal with crime. Overall, these data illustrate that leaders now have the opportunity to move policy in a less punitive direction and that no single party has ownership over the issue.
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Offender Perceptions of Graduated Sanctions
Eric Wodahl et al.
Crime & Delinquency, December 2013, Pages 1185-1210
Abstract:
Finding credible alternatives to revocation for offenders who violate the conditions of their community supervision has emerged as a salient issue in the corrections field. A number of jurisdictions have turned to graduated sanctions as an alternative to revocation. This study addresses one of the major gaps in the research on graduated sanctions by examining perceptions of graduated sanction severity through the administration of surveys to offenders under active supervision. Survey results revealed several important findings. First, offenders do not view jail as being substantially more punitive than community-based sanctions such as community service or electronic monitoring. Second, offenders viewed treatment-oriented sanctions as being more punitive than other graduated sanctions. Third, offender perceptions of graduated sanctions were influenced by a variety of individual characteristics such as gender, age, and education level.
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Lawrence Sherman & Heather Harris
Journal of Experimental Criminology, December 2013, Pages 491-514
Objective: To test for any long-term effects on the death rates of domestic assault suspects due to arresting them versus warning them at the scene.
Methods: The Milwaukee Domestic Violence Experiment (MilDVE) employed a randomized experimental design with over 98 % treatment as assigned. In 1987–88, 1,200 cases with 1,128 suspects were randomly assigned to arrest or a warning in a 2:1 ratio. Arrested suspects were generally handcuffed and taken to a police station for about 3 to 12 h. Warned suspects were left at liberty at the scene after police read aloud a scripted statement. Death records were obtained in 2012–13 from the Wisconsin Office of Vital Statistics and the Social Security Death Index, with the support of the Milwaukee Police Department.
Results: In the first presenting case in which the 1,128 were identified as suspects, they were randomly assigned to arrest in 756 cases and to a warning in 372. No clear difference in death rates from all causes combined (d = 0.04) was ever evident between the groups, or for five of the six specific categories of cause of death. However, a clear difference in homicide victimizations of the suspects emerged between those arrested and those warned. At 23 years after enrolment, suspects assigned to arrest were almost three times more likely to have died of homicide (at 2.25 % of suspects) than suspects assigned to a warning (at 0.81 %), a small to moderate effect size (d = 0.39) with marginal significance (two-tailed p = 0.096; relative risk ratio = 2.79:1; 90 % CI = 1.0007 to 7.7696). Cox regressions controlling for suspects’ stakes in conformity (employment and marriage) show that homicide victimization for arrested suspects is three times that of warned suspects (p = 0.07), although no interactions are yet significant. Logistic regression with more covariates increases arrest effects on homicide to 3.2 times more than warnings (p = 0.06).
Conclusions: Suspects randomly assigned to arrest died from homicide at a consistently higher rate than controls over a two-decade period, but the difference was not statistically discernible until the 22nd year after assignment. Long-term follow-up of randomized experiments is essential for detecting mortality differences that substantially affect cost–benefit analyses of criminal justice practices.
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Mark Gius
Applied Economics Letters, Winter 2014, Pages 265-267
Abstract:
The purpose of the present study is to determine the effects of state-level assault weapons bans and concealed weapons laws on state-level murder rates. Using data for the period 1980 to 2009 and controlling for state and year fixed effects, the results of the present study suggest that states with restrictions on the carrying of concealed weapons had higher gun-related murder rates than other states. It was also found that assault weapons bans did not significantly affect murder rates at the state level. These results suggest that restrictive concealed weapons laws may cause an increase in gun-related murders at the state level. The results of this study are consistent with some prior research in this area, most notably Lott and Mustard (1997).
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Gone in 60 Seconds: The Impact of the Megaupload Shutdown on Movie Sales
Brett Danaher & Michael Smith
International Journal of Industrial Organization, forthcoming
Abstract:
The growth of Internet-based piracy has led to a wide-ranging debate over how copyright policy should be enforced in the digital era. In this paper we analyze the impact of the US government’s shutdown of a major piracy site — Megaupload.com — on digital sales and rentals of movies. Exploiting cross-country variation in pre-shutdown usage of Megaupload, we find that the shutdown of Megaupload and its associated sites caused digital revenues for three major motion picture studios to increase by 6.5-8.5%. Our results suggest that some consumers will turn to legal channels when a major filesharing site is shut down, and by extension that illegal filesharing displaces digital movie sales.
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Georgios Georgiou
International Review of Law and Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Approximately 4.8 million offenders are subject to community supervision in the United States. This paper examines whether a program that assigned different supervision levels based on a risk assessment instrument, had any effect on offenders’ recidivism rates. Using a large statewide sample of adult offenders in Washington State and a regression discontinuity design, I compare offenders whose risk characteristics are similar but who received different levels of post- release supervision. I find that offenders who received more supervision were not less likely to reoffend. The result holds for high-risk and low-risk offenders and for various types of recidivism.
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Effectiveness of a short-term mental health court: Criminal recidivism one year postexit
Virginia Aldigé Hiday, Heathcote Wales & Bradley Ray
Law and Human Behavior, December 2013, Pages 401-411
Abstract:
This article investigated criminal recidivism 1 year postexit from a mental health court (MHC), which has, unlike prior MHCs studied, relatively short periods of court supervision. It benefits from a federal pretrial services agency that screens all arrestees for mental illness and dedicates a specialized supervision unit (SSU) to provide supervision and services while on pretrial release to all screened positive, including MHC participants. We compared criminal activity prior to key arrest with criminal activity post court disposition in MHC participants (N = 408) and MHC-eligible mentally ill arrestees in SSU (N = 687) receiving the same supervision and services while controlling for possible confounders. The proportion of MHC participants arrested was significantly lower in the year after MHC exit and significantly lower than that of the comparison group. They also averaged fewer rearrests and had a longer time to rearrest. MHC graduates made the greatest gains and accounted for the recidivism differences between MHC participants and the comparison group. This study adds to the accumulating evidence of the effectiveness of MHCs in reducing recidivism among offenders with severe mental illness.
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Xia Wang et al.
Criminal Justice and Behavior, forthcoming
Abstract:
With almost 700,000 inmates released annually in the United States, the predictors of successful reentry have received considerable attention. Prior research documents that recidivism is influenced by both ex-inmate characteristics and social context. Little attention, however, has been paid to the role social context might play in moderating the effects of individual-level risk factors. Using inmate release data from the Florida Department of Corrections and other sources, we examine whether contextual factors that promote crime and antisocial behavior amplify the association between individual criminal propensity and recidivism. Our analysis offers limited support for the moderating effects of context, suggesting that the relationship between criminal propensity and recidivism is substantial and largely independent of community characteristics. We discuss the implications of the findings for theory, research, and policy.
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Matthew Sciandra et al.
Journal of Experimental Criminology, December 2013, Pages 451-489
Objectives: Using data from a randomized experiment, to examine whether moving youth out of areas of concentrated poverty, where a disproportionate amount of crime occurs, prevents involvement in crime.
Methods: We draw on new administrative data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Moving to Opportunity (MTO) experiment. MTO families were randomized into an experimental group offered a housing voucher that could only be used to move to a low-poverty neighborhood, a Section 8 housing group offered a standard housing voucher, and a control group. This paper focuses on MTO youth ages 15–25 in 2001 (n = 4,643) and analyzes intention to treat effects on neighborhood characteristics and criminal behavior (number of violent- and property-crime arrests) through 10 years after randomization.
Results: We find the offer of a housing voucher generates large improvements in neighborhood conditions that attenuate over time and initially generates substantial reductions in violent-crime arrests and sizable increases in property-crime arrests for experimental group males. The crime effects attenuate over time along with differences in neighborhood conditions.
Conclusions: Our findings suggest that criminal behavior is more strongly related to current neighborhood conditions (situational neighborhood effects) than to past neighborhood conditions (developmental neighborhood effects). The MTO design makes it difficult to determine which specific neighborhood characteristics are most important for criminal behavior. Our administrative data analyses could be affected by differences across areas in the likelihood that a crime results in an arrest.
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The attribution of responsibility in cases of stalking
Adrian Scott et al.
Psychology, Crime & Law, forthcoming
Abstract:
There is a general belief that stranger stalkers present the greatest threat to the personal safety of victims, despite national victimisation surveys and applied research demonstrating that ex-partner stalkers are generally more persistent and violent. The just-world hypothesis offers a possible explanation for this apparent contradiction. The current research used nine hypothetical scenarios, administered to 328 university students, to investigate the assumptions that underlie attributions of responsibility in cases of stalking. It explores whether these assumptions are consistent with the proposed mechanisms of the just-world hypothesis, and whether they vary according to the nature of the perpetrator–victim relationship and conduct severity. Thematic analysis revealed that the victim was perceived to be more responsible for the situation when the perpetrator was portrayed as an ex-partner rather than a stranger or acquaintance. Furthermore, victims were perceived to be more responsible when the perpetrator's behaviour was persistent and threatening. These findings are discussed in the context of the just-world hypothesis and related to the proposed mechanisms by which a person can reinterpret a situation so that the perceived injustice disappears.
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David Humphreys & Manuel Eisner
Social Science & Medicine, February 2014, Pages 1–9
Abstract:
Alcohol-related violence is a pressing public health concern. In 2005, the government of England and Wales took a controversial approach to preventing violence by removing restrictions on opening hours for alcohol outlets, thus increasing the availability of alcohol. The policy aimed to remove fixed closing times, which it claimed was contributing to urban violence occurring at peak closing times. It proposed to reduce violence and disorder by installing systems of ‘staggered closing times’. This policy was criticised for overlooking established public health principles prioritising the control of alcohol availability in the prevention of alcohol-related harm. In this study, we treated the removal of trading hour restrictions as a natural experiment to test competing theoretical principles about the relationship between alcohol availability and violence. Our study took place in the City of Manchester over a four-year period 2004-2008. Detailed trading records for over 600 alcohol outlets were obtained, as were police records for all violent incidents. We found considerable variation in the implementation of extended trading hours across the city, which affected area-level exposure of changes in alcohol availability and staggered closing times. To isolate the effect of these changes on violence, we performed a dose-response analysis to examine whether improved staggering of closing hours (or increased alcohol availability) was associated with decreases in violence. We found no evidence to support the government-proposed hypothesis that staggered closing reduces violence. We also found no support for the alternative hypothesis; that increase alcohol availability would result in increased violence. This study provides an example of how better evidence can be generated from natural experiments by placing added emphasis on theory, causal mechanisms and implementation science.
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Darrick Jolliffe, David Farrington & Philip Howard
Journal of Experimental Criminology, December 2013, Pages 515-531
Objectives: Most research has suggested that correctional boot camps are not very successful in reducing reoffending, but recent evidence has been more encouraging for programs that include significant rehabilitative components. In line with this, High Intensity Training (HIT) for offenders aged 18–21 at Thorn Cross Young Offender Institution in England was followed by a significant reduction in the number of reconvictions in a 2-year follow up. This article aims to evaluate the impact of the HIT program after 10 years.
Methods: The evaluation used a quasi-experimental design in which male young offenders who received HIT were individually matched, on their risk of reconviction, to a comparison group who went to other prisons. Official reconviction data, including the prevalence, frequency, types, and costs of offenses were used as the outcome measures.
Results: Offenders who received HIT had a significantly lower prevalence and frequency of reconvictions, but their superiority over the control group reduced over time (after about 4 years). However, the cumulative number of convictions that were saved increased steadily over time, from 1.35 per offender at 2 years to 3.35 per offender at 10 years. The cumulative cost savings also increased over time, and the benefit:cost ratio, based on fewer convictions, increased from 1.13 at 2 years to 3.93 at 10 years.
Conclusions: The beneficial effects of the HIT program became more obvious over time. More randomized experiments and long-term follow-up research, including regular interviews, are needed to evaluate the cumulative and persisting effects of correctional interventions more accurately.
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Using friends for money: The positional importance of money-launderers in organized crime
Aili Malm & Gisela Bichler
Trends in Organized Crime, December 2013, Pages 365-381
Abstract:
Despite the significant amount of attention and resources invested into the global anti-money laundering (AML) regime, there is a dearth of empirical studies on the role of money-launderers in illicit markets. This research tests two primary justifications of AML policy: 1) most money-launderers would not be detected through criminal investigations of predicate crimes and organized crime groups; and, 2) professional money-launderers play an important role in illicit markets and criminal networks. We extracted information about money-launderers in the drug market from police intelligence reports over a three-year period. Social network analysis was used to assess the positional importance of the launderers. The results show that most individuals are self-laundering, and relative to other market roles, launderers are not particularly central players. Policy implications for AML enforcement are discussed.
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Assessing Sex Offender Recidivism Using Multiple Measures: A Longitudinal Analysis
Lawrence Bench & Terry Allen
Prison Journal, December 2013, Pages 411-428
Abstract:
While the recidivistic activity of sex offenders has received considerable attention from researchers, most studies have been limited by using a single measurement of recidivism. Using arrest/conviction episodes as the unit of analysis, the present study tracked 389 convicted sex offenders for up to 10 arrest/conviction episodes using 11 different measurements of recidivism for an average of 15.7 years. Logistic regression was used to create a model that successfully predicted recidivism with approximately 70% accuracy. The rate of recidivism as defined by new convictions for sex offenses was approximately 10% overall.
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A Method for Internal Benchmarking of Criminal Justice System Performance
Greg Ridgeway & John MacDonald
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Internal benchmarking is the process of comparing the performance of one entity with the performance of comparison entities. Assessments of the various entities of the criminal justice system, such as police officers, judges, correctional facilities, and neighborhoods, often involve the construction of benchmarks with which to compare their relative performance. However, the typically made comparisons do not adequately account for the underlying differences in these entities. This article presents a general method, based on propensity scoring and doubly robust estimation, for constructing benchmarks for assessing the performance of entities within the criminal justice system while properly accounting for potentially confounding differences among the entities. The article demonstrates the method on an assessment of police performance in Cincinnati.
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Joshua Miller et al.
Journal of Abnormal Psychology, forthcoming
Abstract:
Psychopathic traits are typically associated with an array of externalizing behaviors including violent and nonviolent crime and recidivism, substance use, aggression, and sexual coercion. In the current study, we test the hypothesis that psychopathic traits are related to an increased tolerance for physical pain, which may partially account for the relations between psychopathy and antisocial behavior (ASB). Using community participants oversampled for psychopathic traits (N = 104), we found that psychopathic traits, measured using self- and informant reports, manifested small correlations with some measures of physical pain tolerance (tolerance of pressure and electric shock) but not others (tolerance of cold temperature). In addition, pain tolerance, particularly tolerance of pressure, manifested small correlations with a history of antisocial and aggressive behavior. However, there was little evidence that pain tolerance serves as a mediator of the relations between psychopathy and violent or nonviolent ASB. Conversely, there was evidence that the relations between pain tolerance and ASB were mediated by the presence of certain psychopathic traits. The implications of these findings are discussed.
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Deployments, Combat Exposure, and Crime
Mark Anderson & Daniel Rees
Montana State University Working Paper, December 2013
Abstract:
During the period 2001-2009, four combat brigades and the 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment were based at Fort Carson, Colorado. These units were repeatedly deployed during the Iraq War, allowing us to measure the effect of arguably exogenous changes in troop levels on violent crime in El Paso County, where Fort Carson is located. Our results suggest that never-deployed units contributed to community violence in the form of assaults, murders, and robberies. In contrast, estimates of the relationship between the number of previously deployed units and violent crime are generally small and statistically insignificant. We conclude that soldiers returning from combat do not represent a special threat to public safety.
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Staying out of Sight? Concentrated Policing and Local Political Action
Amy Lerman & Vesla Weaver
ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2014, Pages 202-219
Abstract:
In some urban neighborhoods, encounters with police have become one of the primary points of contact between disadvantaged citizens and their government. Yet extant scholarship has only just begun to explore how criminal justice interventions help to shape the political lives of the urban poor. In this article, we ask: What are the consequences of the increased use of stop-and-frisks (Terry stops) in disadvantaged neighborhoods for communities’ engagement with the state? Relying on a novel measure of local citizen engagement (311 calls for service) and more than one million police stops, we find that it is not concentrated police surveillance per se that matters but, rather, the character of police contact. The concentration of police stops overall is associated with higher levels of community engagement, while at the same time, a high degree of stops that feature searches or the use of force, especially when they do not result in an arrest, have a chilling effect on neighborhood-level outreach to local government. Our article marks a first step toward understanding what concentrated policing means for the democratic life and political agency of American communities.
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Julia Rucklidge, Anthony McLean & Paula Bateup
Crime & Delinquency, December 2013, Pages 1263-1286
Abstract:
Sixty youth (16-19 years) from two youth prison sites participate in a prospective study examining criminal offending and learning disabilities (LD), completing measures of estimated IQ, attention, reading, and mathematical and oral language abilities. Prevalence rates of LDs exceed those of international studies, with 91.67% of the offenders showing significant difficulties in at least one area of achievement (defined as 1 SD or more below the normative mean), the mean reading comprehension score falling at the 4th percentile. Four years post assessment, recidivism rates among released youth (n = 51) are investigated. After the investigators control for other known risk factors (including delinquency and estimated IQ), reading comprehension predicts future offending across measures, capturing rate, seriousness, and persistence of offending post release.