Heard on the street
Crime and Conspicuous Consumption
Daniel Mejía & Pascual Restrepo
Journal of Public Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
We study how property crime distorts consumption decisions. Using an incomplete information model, we argue that consuming conspicuous goods reveals information to criminals seeking bountiful victims and increases the likelihood of being victimized. Thus, property crime reduces the consumption of visible goods, even when these cannot be directly stolen but simply carry information about a potential victim’s wealth. We exploit the large decline in property crime in the U.S. during the 90s to test this mechanism. Using data from the U.S. Consumer Expenditure Survey from 1986 to 2003, we find that households located in states experiencing sharper reductions in property crime increased significantly their consumption of visible goods, even when these goods are not generally stolen, both in absolute terms and relative to other consumption goods. Our findings hold when we instrument the decline in property crime during the 90s using a variety of strategies.
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Contagion in Mass Killings and School Shootings
Sherry Towers et al.
PLoS ONE, July 2015
Background: Several past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community, apparently due to the coverage planting the seeds of ideation in at-risk individuals to commit similar acts.
Methods: Here we explore whether or not contagion is evident in more high-profile incidents, such as school shootings and mass killings (incidents with four or more people killed). We fit a contagion model to recent data sets related to such incidents in the US, with terms that take into account the fact that a school shooting or mass murder may temporarily increase the probability of a similar event in the immediate future, by assuming an exponential decay in contagiousness after an event.
Conclusions: We find significant evidence that mass killings involving firearms are incented by similar events in the immediate past. On average, this temporary increase in probability lasts 13 days, and each incident incites at least 0.30 new incidents (p = 0.0015). We also find significant evidence of contagion in school shootings, for which an incident is contagious for an average of 13 days, and incites an average of at least 0.22 new incidents (p = 0.0001). All p-values are assessed based on a likelihood ratio test comparing the likelihood of a contagion model to that of a null model with no contagion. On average, mass killings involving firearms occur approximately every two weeks in the US, while school shootings occur on average monthly. We find that state prevalence of firearm ownership is significantly associated with the state incidence of mass killings with firearms, school shootings, and mass shootings.
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Race and Youth Crime: Why Isn’t the Relationship Stronger?
Robert Agnew
Race and Justice, forthcoming
Abstract:
Criminologists have devoted much effort to explaining why African American youth have higher rates of serious offending than Whites. But data suggest that African American youth have similar rates of minor offending than Whites and that the large share of African American youth are no more likely to engage in serious crime than Whites. This is the case even though African American youth are much more likely than White youth to be exposed to many of the leading causes of crime, including discrimination, poverty, and residence in very poor communities. This raises a major question that has been neglected by criminologists: Why isn’t the relationship between race and youth crime stronger? Drawing on limited criminological research and several literatures outside criminology, this article describes a range of protective factors that may reduce the likelihood that African American youth respond to discrimination and its negative consequences with crime. These factors fall into four groups: skills in coping, strengths in the face of adversity, social supports, and social controls (the four “S”s).
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The U.S. Crime Puzzle: A Comparative Perspective on U.S. Crime and Punishment
Holger Spamann
American Law and Economics Review, forthcoming
Abstract:
This paper compares actual U.S. crime and incarceration rates to predicted rates from cross-country regressions. Global cross-country regressions of crime and incarceration on background characteristics explain much of the variation between other countries. But the estimated models predict only one-fourth of U.S. incarceration and not all of U.S. crime. The coincidence of the non-negative U.S. crime residuals with the very large positive U.S. incarceration residual constitutes a puzzle. The two pieces fit together only if the residual U.S. incarceration does not contribute to a reduction in crime, except to the extent an omitted criminogenic factor pushes up U.S. crime. The paper quantifies this relationship. Drawing on additional evidence from comparative and U.S.-specific data, it argues that the puzzle's most plausible solution combines low effectiveness of mass incarceration with omitted criminogenic factors such as U.S. neighborhood segregation.
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US punitiveness ‘Canadian style’? Cultural values and Canadian punishment policy
Cheryl Marie Webster & Anthony Doob
Punishment & Society, July 2015, Pages 299-321
Abstract:
From the mid-19th century until 2006, Canadian official policy statements (from both Liberal and Conservative governments) made it clear that offending was seen as largely socially determined and that it was the state’s responsibility to try to reintegrate those who offend back into mainstream society. In this context, imprisonment was seen as a necessary evil, to be avoided wherever possible. The era since 2006 looks considerably more American than Canadian. The policy elite in Canada has taken the position that those who commit offences are inherently ‘bad’ people and qualitatively different from ‘ordinary law abiding’ Canadians. Exclusionary responses are privileged as those who commit offences are seen as having chosen to forfeit their rights of full citizenship. Several broader (cultural and political) ramifications of this punitive shift in the normative orientation expressed by policy-makers in Canada are discussed.
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Improving Negative Emotion Recognition in Young Offenders Reduces Subsequent Crime
Kelly Hubble et al.
PLoS ONE, June 2015
Background: Children with antisocial behaviour show deficits in the perception of emotional expressions in others that may contribute to the development and persistence of antisocial and aggressive behaviour. Current treatments for antisocial youngsters are limited in effectiveness. It has been argued that more attention should be devoted to interventions that target neuropsychological correlates of antisocial behaviour. This study examined the effect of emotion recognition training on criminal behaviour.
Methods: Emotion recognition and crime levels were studied in 50 juvenile offenders. Whilst all young offenders received their statutory interventions as the study was conducted, a subgroup of twenty-four offenders also took part in a facial affect training aimed at improving emotion recognition. Offenders in the training and control groups were matched for age, SES, IQ and lifetime crime level. All offenders were tested twice for emotion recognition performance, and recent crime data were collected after the testing had been completed.
Results: Before the training there were no differences between the groups in emotion recognition, with both groups displaying poor fear, sadness and anger recognition. After the training fear, sadness and anger recognition improved significantly in juvenile offenders in the training group. Although crime rates dropped in all offenders in the 6 months following emotion testing, only the group of offenders who had received the emotion training showed a significant reduction in the severity of the crimes they committed.
Conclusions: The study indicates that emotion recognition can be relatively easily improved in youths who engage in serious antisocial and criminal behavior. The results suggest that improved emotion recognition has the potential to reduce the severity of reoffending.
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Adrian Jones
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
This study investigates the stability of self-control by examining whether neighborhood composition conditions the effect of self-control on offending. Congruent with social learning perspectives, I argue that neighborhood behavioral models provide a conduit for the expression of one’s self-control. Using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN), I examine multi-level zero-inflated negative binomial models that include cross-level interactions between self-control and aggregate self-control. I found that for the frequency of delinquency, but not serious offending, the effect of low self-control is amplified in neighborhoods identified as having low aggregate self-control. These findings provide evidence that the effect of low self-control on offending is not always invariant across neighborhoods.
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Association Between Connecticut’s Permit-to-Purchase Handgun Law and Homicides
Kara Rudolph et al.
American Journal of Public Health, August 2015, Pages e49-e54
Objectives: We sought to estimate the effect of Connecticut’s implementation of a handgun permit-to-purchase law in October 1995 on subsequent homicides.
Methods: Using the synthetic control method, we compared Connecticut’s homicide rates after the law’s implementation to rates we would have expected had the law not been implemented. To estimate the counterfactual, we used longitudinal data from a weighted combination of comparison states identified based on the ability of their prelaw homicide trends and covariates to predict prelaw homicide trends in Connecticut.
Results: We estimated that the law was associated with a 40% reduction in Connecticut’s firearm homicide rates during the first 10 years that the law was in place. By contrast, there was no evidence for a reduction in nonfirearm homicides.
Conclusions: Consistent with prior research, this study demonstrated that Connecticut’s handgun permit-to-purchase law was associated with a subsequent reduction in homicide rates. As would be expected if the law drove the reduction, the policy’s effects were only evident for homicides committed with firearms.
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Hold Your Fire: Did the 1996 Federal Gun Control Act Expansion Reduce Domestic Homicides?
Kerri Raissian
Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, forthcoming
Abstract:
In 1996, Congress expanded the federal Gun Control Act (GCA) to prohibit defendants convicted of a qualifying domestic violence misdemeanor from possessing or purchasing a firearm. Using the FBI's Supplementary Homicide Reports along with homicide data collected from selected state law enforcement agencies, I investigate if this expansion was successful in reducing homicides among the target groups. I use variation from a legal loophole and a series of circuit court decisions to generate difference-in-differences estimates. I find evidence that the GCA expansion led to 17 percent fewer gun-related homicides among female intimate partner victims and 31 percent fewer gun homicides among male domestic child victims. The law also has protective benefits for those that were not targeted by the legislation. “Other” family members (parents and siblings) also experience a 24 percent reduction in gun homicides. I find no evidence that reductions in gun homicides were offset by an increase in nongun homicides. While most falsification and robustness tests support the above conclusions, some tests suggest caution when interpreting the results and a need for further research.
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State Firearm Legislation and Nonfatal Firearm Injuries
Joseph Simonetti et al.
American Journal of Public Health, August 2015, Pages 1703-1709
Objectives: We investigated whether stricter state-level firearm legislation was associated with lower hospital discharge rates for nonfatal firearm injuries.
Methods: We estimated discharge rates for hospitalized and emergency department–treated nonfatal firearm injuries in 18 states in 2010 and used negative binomial regression to determine whether strength of state firearm legislation was independently associated with total nonfatal firearm injury discharge rates.
Results: We identified 26 744 discharges for nonfatal firearm injuries. The overall age-adjusted discharge rate was 19.0 per 100 000 person-years (state range = 3.3–36.6), including 7.9 and 11.1 discharges per 100 000 for hospitalized and emergency department–treated injuries, respectively. In models adjusting for differences in state sociodemographic characteristics and economic conditions, states in the strictest tertile of legislative strength had lower discharge rates for total (incidence rate ratio [IRR] = 0.60; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 0.44, 0.82), assault-related (IRR = 0.58; 95% CI = 0.34, 0.99), self-inflicted (IRR = 0.18; 95% CI = 0.14, 0.24), and unintentional (IRR = 0.53; 95% CI = 0.34, 0.84) nonfatal firearm injuries.
Conclusions: There is significant variation in state-level hospital discharge rates for nonfatal firearm injuries, and stricter state firearm legislation is associated with lower discharge rates for such injuries.
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Schools and Drug Markets: Examining the Relationship Between Schools and Neighborhood Drug Crime
Dale Willits, Lisa Broidy & Kristine Denman
Youth & Society, September 2015, Pages 634-658
Abstract:
Research on drug markets indicates that they are not randomly distributed. Instead they are concentrated around specific types of places. Theoretical and empirical literature implicates routine activities and social disorganization processes in this distribution. In the current study, we examine whether, consistent with these theories, drug markets are particularly likely to form near schools. This research contributes to our understanding of adolescent drug use patterns by assessing some of the place and neighborhood-level mechanisms that help explain how schools facilitate access to illicit drugs. Using data from Albuquerque, New Mexico, we find that neighborhoods with middle schools and high schools experience more drug crime than neighborhoods without middle or high schools. Moreover, the relationship between school presence and drug crime is strongest during the hours directly before, during, and after school. Theoretical and policy implications are discussed.
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Do the Police Believe That Legitimacy Promotes Cooperation From the Public?
Justin Nix
Crime & Delinquency, forthcoming
Abstract:
Tyler’s process-based model of regulation suggests that when citizens perceive the police as a legitimate authority, they are more likely to cooperate in the form of reporting crimes and providing information to the police. Yet most studies have considered citizens’ perceptions of police legitimacy — few studies have asked the police what they feel makes them legitimate in the eyes of the public. Likewise, no studies have considered whether the police believe legitimacy is associated with cooperation from the public. The present study addresses this gap using data from a stratified sample of U.S. police executives. Findings suggest police believe performance, rather than procedural justice, is the key to generating cooperation from the public.
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The impact of state policy on teen dating violence prevalence
Richard Hoefer, Beverly Black & Mark Ricard
Journal of Adolescence, October 2015, Pages 88–96
Abstract:
Teen dating violence (TDV) is a serious public health concern that is associated with many negative effects. Studies on TDV prevention most often focus on the evaluation of prevention programs in school and community settings. Much less is known about the effects of policy on TDV prevalence. This study tests a model to explain whether stronger laws regarding TDV, specifically civil protection orders, have an impact on TDV rates in states. Results show that stronger policy, Democratic party control of the governor’s office, and higher state median income are associated with lower rates of TDV. This study provides solid information regarding the role of civil protection orders as a means of TDV prevention and adds to our knowledge of the efficacy of state-level TDV policy. The information can lead to increased vigor on the part of advocates to strive for specific provisions in the law and to work for gubernatorial candidates who will support such laws.
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Lifetime Benefits and Costs of Diverting Substance-Abusing Offenders From State Prison
Gary Zarkin et al.
Crime & Delinquency, August 2015, Pages 829-850
Abstract:
Prisons hold a disproportionate number of society’s drug abusers. Approximately 50% of state prisoners meet the criteria for a diagnosis of drug abuse or dependence; however, only 10% of prisoners receive drug treatment. Diverting offenders to community-based treatment has been shown to generate positive net social benefits. We build on a lifetime simulation model of a nationally representative state prison cohort to examine diversion from reincarceration to community-based substance abuse treatment. We find that diversion provides positive net societal benefits to the United States and cost savings to the national criminal justice system. Our study demonstrates the societal gains from improving access to the community drug treatment system as an alternative to prison.
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Michelle Kondo et al.
PLoS ONE, July 2015
Abstract:
Vacant and abandoned buildings pose significant challenges to the health and safety of communities. In 2011 the City of Philadelphia began enforcing a Doors and Windows Ordinance that required property owners of abandoned buildings to install working doors and windows in all structural openings or face significant fines. We tested the effects of the new ordinance on the occurrence of crime surrounding abandoned buildings from January 2011 to April 2013 using a difference-in-differences approach. We used Poisson regression models to compare differences in pre- and post-treatment measures of crime for buildings that were remediated as a result of the ordinance (n = 676) or permitted for renovation (n = 241), and randomly-matched control buildings that were not remediated (n = 676) or permitted for renovation (n = 964), while also controlling for sociodemographic and other confounders measured around each building. Building remediations were significantly associated with citywide reductions in overall crimes, total assaults, gun assaults and nuisance crimes (p <0.001). Building remediations were also significantly associated with reductions in violent gun crimes in one city section (p <0.01). At the same time, some significant increases were seen in narcotics sales and possession and property crimes around remediated buildings (p <0.001). Building renovation permits were significantly associated with reductions in all crime classifications across multiple city sections (p <0.001). We found no significant spatial displacement effects. Doors and windows remediation offers a relatively low-cost method of reducing certain crimes in and around abandoned buildings. Cities with an abundance of decaying and abandoned housing stock might consider some form of this structural change to their built environments as one strategy to enhance public safety.
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Carrie Carretta, Ann Burgess & Rosanna DeMarco
Violence Against Women, September 2015, Pages 1145-1165
Abstract:
The underreporting of rape is well known; however, there is less information on women who fail to disclose to anyone. This online study suggests that 24% of 242 women who were non-disclosing compared with those who had disclosed were significantly less likely to seek treatment for emotional injuries. Also, almost two thirds of non-disclosing women believed that the abuse was their fault versus 39.1% of women with prior disclosure. Of clinical interest is that regardless of disclosure pattern, there was no significant difference in reports of depression, anxiety, or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and the majority of respondents endorsed support for online counseling over telephone or individual contact.
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Urban Homicide in the United States, 1980-2010: The Importance of Disaggregated Trends
Roland Chilton & William Chambliss
Homicide Studies, August 2015, Pages 257-272
Abstract:
Using Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) mortality and census data with Supplementary Homicide Reports, we compare 25- and 30-year homicide trends for four age-race-sex categories in 172 U.S. cities. The comparisons indicate that one of the most salient aspects of homicide in the United States from 1980 to 2010 was the disproportionate involvement of young Black men as homicide victims and offenders. The persistence of these rates before, during, and after a sharp rise followed by a dramatic drop in the overall rates suggests the need for a focus on specific explanations for this aspect of urban homicide.