DOES UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRATION INCREASE VIOLENT CRIME?*

Despite substantial public, political, and scholarly attention to the issue of immigration and crime, we know little about the criminological consequences of undocumented immigration. As a result, fundamental questions about whether undocumented immigration increases violent crime remain unanswered. In an attempt to address this gap, we combine newly developed estimates of the unauthorized population with multiple data sources to capture the criminal, socioeconomic, and demographic context of all 50 states and Washington, DC, from 1990 to 2014 to provide the first longitudinal analysis of the macro‐level relationship between undocumented immigration and violence. The results from fixed‐effects regression models reveal that undocumented immigration does not increase violence. Rather, the relationship between undocumented immigration and violent crime is generally negative, although not significant in all specifications. Using supplemental models of victimization data and instrumental variable methods, we find little evidence that these results are due to decreased reporting or selective migration to avoid crime. We consider the theoretical and policy implications of these findings against the backdrop of the dramatic increase in immigration enforcement in recent decades.     

EXAMINING THE GENERALITY OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT–CRIME ASSOCIATION

This article examines whether the relationship between unemployment and criminal offending depends on the type of crime analyzed. We rely on fixed‐effects regression models to assess the association between changes in unemployment status and changes in violent crime, property crime, and driving under the influence (DUI) over a 6‐year period. We also examine whether the type of unemployment benefit received moderates the link to criminal behavior. We find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime but not on other types of crime. Our estimates also suggest that unemployed young males commit less crime while participating in active labor market programs when compared with periods during which they receive standard unemployment benefits.     

论盗窃网络游戏虚拟财产行为定性的法律根据

我国司法实务对盗窃网络游戏虚拟财产的行为存在较大的分歧。其中的盗窃罪定性较为切合实际,但说理并不充分。网络游戏虚拟财产在本质上是一种债权凭证．我国法律将作为债权凭证的纸币拟制为物的先例说明完全可以将虚拟财产归入《民法通则》、《刑法》、《继承法》所规定的“其他财产”以及《物权法》所规定的“其他动产”之列。据此,盗窃网络游戏虚拟财产构成犯罪的,同时触犯盗窃罪与非法获取计算机信息系统数据罪两个罪名。属于想象竟舍,可择一重罪处断。     

A Life-Course Perspective on Stress,Delinquency, and Young Adult Crime

This study uses General Strain Theory (GST) to describe and examine one potential pathway of delinquency/crime escalation and de-escalation across adolescence and young adulthood. In particular, the time-varying consequences for delinquent behavior and young adult crime of persistent or increasing levels of strain are addressed using data from the Family Health Study, an eight-year longitudinal data set (n = 840). The results indicate that there is a positive association between experiencing one type of strain—stressful life events—and involvement in delinquent or criminal behavior during this period of the life-course. However, the impact of stressful life events on these behaviors is diminished among young adults. Moreover, delinquent/criminal peer associations attenuate the age-specific effects of stressful life events, thus suggesting that peers play a central role in the association between strain and these behaviors. Implications of the results for theory and policy are discussed.     

CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR AND THE GAINS FROM CRIME

A number of economists recently have applied tools of economics to analysis of crime. The resulting models of criminal activity typically postulate that crime is positively related to gains porn crime and inversely related to the probability of punishment. While empirical studies have confirmed this latter effect, the relation between gains from crime and criminal activity has not been satisfactorily examined. This paper specifically tests the empirical relation between criminal behavior and the gains from crime. The unsettling possibility that decreases in the gains from crime my lead to increases in the number of crimes is discussed.     

THE CASCADING EFFECTS OF ADOLESCENT GANG INVOLVEMENT ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE*

The short‐run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life‐course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fulfillment of adulthood roles and statuses in the economic and family spheres. Moreover, problems fulfilling these conventional roles are hypothesized then to lead to sustained involvement in criminal behavior in adulthood. Using data from a sample of males from the Rochester Youth Development Study, results from structural equation models support the indirect link between gang membership and noncriminal and criminal outcomes in adulthood. Specifically, gang involvement leads to an increase in the number of precocious transitions experienced that result in both economic hardship and family problems in adulthood. These failures in the economic and family realms, in turn, contribute to involvement in street crime and/or arrest in adulthood. Implications for the criminal desistance process are discussed.     

DOES ECONOMIC ADVERSITY BREED CRIMINAL COOPERATION? CONSIDERING THE MOTIVATION BEHIND GROUP CRIME

The fact that most offenders have accomplices at some point in their criminal career is curious, given the risks associated with criminal cooperation. McCarthy, Hagan, and Cohen ( 1998 ) offered the first formal theory of the decision to co‐offend, which addressed explicitly the uncertainties attached to the decision to engage in group crime. They posited that when offenders experience adversity, they become more risk seeking and oriented toward the chance for potential gain, which essentially outweighs the uncertainties attached to criminal cooperation. McCarthy, Hagan, and Cohen's analysis of street youth offered some empirical support for their premise but left open many important questions. The current study uses data from two different samples of incarcerated felons in Nebraska (N = 321 offenders) and Colorado (N = approximately 1,120 observations nested within approximately 640 offenders) that provide information on different forms of economic adversity. Logistic regression models provide some evidence for the association between adversity and co‐offending, but they are inconsistent. In contrast, a preference for excitement is a consistent and powerful predictor of offending.     

Criminal Behavior in Opioid‐Dependent Patients Before and During Maintenance Therapy: 6‐year Follow‐Up of a Nationally Representative Cohort Sample

Lifetime prevalence of opioid dependence is about 0.4% in western countries. Opioid‐dependent patients have high morbidity and mortality and a high risk of criminal behavior. Few studies have addressed the long‐term impact of opioid maintenance therapy on convictions and criminal behavior. The PREMOS study is a prospective, longitudinal, naturalistic clinical study of a nationally representative sample of 2694 opioid‐dependent patients to investigate convictions and criminal behavior at baseline and after 6 years of maintenance treatment. At follow‐up, 2284 patients still were eligible (84.7%). A comprehensive assessment including a patient and doctor questionnaire, and the EuropASI was completed at baseline and follow‐up. Data on criminality at follow‐up had been received for 1147 (70.6%) patients. A large number (84.5%) of them had been charged or convicted at any time before baseline assessment, most frequently with drug‐related offenses (66.8%), acquisitive crime (49.1%), or acts of violence (22.0%). Reported charges and convictions had declined to 17.9% for the last 12 months before follow‐up, which was also reflected by a significant decrease in the EuropASI subscore “legal problems” from 1.52 at baseline to 0.98 after 6 years. These data indicate a significant and clinically relevant reduction in criminal behavior in opioid‐dependent patients in long‐term maintenance treatment. Maintenance therapy is effective in the reduction in both narcotics‐related and acquisition crime.     

DOES MARRIAGE REDUCE CRIME? A COUNTERFACTUAL APPROACH TO WITHIN‐INDIVIDUAL CAUSAL EFFECTS*

Although marriage is associated with a plethora of adult outcomes, its causal status remains controversial in the absence of experimental evidence. We address this problem by introducing a counterfactual life‐course approach that applies inverse probability of treatment weighting (IPTW) to yearly longitudinal data on marriage, crime, and shared covariates in a sample of 500 high‐risk boys followed prospectively from adolescence to age 32. The data consist of criminal histories and death records for all 500 men plus personal interviews, using a life‐history calendar, with a stratified subsample of 52 men followed to age 70. These data are linked to an extensive battery of individual and family background measures gathered from childhood to age 17 — before entry into marriage. Applying IPTW to multiple specifications that also incorporate extensive time‐varying covariates in adulthood, being married is associated with an average reduction of approximately 35 percent in the odds of crime compared to nonmarried states for the same man. These results are robust, supporting the inference that states of marriage causally inhibit crime over the life course.     

THE EFFECTS OF LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES ON LONGITUDINAL TRAJECTORIES OF OFFENDING*

This study, which is based on individual criminal careers over a 60‐year period, focuses on the development of criminal behavior. It first examines the impact that life circumstances such as work and marriage have on offending, then tests whether the effects of these circumstances are different for different groups of offenders, and finally examines the extent to which the age‐crime relationship at the aggregate level can be explained by age‐graded differences in life circumstances. Official data were retrieved for a 4‐percent (N=4,615) sample of all individuals whose criminal case was tried in the Netherlands in 1977. Self‐report data were derived from a nationally representative survey administered in the Netherlands in 1996 to 2,244 individuals aged 15 years or older. In analyzing this data, we use semi‐parametric group‐based models. Results indicate that life circumstances substantially influence the chances of criminal behavior, and that the effects of these circumstances on offending differ across offender groups. Age‐graded changes in life circumstances, however, explain the aggregate age‐crime relationship only to a modest extent.     

ADOLESCENT VICTIMIZATION AND INCOME DEFICITS IN ADULTHOOD: RETHINKING THE COSTS OF CRIMINAL VIOLENCE FROM A LIFE‐COURSE PERSPECTIVE*

Estimating the financial costs of criminal violence to victims is important for assessing both the impact of crime on individuals and evaluating the feasibility and utility of various crime prevention, crime control, and criminal justice policies. Traditionally, such estimates focus on short‐term costs: costs connected to the victimization event itself and costs incurred during the immediate aftermath. Although the possibility of more long‐term costs is acknowledged, research has yet to articulate how and to what extent criminal violence impacts socioeconomic fortunes. In this article, I propose a life‐course model for estimating the long‐term costs of violent victimization. Using prospective, longitudinal data from a national sample of American adolescents, and retrospective data from a national sample of Canadians, I use this conceptual model to estimate income losses over the life cycle associated with violent victimization. Three significant results are reported. First, income losses from violent victimization are age‐graded, with the greatest costs occurring for victimization experienced in adolescence. Second, criminal violence experienced in adolescence appears to influence later earnings by disrupting processes of educational and occupational attainment. Third, the total costs of criminal violence over the life course for adolescents are considerable in comparison to estimates provided in previous research. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.     

ON THE RELIABILITY AND VALIDITY OF SELF‐REPORTED ILLEGAL EARNINGS: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE STUDY OF CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT*

The study of the monetary returns to criminal activity is a central component in many emerging areas of criminology, including rational choice and offender decision‐making, desistance, and criminal achievement. Scholars have been increasingly captivated with specification of the earnings function and with examining how variations in illegal earnings predict important outcomes such as persistence in offending. The potential utility of findings in related empirical studies hinges on the quality of the key measure, self‐reported illegal earnings. Yet to date scant attention has been paid by researchers to the measurement properties of this metric. We analyze self‐reported illegal earnings generated from a variety of instrumental crimes by using data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (n = 585) and the National Supported Work Project (n = 1,509), which are two longitudinal data sets of active offenders separated by more than 30 years. Findings based on analyses both within and between data sets reveal support for the internal consistency reliability and criterion validity of self‐reported illegal earnings. Moreover, the results reveal premiums in terms of higher earnings associated with different crime types, which are persistent both over time and across data sets. Implications and future directions for advancing the theoretical study of criminal achievement are also discussed.     

A LIFE‐COURSE PERSPECTIVE ON SPIRITUALITY AND DESISTANCE FROM CRIME*

Spirituality is a component of many drug and alcohol treatment strategies, and faith‐based programming is also common within prison settings. Yet research on religiosity—crime linkages has often relied on general youth or adult samples or has included a short time line for gauging positive effects. Life‐course researchers focused on serious delinquents, in turn, have often emphasized other factors associated with long‐term crime patterns, such as marital attachment and job stability, or the criminality of the individual's social ties. This study draws on quantitative and qualitative data derived from a long‐term follow‐up of a sample of serious adolescent male and female offenders to explore the role of spirituality and religious participation as influences on adult patterns of criminal involvement (N= 152). The respondents were first interviewed as adolescents, in 1982, and again as adults in 1995 and 2003. Results of longitudinal analyses that take into account self‐report and incarceration histories at both time periods do not reveal a significant association between these indices of religiosity and the likelihood of evidencing a pattern of sustained desistance. Our analysis of indepth life‐history interviews conducted with most respondents over these two time periods and 41 additional interviews focused specifically on spirituality and religion are used to explore in more detail the promise and challenges associated with relying on religiosity as a catalyst for sustained behavior change.     

Assessing the Spatial–Temporal Relationship Between Disorder and Violence

The relationship between disorder and violence has generated much debate in the field of criminology. While advocates of the broken windows thesis believe disorder is the root cause of crime, other researchers view both disorder and crime as analogous behaviors resulting from the breakdown of collective efficacy. Scholars from both sides of this debate, however, assume a long-term correlation between disorder and crime at places. This assumption has not been tested with a longitudinal dataset at a relatively small geographic unit of analysis. The current study used data collected in Seattle, Washington and utilized Group-based Trajectory Analysis and Joint Trajectory Analysis to explore the longitudinal relationship between disorder and violence. The results showed that disorder, just like crime, concentrates in a few “hot spots.” Additionally, the results showed that while the lack of disorder problems guarantees places to be violence free, having high levels of disorder predicts having violence problems only about 30% of time. As such, these findings point out the need for future theorization efforts on the disorder-violence nexus to include contextual factors which could explain this imperfect association between the two.     

EXPLAINING THE GENDER GAP IN CRIME: THE ROLE OF HEART RATE

Although it is well established that males engage in more crime compared with females, little is known about what accounts for the gender gap. Few studies have been aimed at empirically examining mediators of the gender–crime relationship in a longitudinal context. In this study, we test the hypothesis that a low resting heart rate partly mediates the relationship between gender and crime. In a sample of 894 participants, the resting heart rate at 11 years of age was examined alongside self‐reported and official conviction records for overall criminal offending, violence, serious violence, and drug‐related crime at 23 years of age. A low resting heart rate partially mediated the relationship between gender and all types of adult criminal offending, including violent and nonviolent crime. The mediation effects were significant after controlling for body mass index, race, social adversity, and activity level. Resting heart rate accounted for 5.4 percent to 17.1 percent of the gender difference in crime. This study is the first to produce results documenting that lower heart rates in males partly explain their higher levels of offending. Our findings complement traditional theoretical accounts of the gender gap and have implications for the advancement of integrative criminological theory.     

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUTH THEFT,MARIJUANA USE,DEPRESSION, AND POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE*

Explanations for the fact that crime tends to run in families have focused on the deprived social backgrounds of criminal parents, methods of child‐rearing, modeling processes, and genetic mechanisms. However, parental involvement in the criminal justice system itself also might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of crime and have other adverse effects on children's well‐being. We investigated the development of youth problem behavior in relation to parental arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the youngest and oldest samples of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal survey of 1,009 inner‐city boys. Parental arrest and conviction without incarceration did not predict the development of youth problem behavior. Parental incarceration was not associated with increases in marijuana use, depression, or poor academic performance. However, boys experiencing parental incarceration showed greater increases in theft compared with a control group matched on propensity scores. The association between parental incarceration and youth theft was stronger for White youth than for Black youth. Parenting and peer relations after parental incarceration explained about half of its effects on youth theft. Because the effects of parental incarceration were specific to youth theft, labeling and stigma processes might be particularly important for understanding the consequences of parental incarceration for children.     

Teenage childbirth and young adult criminal convictions: A quasi-experimental study of criminal outcomes for teenage mothers

Purpose

Teenage childbirth is associated with poor psychosocial outcomes for teen mothers. One example is that teen mothers have higher rates of antisocial behavior. The extant research has not been able to determine if teenage motherhood is independently associated with criminal behavior, or if the association is due to selection factors associated with both teenage childbirth and criminal behavior.

Methods

We used longitudinal data from Swedish national registers and sibling-comparisons (both full- and half-siblings) to identify the extent to which there is an independent association between teenage childbirth and mothers’ likelihood of criminal conviction between ages 20-30, or if the association is confounded by familial (including genetic or environmental) factors that make sisters similar.

Results

Women who began childbearing as teenagers were more likely to be convicted of a crime in young adulthood compared to women who delayed childbearing. When sisters were compared, the association between teenage childbirth and criminal convictions disappeared. Multivariate behavior genetic analyses suggest genetic and shared environmental account for the association.

Conclusions

The statistical association between teenage childbirth and early adulthood criminal convictions is confounded by genetic and shared environmental factors that influence both the likelihood of teenage childbirth and risk of early adulthood criminal conviction.     

Strain,Crime, and Contingencies

Hypotheses from General Strain theory are addressed using data from a random sample of adults in Raleigh, NC. Analyses examine three issues: (1) whether strain predicts self‐projected criminal behavior; controlling for past self‐reported crime; (2) whether negative emotions mediate the relationship between strain and projected crime; and (3) whether social support and criminal peers serve as contingencies or mediators for strain in predicting criminality. Results are generally consistent with previous studies focusing on youth. Three of four measures of strain are found to predict the crime measures. However, that relationship is not mediated by negative emotion and the measures of social support and criminal peers do not act as contingencies or mediators. The results suggest that strain may not operate through negative emotions and that theoretical refinement is needed to identify which potential contingencies are likely to be operating under various circumstances.     

VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE*

Although numerous theories suggest that voluntary organizations contribute to lower crime rates in neighborhoods, the evidence for this proposition is weak. Consequently, we propose a dynamic perspective for understanding the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime that involves longitudinal analyses and the measurement of the age of organizations. By using longitudinal data on a sample of census blocks (N = 87,641) located across 10 cities, we test the relationship between age‐graded measures of different types of voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime rates. We use fixed‐effects negative binomial regression models that focus on change within neighborhoods of the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime. Our results show that although each type of voluntary organization is found to exhibit crime‐reducing behavior in neighborhoods, we find that many of them are consistent with what we refer to as the “delayed impact scenario”—there is a pronounced delay between the placement of a voluntary organization and a neighborhood subsequently experiencing a reduction in crime. With protective effects of organizations typically not demonstrated until several years after being in the neighborhood, these patterns suggest a need for long‐term investment strategies when examining organizations.     

WORK,INCOME SUPPORT,AND CRIME IN THE DUTCH WELFARE STATE: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY FOLLOWING VULNERABLE YOUTH INTO ADULTHOOD

Life‐course criminological research has consistently suggested that employment can reduce criminal behavior. However, it is unclear whether the financial aspects of employment or the social control that inheres in employment best explains the relationship between employment and reduced offending. By using longitudinal information on a sample of men and women (N = 540) who were institutionalized in a Dutch juvenile justice institution in the 1990s, this study examines the effects of employment as well as the different types of income support on crime. Random‐ and fixed‐effects models show that for men, both work and income support are associated with a reduction in the rate of offending. For women, however, although employment is correlated with a lower offending rate, receiving income support, and in particular disability benefits, is correlated with a higher offending rate. The findings support both theories that stress the financial motivation for crime as well as theories that emphasize the importance of informal social control for reducing offending.