TOWARD AN ANALYTICAL CRIMINOLOGY: THE MICRO–MACRO PROBLEM,CAUSAL MECHANISMS,AND PUBLIC POLICY

In this address, I revisit the micro–macro problem in criminology, arguing for an “analytical criminology” that takes an integrated approach to the micro–macro problem. I begin by contrasting an integrated methodological‐individualist approach with traditional holist and individualist approaches. An integrated approach considers the concept of emergence and tackles the difficult problem of specifying causal mechanisms by which interactions among individuals produce social organizational outcomes. After presenting a few examples of micro–macro transitions relevant to criminology, I discuss research programs in sociology and economics that focus on these issues. I then discuss the implications of social interaction effects for making causal inferences about crime and for making crime policy recommendations.     

A Situational Model for Distinguishing Terrorist and Non-Terrorist Aerial Hijackings, 1948–2007

Despite the centrality of situational variables to crime theories, they remain uncommon in criminology. Based on the hypotheses drawn from the literature on situational determinants of crime, we examine whether aerial hijackings perpetrated by terrorists are situationally distinct from other aerial hijackings. We define terrorist hijackings as those that include threatened or actual use of illegal force or violence to attain a political, economic, religious or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation. Other aerial hijackings include those perpetrated for transportation or extortion purposes. Using a newly updated dataset, we examined 1,019 aerial hijackings that occurred around the world from 1948 to 2007, out of which we classified 122 as terrorism. Results provide strong support for the argument that situational factors measuring organizational resources distinguish terrorist from non-terrorist aerial hijackings, and partial support for the argument that situational factors measuring publicity distinguish these events.     

Differential Social Support,Differential Coercion,and Organized Criminal Activities

Utilizing differential social support and coercion theory, the study examines how levels of social support and coercion lead to involvement in organized criminal activities through the development of anger, low self-control, low social control, and access to illegitimate social support. The findings show that the association between social support and organized criminal activities is mediated through anger, self-control, social control, and access to illegitimate social support. Similarly, the relationship between coercion and organized criminal activities is mediated through anger, self-control, and illegitimate social support. The results also reveal that coercion has a direct effect on crime. The study offers preliminary theoretical support but more theoretical and empirical work is required to clarify the causal continuum of erraticness and consistency of central variables.     

面方犯罪学社会支持理论研究及其借鉴意义

社会支持理论在西方犯罪学领域产生与发展之前,早已存在并应用于精神卫生研究等领域。西方犯罪学社会支持理论极力推崇一种积极的刑事政策,这对于当前处于社会转型期的中国所面临的许多弱势群体犯罪问题,如青少年犯罪、女性犯罪、老年犯罪、农民工犯罪、农村留守人员犯罪等,具有一定的解释力,有着重要的理论借鉴价值和社会实践意义。     

西方犯罪学社会支持理论研究及其借鉴意义

社会支持理论在西方犯罪学领域产生与发展之前,早已存在并应用于精神卫生研究等领域。文章在对社会支持理论的定义及其相关命题、主要分类及功能价值进行介评后,着重对该理论的功效及缺陷进行了简要的评价与分析。进而指出：西方犯罪学社会支持理论极力推崇一种积极的刑事政策,这对于当前处于社会转型期的中国所面临的许多弱势群体犯罪问题,如青少年犯罪、女性犯罪、老年犯罪、农民工犯罪、农村留守人员犯罪等,具有一定的解释力,有着重要的理论借鉴价值和社会实践意义。     

西方国家“轻轻重重”两极化刑事政策评介

20世纪70年代以来,西方国家开始出现了两极化的刑事政策,其不仅体现在刑事实体立法之中,而且体现在刑事诉讼程序及刑事执行等动态运行的全过程之中.刑之谦抑的要求与犯罪高压态势之矛盾促成了两极化刑事政策的生成;调和刑罚报应目的与预防目的的综合刑论是两极化刑事政策的理论基石;刑法保护机能和保障机能之平衡是调整刑事政策的基准和杠杆;犯罪学研究的成果为两极化刑事政策提供了合理的理论支撑.     

Understanding Victim Support as Crime Prevention Work: The Construction of Young Victims and Villains in the Dominant Crime Victim Discourse in Sweden

Starting from the observation that a new victim category has emerged in the form of the ‘young crime victim’, this article explores the notion of support to young crime victims as crime prevention work, considering it as an important constituent of the dominant crime victim discourse among support professionals. In the context of the support work, the (young) ‘victim’ and the (young) ‘villain’ provide mutually necessary counterparts constructed in relation to each other. Corresponding to this division, two approaches in criminal and crime prevention policy and practice are then analysed using Garland's notions of ‘the criminology of the self’ and ‘the criminology of the other’. The first of these strategies is generally associated with rehabilitative measures (with the resulting normalization of the crime, its victims, and villains), while in the second punitive measures remain the norm (with the crime, its victims, and villains becoming ‘Otherized’). Yet, as shown within the context of rehabilitation organized as support to young crime victims, both of these (at first glance mutually contradictory) discourses are drawn upon and operationalized by the professional support staff constructing images of young victims and villains in their daily work. Help-seeking youths resistant to identifying as victims remain represented as (possible future) villains.     

DIFFERENTIAL COERCION,STREET YOUTH,AND VIOLENT CRIME*

Using a sample of 300 homeless street youths, this study examines differential coercion theory and the role that coercion and the socialpsychological deficits of anger, low self‐control, coercive modeling, coercive ideation, and control imbalances play in the generation of violent crime. Results from cross‐sectional and prospective offending models that examine the individual mediators reveal that coercion has a direct relationship with violent offending as well as a relationship that is mediated by low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation. Although control imbalances have a direct relationship with crime, they do not mediate the relationship between coercion and crime. In the cross‐sectional model that contains all the mediators, coercion, low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation are associated with crime. In the prospective model that contains all the mediators, only anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation remain associated with crime. Results are discussed regarding future theory development and policy implications.     

论犯罪学研究成果的转化——兼论犯罪学的良性发展机制

犯罪学研究成果应当及时转化为刑事立法、刑事政策、实务部门的具体决策以及社会公众防范犯罪的方法、手段等,切实发挥预防和控制犯罪的作用,充分为维护社会稳定大局服务.当前,犯罪学研究成果的转化面临较多的实际困难,关键在于研究成果的研发机制、中介机制、评价机制存在不同程度的缺陷和脱节,应当尽快建立健全犯罪学研究成果的转化机制,大力推动犯罪学的良性发展.     

Intersectionality,Rural Criminology,and Re-imaging the Boundaries of Critical Criminology

One of the significant shortcomings of the criminological canon, including its critical strands—feminist, cultural and green—has been its urbancentric bias. In this theoretical model, rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity and close density acquaintance networks. This article challenges the myth that rural communities are relatively crime free places of ‘moral virtue’ with no need for a closer scrutiny of rural context, rural places, and rural peoples about crime and other social problems. This challenge is likewise woven into the conceptual and empirical narratives of the other articles in this Special Edition, which we argue constitute an important body of innovative work, not just for reinvigorating debates in rural criminology, but also critical criminology. For without a critical perspective of place, the realities of context are too easily overlooked. A new criminology of crime and place will help keep both critical criminology and rural criminology firmly anchored in both the sociological and the criminological imagination. We argue that intersectionality, a framework that resists privileging any particular social structural category of analysis, but is cognisant of the power effects of colonialism, class, race and gender, can provide the theoretical scaffolding to further develop such a project.     

Public criminologies

Research Summary Public scholarship aspires to bring social science home to the individuals, communities, and institutions that are its focus of study. In particular, it seeks to narrow the yawning gap between public perceptions and the best available scientific evidence on issues of public concern. Yet nowhere is the gap between perceptions and evidence greater than in the study of crime. Here, we outline the prospects for a public criminology, conducting and disseminating research on crime, law, and deviance in dialogue with affected communities. We present historical data on the media discussion of criminology and sociology, and we outline the distinctive features of criminology—interdisciplinary, a subject matter that incites moral panics, and a practitioner base actively engaged in knowledge production—that push the boundaries of public scholarship. Policy Implications Discussions of public sociology have drawn a bright line separating policy work from professional, critical, and public scholarship. As the research and policy essays published in Criminology & Public Policy make clear, however, the best criminology often is conducted at the intersection of these domains. A vibrant public criminology will help to bring new voices to policy discussions while addressing common myths and misconceptions about crime.     

THE ROLE OF TURNING POINTS IN ESTABLISHING BASELINE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN PEOPLE IN DEVELOPMENTAL AND LIFE‐COURSE CRIMINOLOGY

Turning points, between‐person differences, and within‐person changes have all been linked to desistance from crime. Nevertheless, the means through which between‐person differences are frequently captured in life‐course criminology makes them intertwined with, and perhaps confounded by, turning points in life. We propose that a new way of capturing the between‐person effect—the baseline between‐person difference—could benefit theoretically informed tests of developmental and life‐course issues in criminology. Because they occur at one time point immediately preceding a turning point in life, we demonstrate that baseline between‐person differences establish meaningful theoretical connections to behavior and the way people change over time. By using panel data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative, we estimate models capturing within‐person change and baseline between‐person differences in social bonds (family support) and differential association (peer criminality) at the time of release from prison. The results demonstrate that baseline levels of family support protect people from postrelease substance use but not from crime. Baseline between‐person differences and within‐person changes in peer criminality, however, are robustly related to crime and substance use. Collectively, baseline between‐person differences seem critical for behavior and within‐person change over time, and the results carry implications for reentry‐based policy as well as for theory testing in developmental criminology more broadly.     

POSTMODERN THOUGHT AND CRIMINOLOGICAL DISCONTENT: NEW METAPHORS FOR UNDERSTANDING VIOLENCE*

Although postmodern theory has virtually exploded throughout the social sciences, thus far it has only begun to touch criminology. This piece identifies some of the principal themes associated with postmodern thought, reasons for the current interest in it, and its potential relevance for criminology. There are many postmodernisms, but special attention is paid here to the popular models borrowed from literary and linguistic analysis. Violence is used as a concrete example to explore these issues. The postmodern critique is a challenge not only to the philosophical underpinnings of traditional and empirical criminology, but also to the basic premises of both mainstream and progressive social policy responses to criminal violence.     

Social support as an organizing concept for criminology: Presidential address to the academy of criminal justice sciences

Although “social support” is present as a theme in many criminological writings, it has not been identified explicitly as a concept capable of organizing theory and research in criminology. Drawing on existing criminological and related writings, this address derives a series of propositions that form the foundation, in a preliminary way, for the “social support paradigm” of the study of crime and control. The overriding contention is that whether social support is delivered through government social programs, communities, social networks, families, interpersonal relations, or agents of the criminal justice system, it reduces criminal involvement. Further, I contend that insofar as the social support paradigm proves to be “Good Criminology”—establishing that nonsupportive policies and conditions are criminogenic—it can provide grounds for creating a more supportive, “Good Society.”     

Linking informal social control and restorative justice: moving social disorganization theory beyond community policing

Much of what is at the heart of social disorganization theory’s approach to neighborhood crime prevention has been ignored in favor of policies that are more closely associated with deterrence and rational choice theories. Specifically, ideas of informal social control and collective efficacy have often been translated into policies of community surveillance and the reporting of suspicious behaviors to the police. While these policies may make neighborhoods less attractive to offenders because they create higher certainty levels of recognition, and subsequently arrest, social disorganization theory, at its heart, suggests crime prevention policies of a very different nature: policies that are more closely associated with restorative justice, re‐integrative shaming and peacemaking criminology. These associations are highlighted and provide a conceptual model for a community crime prevention program that is more consistent with the underlying nature of social disorganization theory.     

Critical Criminology, Existential Humanism, and Social Justice: Exploring the Contours of Conceptual Integration

The relationship between critical criminology and social justice has been well documented, but efforts to provide a unified theory of social justice that cuts across and embodies the various strains of critical criminological thought have not been systematically researched. One useful approach for engaging in such a project comes from existential humanism, which draws attention to a number of life themes (e.g., the struggle to be free, being and becoming, redemption) and is compatible with critical criminology's commitment to radical social change. This article provisionally explores the boundaries of theoretical synthesis, mindful of those complex (and thorny) issues upon which successful conceptual integration depends, including definitions, assumptions, domains of inquiry, and modes of integration. This discussion concludes with an outline of the implications of a commentary for the future of critical criminology and for sustainable, meaningful praxis. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Peacemaking Criminology

This is an overview of the work of criminologists that informs how people build trust, safe and social security in the face of violent social differences. The article begins with a story of how the term “peacemaking” came to “criminology.” A theory of peacemaking emerging from this beginning is then stated, including a review of criminological literature that informs the theory. The theory is grounded in a paradigmatic departure from criminology’s tradition—the study of crime and criminality—to proposing instead of studying what replaces human separation with cooperation and mutual trust. This paradigm implies that stories of dispute handling are its most authoritative data, especially stories people tell about their own relations. It also implies new ways of evaluating the fruits of adopting a peacemaking paradigm for learning and living.     

Intersectional Criminology: Interrogating Identity and Power in Criminological Research and Theory

Intersectional criminology is a theoretical approach that necessitates a critical reflection on the impact of interconnected identities and statuses of individuals and groups in relation to their experiences with crime, the social control of crime, and any crime-related issues. This approach is grounded in intersectionality, a concept developed from the tenets of women of color feminist theory and activism. To demonstrate how intersectionality is useful in criminology, this article reviews a sampling of feminist and critical research conducted on Black girls’ and women’s experiences with crime, victimization, and criminal legal system processes. This research demonstrates the interlaced social impacts of race, gender, femininity/masculinity ideals, sexuality, and socioeconomic class. This article also provides a basis for widely deploying an intersectional approach throughout the field of criminology across all social identities and statuses.     

Ironies of Crime, Control, and Criminology

Irony is a kind of communication in which shared knowledge about a particular context is formed as a counter-intuitive statement with hidden meaning. Irony is important because it branches the tree of knowledge and balances morality. This paper reviews the definition and value of irony; examines ironic works on crime and control; proposes an irony of criminology: it can be studied with science and thereby improved; draws on this idea to provide a method-based theory of theory and findings; and concludes by discussing implications for future work in reflexive criminology.