THE DECLINE OF ELITE HOMICIDE

Criminological research consistently shows that interpersonal homicide is largely confined to low-status people. Yet, anthropological and historical materials reveal that in earlier and simpler societies homicide was found throughout the status hierarchy. Using theory developed by Donald Black, I argue that a critical factor in the decline of lethal conflict among social elites is the increased availability of legal means of handling conflict. An implication is that since a focus on modern societies and their developed legal systems yields a limited and even distorted empirical picture of lethal violence, criminologists should strive to formulate theories that are cross-cultural and historical in scope.     

The Accuracy of Public Beliefs about Crime Further Evidence

Criminologists largely agree that public beliefs about crime are inaccurate, and some seem willing to abandon crime reduction as a policy goal in favor of strategies which directly affect public perceptions of crime. Yet direct tests of the accuracy of public beliefs about crime are rare. In a sample survey of Tucson adults, respondents were asked to estimate the percentage of Tucson juveniles who had committed each of fifteen offenses (i.e., the categorical rates of the offenses) and the offender sex ratio for each offense. Responses were compared with self-reported data from students in three Tucson high schools. Among the fifteen offenses there is remarkable agreement between the perceived categorical rates, sex ratios, and the self-reported figures. Taken in conjunction with earlier studies, these findings suggest that strategies designed to reduce the social consequences of crime by altering public beliefs about crime are unlikely to succeed unless they are accompanied by true reductions in the crime rate.     

ILLEGAL ENTERPRISE: A THEORETICAL AND HISTORICAL INTERPRETATION *

Illegal enterprise—defined as the sale of illegal goods and services to customers who know that the goods or services are illegal—has long been a central part of the American underworld, but it has received little attention as a separate criminological category. Although such activities are often relatively short term and small scale when compared with legal businesses, three major factors explain the cooperation that sometimes emerges among illegal entrepreneurs. The first factor is systematic corruption, which often permits police or politicians to bring order to illegal activities within a political subdivision. A second factor is overlapping partnerships by which entrepreneurs often launch and maintain illegal businesses. A third factor is the internal economic characteristics of illegal businesses, which shape the manner in which they operate. The paper explores the implications of each factor through historical examples and suggests hypotheses concerning the changing structure of illegal enterprises in American cities.     

WHAT IS THE PERCEIVED SERIOUSNESS OF CRIMES?

Although criminologists have measured the perceived seriousness of offenses for decades, there is no consensus on the meaning of seriousness, nor is there clear evidence as to what individuals have in mind when they rate the seriousness of crimes. Seriousness judgments could reflect normative evaluations of offenses (i.e., their wrongfulness) or factual judgments about their harmfulness to victims. Survey data from Dallas residents show that the two dimensions are distinct and that conventional classes of crime (personal, property, public order) systematically differ on the two dimensions. Where crimes are perceived to be more wrong than harmful, seriousness mirrors wrongfulness. Where crimes are perceived to be more harmful than wrong, harmfulness predominates. A substantial minority of respondents, however, did not perceive differences in the moral gravity of crimes, judging the seriousness of crimes solely on the basis of harmfulness. These and other findings indicate that seriousness judgments are more structured and complex than commonly supposed and that conventional measures of seriousness, when applied to substantive problems, may mask or obscure distinct mechanisms of evaluation.     

Determinants of Municipal Bond Ratings for General‐Purpose Governments: An Empirical Analysis

In the wake of the destabilization of the tax‐exempt bond insurance industry, this paper presents an ordered probit model of the determinants of the credit ratings of 965 county and city governments from throughout the nation. The underlying Moody's rating of these governments is posited as a function of a vector of publicly available economic, demographic, governmental, fiscal, and financial variables. The empirical results demonstrate the relative importance of economic base diversity, the growth rates of earnings, and population as well as existing full faith and credit debt on credit ratings. Additionally, our findings support the proposition that the existence of tax limits reduce the perception of credit quality, while expenditure limits raise credit ratings.     

The Eurozone as a Flawed Currency Area

The European single currency system has come under unprecedented strain during the past three years and there is little reason to assume that this will diminish, in any significant way, in the near future. This article briefly explores the background to the current eurozone crisis before outlining a number of potential solutions. Specifically, we discuss how the credit crunch induced recession of 2008 triggered the problems within the eurozone regarding sovereign debt, looking at the issues of spill‐over and free‐rider effects, together with the implementation of EMU fiscal rules. The analysis is then extended by outlining a series of potential remedies. This consists of a critical evaluation of solutions that the EU has already instigated (i.e. moral persuasion, financial relief measures and debt default), together with a series of alternative propositions (i.e. fiscal federalism and a European Clearing Union) and even the collapse of the euro.