Self Reports of Violence

Self-report data are used to compare the relative incidence of aggression and violence among ex-mental patients, ex-offenders, and the general population and to examine the effect of socio-demographic variables on the frequency of these behaviors. Frequency was measured by reported frequencies of aggressive behaviors during the preceding year, by whether respondents could recall serious disputes, and by the recency of the disputes they recalled. In support of studies that have relied on official arrest statistics, the evidence suggests that ex-offenders engage in violence with greater frequency than the other two groups and that they have a greater tendency to physically attack and injure their antagonists when involved in violent disputes. Ex-mental patients appear to use weapons more frequently than the general population, but they are no more likely to injure antagonists. In contrast to labeling theory, police were no more likely to become involved or to make an arrest in incidents involving ex-patients or ex-offenders.     

TRENDS IN VIOLENT CRIME AMONG EX-MENTAL PATIENTS

A central component of the public's conception of the mentally ill is that they are dangerous. This belief receives support from recent studies of the arrest rates of ex-mental patients which suggest that arrests for violent crimes have increased. In order to investigate this issue, samples were taken at two points in time. Analysis of arrest rates revealed that very few ex-mental patients were subsequently arrested for violent crimes, although these rates were higher and increasing faster than these of the general population. Mast significant were the findings that subsequent arrests were best explained by the number of prior arrests and that the percentage of patients with a history of criminal behavior has increased dramatically over time. The implications of these trends in violent crime among ex-mental patients for the perceived link between mental illness and violence and for the social control functions of society are discussed.     

Police organizational factors,the racial composition of the police,and the probability of arrest

While past research has considered the effects of police organizational characteristics on various outcomes, including arrest rates, relatively little research has explored the role of the racial composition of the police and its association with race‐specific arrest rates. Furthermore, no research has explored the association between arrest probabilities for Black and White offenders and police organizational factors. Using data from the 2000 National Incident‐Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the 2000 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), and the 2000 decennial Census, the present exploratory study employs multilevel modeling to examine the association between police organizational factors including the percentage of the police force that is Black and arrest probabilities for offenders involved in 19,099 aggravated assaults and 100,859 simple assaults across 105 small cities. Results show that for simple assaults, the relative size of the Black police force is associated with the risk of arrest for both Black and White offenders. Furthermore, departments with relatively more Black police officers are found to have the largest gap in the arrest probabilities for White and Black offenders, although Whites are more likely to be arrested for assaults than Blacks, regardless of the racial composition of the police. Results also show those departments with more written policy directives, relatively larger administrative component, a higher educational‐level requirement, and centralized police departments have the highest arrest probabilities. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.     

Gender, Police Arrest Decisions, and Notions of Chivalry

The extent of preferential treatment toward female offenders during arrest has been a neglected topic in research on female criminality. This article uses data collected in 1977 during police-suspect encounters with 785 males and females to explore the existence of chivalrous treatment of female offenders in the initial stages of criminal processing. These data indicate that chivalry exists at the stage of arrest for those women who display appropriate gender behaviors and characteristics. In general, the findings suggest that female suspects who deviate from stereotypic gender expectations lose the advantage that may be extended to female offenders. Specifically, older, white, female suspects are less likely to be arrested than their younger, black or hostile sisters. In addition, in the initial stage of criminal processing, female property offenders receive no leniency, and some evidence suggests that offenses against property weigh we heavily in arrest decisions for females than for males. Differences in the factors influencing police arrest decisions for male and female suspects are also examined.     

Domestic violence,domestic dispute reporting,and police disposition patterns: A pilot study

The data supported prior research findings that, in general, the police response to domestic dispute and violence incidents does not result in criminal complaints and subsequently, no action is taken. Considered separately, urban areas produce a lower reported domestic dispute rate, but display a stronger tendency to arrest offenders under the Ohio Domestic Violence Program and disputes result in action not being taken more often than in suburban and less often than in rural areas. Surburban areas evidence the highest reported domestic dispute rate, the lowest tendency to initiate criminal complaints under the Ohio Domestic Violence Program, and tend to arrest offenders less often and make fewer referrals to other agencies than urban areas. Rural areas have a higher reported domestic dispute rate than urban areas, arrest fewer offenders, and make more referrals to other agencies than suburban areas. The data suggested that domestic dispute and violence incidents are handled differently by urban. suburban, and rural police jurisdictions.     

The imprisoned nonviolent drug offender: Specialized martyr or versatile career criminal?

Some observers oppose imprisoning nonviolent drug offenders because they view incarceration as costly and such persons as generally benign. The careercriminal literature has established that perpetrators, including drug violators, commit an array of offenses. The current study merges these debates using a sample of 500 arrested adults selected from an urban jail in the western United States. Drug offenders amassed a much more extensive arrest history than other suspects net the effects of age, race, sex, prison history, and arrest onset. Drug offenders are quite versatile and do not conform to the image of specialized violators who are nominally criminal.     

RISK,RACE, AND RECIDIVISM: PREDICTIVE BIAS AND DISPARATE IMPACT*

One way to unwind mass incarceration without compromising public safety is to use risk assessment instruments in sentencing and corrections. Although these instruments figure prominently in current reforms, critics argue that benefits in crime control will be offset by an adverse effect on racial minorities. Based on a sample of 34,794 federal offenders, we examine the relationships among race, risk assessment [the Post Conviction Risk Assessment (PCRA)], and future arrest. First, application of well‐established principles of psychological science revealed little evidence of test bias for the PCRA—the instrument strongly predicts arrest for both Black and White offenders, and a given score has essentially the same meaning—that is, the same probability of recidivism—across groups. Second, Black offenders obtain higher average PCRA scores than do White offenders (d = .34; 13.5 percent nonoverlap in groups’ scores), so some applications could create disparate impact. Third, most (66 percent) of the racial difference in PCRA scores is attributable to criminal history—which is already embedded in sentencing guidelines. Finally, criminal history is not a proxy for race, but instead it mediates the relationship between race and future arrest. Data are more helpful than rhetoric if the goal is to improve practice at this opportune moment in history.     

THE SIZE OF THE “CRIMINAL POPULATION”: THE PREVALENCE AND INCIDENCE OF ADULT ARREST*

The recent emphasis in criminological theory and research on “chronic offenders” assumes that involvement in crime is concentrated among a small group of offenders rather than being widespread in the population. To address this question, this study employs a longitudinal data base on criminal histories to estimate the prevalence of arrest—defined as the proportion of a population ever arrested—and the incidence of arrest—defined as the number of arrests incurred by those ever arrested—for an age cohort of young adults between the ages of 18 and 29. The results show that being arrested is a relatively common experience for young adults: nearly one-quarter of the entire cohort and one-third of the males in the cohort were arrested at least once. One of six males and two of five black males were arrested for an index offense. The data on incidence reveal the presence of a subset of “chronic offenders” who are responsible for a disproportionate number of arrests. However, defined in terms of three or more arrests for any offense, their numbers are smaller, but the data suggest it may be difficult to distinguish “chronic offenders” from “one-time” offenders because 60% do not recidivate. These findings suggest that the current preoccupation with chronic offenders may obscure the broader social structural factors that cause very large segments of the population to come into conflict with the law.     

SPECIALIZATION IN VIOLENCE: EVIDENCE OF A CRIMINAL SUBGROUP*

This study examines the criminal arrest records of a Danish birth cohort of 28,884 men to test the hypothesis that specialization exists for violent offending. Property offending is included for comparison. Specialization in violence is found to exist for offenders with more than three arrests, and specialization in property offending, for offenders with fewer than four arrests. Knowledge of past violent offending is discussed as a potentially valuable part of the predictive equation of future violence.     

Does the Criminal Justice System Treat Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Offenders Leniently?

We examine whether men who physically assault their female partners or who commit sexual assault receive more lenient treatment than offenders who commit other types of assaults. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women Survey do not support these hypotheses. Rather, they suggest that women who assault their male partners are particularly likely to avoid arrest. In addition, both men and women who assault partners are more likely to avoid conviction than other offenders. Evidence suggests that there has been an increase over time in rates of arrest and conviction for partner violence.     

Estimation of arrest careers using hierarchical stochastic models

This paper introduces a general procedure using hierarchical stochastic models for characterizing criminal careers within a population of heterogeneous offenders. Individuals engage in criminal careers which are treated as stochastic processes governed by fixed parameters (e.g., a rate parameter), and these parameters come from specified distributions. The parameters of these distributions at the upper level of the hierarchy must then be specified. The models are estimated using data on all persons arrested at least once in the six-county Detroit Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area during the 4 years 1974–1977 for a criterion offense (an index crime other than larceny) and arrested at least once for robbery through April 1979. The collected data set is not a random sample of all such offenders in the population. There is a bias toward selecting those with a higher arrest frequency. In order to make more general inferences, statistical adjustment was needed to overcome the arrest-frequency sampling bias. We construct a series of models for the arrest career and fit the models with the data set of arrests. After correcting biases in the data, we estimate the model parameters using empirical Bayes methods and then examine the resulting models.     

Drug use and criminal activity among rural probationers with DUI histories

The present study examined whether ever being arrested for driving under the influence (DUI) was associated with higher levels of substance use and criminal activity in a sample of 800 probationers. Lifetime and 30-day histories of substance use and criminal activity were compared across three groups of probationers from rural Kentucky: those with a single DUI arrest, those with two or more DUI arrests, and those with no DUI arrests. A larger percentage of probationers with a DUI arrest reported lifetime and 30-day substance use than non-DUI offenders in almost all drug and alcohol categories. Higher prevalence of criminal activity was limited primarily to the multiple DUI arrest group. Findings add to the literature on rural substance abusers and indicate that DUI may be used as a marker to help identify opportunities for targeted substance abuse interventions.     

Only a Matter of Time? The Role of Criminal Competence in Avoiding Arrest

While prior research has shown that the probability of detection plays a role in the decision-making of many offenders, much less is known on offenders’ relative success in avoiding arrest. In this study, we draw from detailed criminal career data on 172 offenders involved in lucrative criminal activities to examine the role of criminal competence in the probability of being arrested in a given month. We examine a particular aspect of competence, criminal efficiency, which is defined as the ability to earn a relatively large amount of money for each crime committed. Our research design allows us to disentangle the effect of criminal efficiency as a static trait of offenders from the dynamic variations in efficiency that offenders experience over time. Results show that efficiency is a strong, negative predictor of arrest, both at the static and dynamic levels.     

Moroccan adolescent suspect offenders in the Netherlands: ethnic differences in offender profiles

Ethnic minority youths are over-represented in the juvenile justice system in Western societies. However, research on the nature of crime committed by these youths is lacking. In the present study, offending patterns of incarcerated native Dutch adolescents and adolescents of Moroccan origin were compared. Criminal record data were used to examine the offence history of 291 incarcerated adolescents. Offender types were determined through latent class analysis. Adolescents of Moroccan origin were incarcerated more often, for more offences and at a younger age than native Dutch adolescents. A four-class model of offender types was found: property offenders, violent offenders, sexual offenders and arsonists. Property offenders were mainly Moroccan adolescents, the other offender types consisted predominantly of native Dutch adolescents. Moroccan adolescents in pre-trial arrest in the Netherlands can be characterized as early starting offenders who persist in being incarcerated for property-based crime.     

Friends with(out) benefits: co-offending and re-arrest

Research shows that co-offending has contradictory effects on rates of re-arrest. On the one hand, group offending may be riskier: for example, co-offenders might be targeted by police or might snitch to protect themselves. Criminal networks may also have indirect effects: offenders embedded in criminal networks commit more offences and thus should have a higher risk of being arrested at some point. On the other hand, networks generate steady criminal opportunities with relatively low risk of arrest and high monetary benefits (e.g. drug trafficking). Few authors have empirically explored the relation between co-offending and re-arrest. This article does so using data from seven years of arrest records in the province of Quebec, Canada. The analysis is designed to explore why some offenders are re-arrested after an initial arrest while others are not. It focuses on the factors involved in re-arrest, considering two distinct levels of measures of co-offending. The first level of analysis takes into account a situational measure that indicates whether a given offence was committed by co-offenders (group offence). The second level is used to examine whether being part of a criminal network influences re-arrest. For offenders embedded in such networks, two network features (degree centrality and clustering coefficient) show that the global position of individuals within the Quebec arrest network are analysed. Our results suggest that co-offending is a crucial factor that should be taken into account when looking at the odds of being caught again. The use of generalised linear mixed model brings interesting nuances about the impact of co-offending. The article adds to the recently growing literature on the link between networks and criminal careers.     

REASSESSING TRENDS IN BLACK VIOLENT CRIME, 1980–2008: SORTING OUT THE “HISPANIC EFFECT” IN UNIFORM CRIME REPORTS ARRESTS,NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY OFFENDER ESTIMATES,AND U.S. PRISONER COUNTS*

Recent studies suggest a decline in the relative Black effect on violent crime in recent decades and interpret this decline as resulting from greater upward mobility among African Americans during the past several decades. However, other assessments of racial stratification in American society suggest at least as much durability as change in Black social mobility since the 1980s. Our goal is to assess how patterns of racial disparity in violent crime and incarceration have changed from 1980 to 2008. We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Using 1980–2008 California and New York arrest data to adjust for this “Hispanic effect” in national Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, we assess whether the observed national decline in racial disparities in violent crime is an artifact of the growth in Hispanic populations and offenders. Results suggest that little overall change has occurred in the Black share of violent offending in both UCR and NCVS estimates during the last 30 years. In addition, racial imbalances in arrest versus incarceration levels across the index violent crimes are both small and comparably sized across the study period. We conclude by discussing the consistency of these findings with trends in economic and social integration of Blacks in American society during the past 50 years.     

Self-Reported Violent Offending Among Subjects with Genius-Level IQ Scores

While research indicates offenders have IQ scores approximately eight points below the population average of 100, very little is known about the crimes of individuals with above-average IQ scores. The current research is not limited to acts of family violence, but it describes the self-reported offending of 465 high-IQ subjects for eight violent crimes: robbery, carrying a concealed weapon, making a serious threat, serious assault, homicide, constructing an explosive device, kidnapping, and attempting suicide. Rates of prevalence and incidence are reported and compared to the rates from a control group of 756 individuals with average IQ scores. High-IQ subjects reported higher rates of prevalence, incidence, and arrest, but lower levels of conviction, than controls. A significant positive correlation exists for offenders between IQ score and lifetime incidence rate for robbery, homicide, and kidnapping, and a significant negative correlation exists between IQ score and incidence of attempted suicide.     

Types of crimes committed by repeat DUI offenders

This study investigates whether repeat driving under the influence (DUI) offenders have more extensive histories of violent, property, and drug crimes than first-time drunk drivers. It also offers an exploratory investigation into the extent of their criminal specialization. Negative binomial regression was performed on arrest and criminal history data from a systematic random sample of 429 DUI arrestees. Analyses controlling for age, gender, ethnicity, and employment found that being a repeat DUI offender increased the total number of violent and property convictions (regardless of severity) and petty misdemeanor/violation property convictions. The results suggest DUI recidivists are generalists rather than specialists and that impaired driving is best viewed as just one manifestation of a host of deviant behaviors. They also illustrate the challenges of rehabilitating and deterring DUI recidivists and the potential differences between first-time and repeat DUI offenders. The findings should not be interpreted as support of enforcement or deterrent DUI policies that focus on repeat offenders, as limited resources are most efficiently directed at the general population of impaired drivers.     

Juvenile female and male sex offenders: a comparison of offender, victim, and judicial processing characteristics

This research examines 61 juvenile female sex offenders in terms of their offending patterns, demographics, and victim characteristics; these findings are compared to 122 juvenile male sex offenders. Relying on sex offender registration data and criminal history records, bivariate analyses are conducted to assess male-female differences. Logistic regression is also employed to further assess group membership (male and female). Females were typically younger than males at the time of their arrest for a sex offense. Female offenders also chose male and female victims proportionately, whereas males were more likely to choose female victims. Logistic regression analysis revealed two significant predictors of the offender's sex: victim's sex and length of sentence. This research, therefore, indicates different modalities of offense characteristics for males and females, which predicates different management strategies in terms of identification for these groups of offenders.     

Sexual predator civil commitment: a comparison of selected and released offenders

This study compared two groups of sex offenders who were considered for civil commitment under Florida's Jimmy Ryce Act: Two hundred twenty-nine sex offenders who were recommended by forensic evaluators to be civilly committed and 221 sex offenders who were recommended for release. It was hypothesized that selected offenders would be more likely to display risk factors for sex offense recidivism than those who did not meet criteria. Data analyses revealed that selected offenders, as a group, scored significantly higher on actuarial risk assessment instruments. There were also significant differences between the groups on other risk factors that have been empirically correlated with sexual recidivism. Selected offenders had higher frequencies of paraphilia diagnoses and antisocial personality. These findings supported the hypotheses and suggested that evaluators are correctly selecting for civil commitment those sex offenders who have a mental abnormality predisposing them to sexual violence and who are at higher risk for reoffense.