Serious Youth Violence and Innovative Prevention: On the Emerging Link Between Public Health and Criminology

It was not so long ago that scholarly writings pointed to the vast chasm that existed between criminal justice and public health approaches to understanding and controlling interpersonal violence. Other scholarship of the day examined how criminal justice and criminology could benefit from adopting elements of the public health approach. For sure, there still exist many differences in how the two disciplines approach the violence problem, but over the years there have been some promising developments at the intersection of public health and criminology. This paper surveys the evolving link between public health and criminology, with a special focus on serious youth violence. It is concerned with both research and practice and how these efforts—across primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention strategies—are contributing to improved public health-criminology collaborations or public health-influenced programs that have a discernable impact on youth violence.     

Hate,Threats, and Violence. A Register Study of Persons Suspected of Hate Crime

This article focuses on individuals suspected of hate crimes with xenophobic, Islamophobic, and homophobic motives. The objective is to fill a gap in the knowledge left by existing research, which has primarily focused on victims and definitional problems. This article's genuine contribution to new research is the comparative perspective and the study of co-offending and specialization in offences for persons suspected for hate crimes. To find persons suspected for hate crimes, register data relating to hate-crime-motivated assault and unlawful threats/molestation offences from 2006 have been used. The study is based on a total of 1,910 offence reports together with information from the Registers of Suspected and Convicted Offenders for 558 persons suspected for hate crimes. Xenophobic hate crimes are over-represented in the material by comparison with homophobic and Islamophobic hate crimes. In the reports that have information about the relation between victim and perpetrators, it is more common for the perpetrators to be known than unknown to the victims. In cases where a suspected person has been identified, males are in a clear majority. Those suspected of homophobic hate crimes have the lowest mean age. Only a small number of offence reports include information on suspected co-offenders. Fifty-five per cent of the suspected people have prior registered convictions. It is very uncommon for them to be specialized in violent offences or unlawful threats/molestation, however. It is not possible to generalize the results to perpetrators of hate crimes, because 70% of the offence reports did not have information of suspected persons.     

Preventing Crime is Hard Work: Early Intervention,Developmental Criminology,and the Enduring Legacy of James Q. Wilson

Objective

The late James Q. Wilson (1931-2012) was a prolific scholar and made many important contributions to the field of criminology. Less well known, however, is that Wilson was a great advocate of early prevention of delinquency and later offending. This essay examines this aspect of Wilson's overall contribution to criminology.

Materials and methods

Narrative review of Wilson's research and writings on early crime prevention and developmental criminology.

Results

Three key events delineate Wilson's long-lasting support for early crime prevention: his 1983 "Raising Kids" article with its special focus on family-based prevention; his help to initiate and champion developmental and longitudinal research on offending in the 1980s and 1990s; and his influential writings and behind-the-scenes work on early prevention throughout the 1990s and 2000s.

Conclusions

Wilson played an important role in advocating for early crime prevention. Without question, this is part of his enduring legacy to the field of criminology.     

On the Road to the Rule of Law: Crime, Crime Control, and Public Opinion in China

Since 1978, the Chinese reform policy has brought fast economic developments and social change but also considerably higher crime levels. China’s rapid modernization has resulted in a situation of increased opportunities and Durkheimian anomie. The Chinese government responds to the worsening crime situation with punitive criminal sanctions, especially under the ‘strike hard’ policy. However, a punitive crime control ideology and repressive criminal norms are neither effective in stopping the crime wave nor in compliance with the aim to establish the rule of law. After examining the negative effects the strike hard policy has brought to the Chinese criminal justice, we present findings from a recent web survey among Chinese students in Germany (N=ca. 900). We use these data to explore the punitive attitudes, esp. towards the death penalty, among the Chinese young elite.     

Dating Violence Victimization,Relationship Satisfaction,Mental Health Problems,and Acceptability of Violence: A Comparison of Men and Women

Two of the most common reported consequences of dating violence are its impact on the victim’s satisfaction with their romantic relationship and its impact on the victim’s mental health. Recent research suggests that the strength of these relationships may be moderated by the degree to which the dating violence is acceptable to the victim. However, studies of these relationships have been limited to samples of women. The purpose of the present research was to examine the relationships among dating violence victimization, relationship satisfaction, mental health problems, and acceptability of violence for a sample that includes not only female victims, but also male victims. Using a sample of 155 male and 417 female college students, hierarchical regression analyses found that dating violence victimization is associated with relationship satisfaction and mental health problems for both men and women. For men, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and the mental health problems of depression, anxiety, and somatization. For women, acceptability of violence moderated the relationship between dating violence victimization and relationship satisfaction only.