EXAMINING THE PREVALENCE OF CRIMINAL DESISTANCE*

Criminological theorists and criminal justice policy makers place a great deal of importance on the idea of desistance. In general terms, criminal desistance refers to a cessation of offending activity among those who have offended in the past. Some significant challenges await those who would estimate the relative size of the desisting population or attempt to identify factors that predict membership in that population. In this paper, we consider several different analytic frameworks that represent an array of plausible definitions. We then illustrate some of our ideas with an empirical example from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort Study.     

THE STABILITY OF CRIMINAL POTENTIAL FROM CHILDHOOD TO ADULTHOOD*

This paper examines two alternative interpretations of the well-documented positive association between past and future criminal behavior. One is that prior participation has a genuine behavioral impact that increases the likelihood of future participation. The second is that there are stable, unmeasured differences in criminal potential across the population. Many general theories of crime can be interpreted as suggesting one of these interpretations. Based on an analysis of a panel data set that tracks a sample of males for over 20 years, the results suggest that the positive association is largely attributable to stable, unmeasured individual differences.     

SPECIALIZATION AND THE CRIMINAL CAREER*

Hirschi recently (1985) attempted to show the compatibility of social control with rational choice theory. This effort by Hirschi is noteworthy because, if successful, he could provide a connection between positive and classical sentiments which have traditionally appeared in contention. Hirschi fails, however, to achieve his objective and is hindered by what he views as the incompatible objectives of the two theories. Hirschi uses the recently accepted findings which indicate lack of specialization among persons involved in illegal behavior to illustrate the difference he sees between criminality and crime and, thus, the divergence between social control and rational choice. This paper attempts to remove the barrier found by Hirschi by providing improved measurement of specialization, such as has been proposed by Farrington (1986) and Klein (1984), and by placing the results in a more realistic criminal careers perspective than has been done in previous studies. This study utilizes data from the 1958 Philadelphia Birth Cohort. With information to age 26 for 27,160 persons, these data are perhaps better suited to investigate this topic than any available.     

REDEMPTION IN THE PRESENCE OF WIDESPREAD CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS*

Criminal background checks have now become ubiquitous because of advances in information technology and growing concerns about employer liability. Also, a large number of individual criminal records have accumulated and have been computerized in state repositories and commercial databases. As a result, many ex‐offenders seeking employment could be haunted by a stale record. Recidivism probability declines with time “clean,” so some point in time is reached when a person with a criminal record, who remained free of further contact with the criminal justice system, is of no greater risk than a counterpart of the same age—an indication of redemption from the mark of crime. Very little information exists on this measure of time until redemption and on how its value varies with the crime type and the offender's age at the time of the earlier event. Using data from a state criminal‐history repository, we estimate the declining hazard of rearrest with time clean. We first estimate a point of redemption as the time when the hazard intersects the age–crime curve, which represents the arrest risk for the general population of the same age. We also estimate another similar redemption point when the declining hazard comes “sufficiently close” to the hazard of those who have never been arrested. We estimate both measures of redemption as a function of the age and the crime type of the earlier arrest. These findings aid in the development of guidelines for the users of background checking and in developing regulations to enhance employment opportunities for ex‐offenders.     

THE STRUCTURAL SIMILARITY OF PROCESSES GENERATING CRIMINAL AND ANALOGOUS BEHAVIORS*

It is possible to distinguish between broad-domain theories that offer an explanation for all phenomena of interest to a discipline and narrow-domain theories that attempt to explain a subset of those phenomena. In criminology, this distinction has prompted theorists and researchers to confront the question of whether the same etiological process can explain variation in all types of criminal offending behavior or whether it will be necessary to adopt different theories to explain variation in different kinds of criminal behavior. One broad-domain theory, advanced by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), contends that a variable called “self-control” can account for variation in all kinds of criminal conduct as well as variation in many acts that are “analogous” to crime in some ways but are not actually criminal. Analogous behaviors include, among other things, smoking, drinking, involvement in accidents, gambling, and loitering. Using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 369 males), we attempt to define operationally the concept of self-control with a set of variables measured at ages 8–9. We then examine the empirical association between this self-control measure and self-reported involvement in a variety of criminal and analogous acts during adolescence. In support of Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, our results indicate that self-control is associated with both outcomes and that the strength of the association is approximately equal. Contrary to the expectations of their theory, however, was our finding that the covariance between criminal and analogous behaviors could not be explained entirely by variations in self-control. This finding suggests that factors other than time-stable differences in criminal propensity do matter for criminal and legal, but, risky behaviors.     

INTERORGANIZATIONAL UTILITY OF WELFARE STIGMA IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM*

The appropriation of “welfare stigma” or stereotypes about poor people's overreliance and abuse of public aid in two core criminal justice functions is examined: felony adjudication in a court system and space allocation in a jail. Through a comparative ethnographic study in which an abductive analysis of data (20 months of fieldwork) was used, we show that criminal justice gatekeepers utilize welfare stigma to create stricter eligibility criteria for due process in criminal courts and occupancy in jails. Specifically, the number of court appearances, motions, trials, jail beds, food, showers, and medical services is considered by professionals to be the benefits that individuals seek to access and abuse. Professionals view their role as preventing (rather than granting) access to these resources. The comparative nature of our data reveals that welfare stigma has interorganizational utility by serving two different organizational goals: It streamlines convictions in courts, which pulls defendants through adjudication, and conversely, it expands early release from jails, which pulls inmates out of the custody population. In the context of diminishing social safety nets, our findings have implications for understanding how discretion is exercised in an American criminal justice system increasingly tasked with the distribution of social services to the urban poor.     

THE EFFECT OF CRIMINAL VICTIMIZATION ON A HOUSEHOLD'S MOVING DECISION*

Only a small body of research addresses the impact of criminal victimization on moving (Skogan, 1990; Taub et al. 1984). Knowledge of this under-researched relationship is important for three reasons. First, moving is costly to the victim both in monetary and psychological terms. Second, if a victimization-mobility relationship exists, then it may partially explain why people migrate to suburban areas from cities. Third, because residential mobility reduces social control that, in turn, potentially results in more crime, evidence that criminal victimization leads to more mobility may help explain a cycle that perpetuates disorder and neighborhood decline (Bursik and Grasmick, 1993; Horwitz, 1990; Miethe and Meier, 1994; Skogan, 1990; Skogan and Maxfield, 1981). This study uses a longitudinal version of the National Crime Survey that includes 22, 375 households to test the hypothesis that criminal victimization is associated with an increased probability that a household moves.     

CRIMINAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE UNITED STATES*

Criminologists continue to debate fundamental issues about the nature of their work. Some of the issues were built into the field by the criminal anthropologists who founded it a century ago. By examining the work of major American criminal anthropologists—a nearly forgotten group—one can identify the origins of three enduring problems: criminology's difficulties in (1) establishing its disciplinary boundaries; (2) defining its methods: and (3) deciding whether its primary goal is crime control or the production of knowledge with no immediate use-value. The study of criminology's roots in criminal anthropology cannot settle these debates, but it can put them in historical perspective and clarify their substance.     

THE EFFECT OF DROPPING OUT OF HIGH SCHOOL ON SUBSEQUENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR*

Sociological theories of delinquency offer rather divergent predictions concerning the effect of dropping out of high school on subsequent delinquent and criminal behavior. For example, strain theory suggests that dropping out decreases such behavior, especially for lower class youth, while social control theory suggests that dropping out should increase the chances of criminal activity. Moreover, empirical studies provide support for each of these views with the most influential study (Elliott and Voss, 1974) presenting evidence consistent with a strain perspective. The present investigation identifies methodological shortcomings in previous studies and reexamines the link between dropout status and subsequent criminal activity. Results indicate that dropping out of high school is positively associated with later crime, an outcome that is consistent with a control perspective.     

POLITICIZATION OF THE CRIMINAL OFFENDER

A “political model” of crime and punishment is described and the utility of this model is explored in the light of depth interviews with incarcerated offenders. It is suggested that the average offender brings to prison political socialization experiences which have resulted in alienation but not ideological estrangement from the political order. It is further suggested that politicizing processes in prison, coupled with the failure of rehabilitative efforts, have mode the political model acceptable to a large proportion of offenders. this model is not acceptable to prison administrators, however, and the result is increasingly that administrators and clients are operating from conflicting paradigms.     

THE NEUTRALIZATION OF CRIMINAL OFFENSE

A previously untested proposition from Sykes and Matza's neutralization theory is that certain types of offenders will favor certain types of neutralizing excuses. Murderers, for example. may tend toward denial of responsibility or denial of the victim. A competing hypothesis, derived from Hindelang's challenges to neutralization and drift theories, is that offenders would favor excuses keyed to offenses similar to their own. Robbers, for example, may favor excuses for robbery over excuses for other offenses. regardless of the content of the excuses themselves. The data presented in this article, based on o survey of inmates in four Florida prisons, fail to support either hypothesis. This may suggest that the two perspectives from which the hypotheses are derived are overly simplistic-that the nature of crime and delinquency is more subtle and complex than indicated by either the subcultural or antisubcultural theoretical traditions.     

THE EFFECT OF CRIMINAL BACKGROUND CHECKS ON HIRING EX‐OFFENDERS*

Research Summary The rapid increase in the nation's incarceration rate over the past decade has raised questions about how to reintegrate a growing number of ex‐offenders successfully. Employment has been shown to be an important factor in reintegration, especially for men over the age of 27 years who characterize most individuals released from prison. This article explores this question using unique establishment‐level data collected in Los Angeles in 2001. On average, we replicate the now‐common finding that employer‐initiated criminal background checks are negatively related to the hiring of ex‐offenders. However, this negative effect is less than complete. The effect is strongly negative for those employers that are legally required to perform background checks, which is not surprising because these legal requirements to perform checks are paired with legal prohibitions against hiring ex‐offenders. However, some employers seem to perform checks to gain additional information about ex‐offenders (and thus hire more ex‐offenders than other employers), and checking seems to have no effect on hiring ex‐offenders for those employers not legally required to perform checks. Policy Implications One public policy initiative that has received considerable attention is to deny employers access to criminal history record information, which includes movements to “ban the box” that inquires about criminal history information on job applications. The assumption underlying this movement is that knowledge of ex‐offender status leads directly to a refusal to hire. The results of this analysis show that policy initiatives aimed at restricting background checks, particularly for those firms not legally required to perform checks, may not have the desired consequences of increasing ex‐offender employment. This result is consistent with an alternative view that some employers care about the characteristics of the criminal history record and use information about criminal history in a more nuanced, nondiscrete way.     

MODELING CRIMINAL CAREERS*

A stochastic model of criminal careers embodying the assumptions of Gottfredson and Hirschi (1986, 1988) is used as a tool to examine the arguments and claims that have been raised in the recent debate over the nature of criminal careers. The model is used to fit aggregate career data in different jurisdictions and to explain racial and sex patterns in recidivism data. Some of the arguments that have been deployed on both sides of this debate are shown to lack validity. Nullius in verba. —Motto of the Royal Society     

A TEST OF VARIOUS PERSPECTIVES ON THE INTERGENERATIONAL TRANSMISSION OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE*

Past research indicates that adults who were subject to severe physical discipline as children are often violent toward their spouse and children as adults. This association is usually attributed to modeling or the learning of attitudes that legitimate hitting family members. Using four waves of data from a sample of midwestern families, this study found only limited support for these explanations. Analysis showed that the relationship between childhood exposure to harsh parenting and recurrent adult violence toward children or a spouse was mediated by the extent to which parents displayed an antisocial orientation. This pattern of findings is consistent with criminological theories that view criminal and deviant behavior of all sorts as rooted in a general antisocial orientation acquired in childhood largely as a result of ineffective parenting.     

刑事政策视野中的刑法目的解释

<正>刑法适用解释是纸面上的刑法得以适用于个案的必经路径,而刑法适用解释的关键是解释方法的选择及其位阶安排问题。这一问题的棘手之处在于,各种解释方法着眼点的不同往往导致考察者思维上的混乱。     

A PROSPECTIVE TEST OF A CRIMINAL CAREER MODEL*

In an earlier article in this journal, Barnett, Blumstein, and Farrington (1987) formulated a model that described the criminal careers of the multiple offenders in a cohort of London males that had been studied from their 10th to 25th birthdays. That model involved two subpopulations of offenders (denoted as “frequents” and “occasionals”), each characterized by a constant annual conviction rate (μ) and a constant probability (p) of terminating the career following a conviction. This article describes the results of a prospective and predictive test of the model using new data collected on the same offenders from their 25th to 30th birthdays. The original model accurately predicted the number of recidivists, the degree of recidivism risk, the total number of recidivist convictions, and the time intervals between recidivist convictions. However, the predictions for the frequents suffered some distortions introduced by a few “intermittent” offenders who seemed to have terminated their careers, but who re-initiated offending during the test period after a long gap.     

MENTORS AND CRIMINAL ACHIEVEMENT*

Much of the research focusing on conventional occupations concludes that mentored individuals are more successful in their careers than those who are not mentored. Early research in criminology made a similar claim. Yet contemporary criminology has all but ignored mentors. We investigate this oversight, drawing on Sutherland's insights on tutelage and criminal maturation and incorporating ideas on human and social capital. We argue that mentors play a key role in their protégés' criminal achievements and examine this hypothesis with data from a recent survey of incarcerated adult male offenders in the Canadian province of Quebec. In this sample, a substantial proportion of respondents reported the presence of an influential individual in their lives who introduced them to a criminal milieu and whom they explicitly regarded as a mentor. After studying the attributes of offenders and their mentors, we develop a causal framework that positions criminal mentor presence within a pathway that leads to greater benefits and lower costs from crime.