What is Crime?

Since its emergence in the 19th century, orthodox criminology has suffered from the contradiction of claiming, on the one hand, to be a value-neutral, intellectual discipline, and on the other, operating as part of the ideological apparatus of the political state by taking state definitions of what is crime and who are its criminals as the starting points for criminological inquiry. This essay examines the ways in which criminology has suffered from this internal contradiction, with particular attention to how it has been constrained by political, economic, and professional forces to focus primarily on crimes whose collective harm to society falls well below the harms caused by the wrongful, but often legal acts of economic and political elites. It concludes with the recognition that the kind of critical inquiry emblematic of the work of Bill Chambliss is essential if criminology hopes to remain relevant to the challenges of the future.     

What Could a New Crime Commission Accomplish?

Even though the crime rate in the United States has dropped since the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson issued its report in 1967, the total number of serious crimes in the nation has increased, and public concern about the subject remains high. The 1960s Commission did not fully consider several major subjects that have emerged after it reported, including mental illness, immigration, cybercrime and other white collar crimes, indigent defense, crime victims, and evidence‐based crime policy. Many observers believe that the need to deal with these subjects in addition to those discussed by other researchers in this volume warrants an examination of crime and justice by a new commission. Congress has considered proposals for such a study for nearly a decade, but they are yet to be acted on amid ideological disputes over other criminal justice issues. If Congress fails to establish a new commission, it is still possible that one could be formed with the support of state, county, and local governments, as well as with the support of private foundations.     

What Kind of Joblessness Affects Crime? A National Case–Control Study of Serious Property Crime

Objective

To assess whether joblessness affects the commission of serious property crime.

Methods

We studied serious property crime, applying a case–control design to nationally representative samples of (a) known serious property crime offenders and (b) nonoffenders. This was done by comparing a national sample of prison inmates convicted of robbery or burglary (the “cases”) with a general sample of the U.S. adult population (the “controls”). In contrast to prior individual-level research, the study sample included substantial numbers of serious offenders, and provided a formal basis for generalizing the findings to the U.S. adult population. We differentiated five labor force statuses: (1) unemployed (according to the official government definition), (2) underemployed, (3) out of the labor force for widely socially accepted reasons (OLFL), (4) out of the labor force for reasons not widely accepted (OLFN), and (5) fully employed.

Results

We found that when these distinctions are made, people are not more likely to engage in burglary or robbery when they are either completely unemployed or underemployed according to the official definitions. Instead, it is being out of the labor force for reasons not widely accepted as legitimate that is significantly and positively related to serious property offending.

Conclusions

The results suggest that offending among jobless persons may reflect preexisting differences in criminal propensity among those who stay out of the labor force, rather than effects of joblessness per se. Part-time work is associated with significantly less property crime, perhaps because the willingness to accept even part-time jobs serves as an indicator of commitment to pro-social attitudes.

     

Testing for Analysts’ Bias in Crime Prevention Experiments: Can We Accept Eisner’s One-tailed Test?

Eisner (Journal of Experimental Criminology, this issue, 2009) suggests that developer-led evaluations often make programs look better than independent evaluations do because the former suffer systematic biases in favor of prevention success. Yet, his proposed remedies suffer their own systematic bias, constituting a ‘one-tailed’ test of bias in only one direction. In this response we suggest that a more objective assessment of ‘analysts’ effects’ requires a ‘two-tailed’ test of bias, in which reviewers would measure indications of bias both for and against success in evaluations reported by both developers and independent evaluators. After exploring the full complexity of the distinction between developers and evaluators, we report on one case in which independent evaluations were more favorable than those of developers. We then suggest possible indicators of analysts’ biases against finding success that may characterize the work of developers who “bend over backwards” to find harm in their programs, and of independent evaluators who may seek to “get a scalp” of a developer or a program.

Is There a Crime Drop in Western Europe?

Combining data from police statistics and crime victim surveys, this article analyses the evolution of crime in Western Europe from 1988 to 2007. The results show that there is no general drop in crime. Property offences and homicide have been decreasing since the mid 1990s, while violent and drug offences have increased during the period under study. These trends highlight the limits of the explanations to the crime drop in the United States, which are based on the premise of a correlation in the evolution of all offences. The drop in property offences seems related to changes in the socioeconomic situation in Europe as well as to increases in security measures in households, and the reinforcement of private security. The increase in violent offences can be explained by the combination of several factors, including changes in youth’s free time provoked by the development of the Internet, changing demographics, and the rise of episodic heavy alcohol consumption and street gangs.     

White-Collar Crime in Socialism: Myth or Reality?

Previous research on the determinants of police expenditures has not risen to the level of empirical understanding in large part because it has failed to explain substantively important variation among local jurisdictions. This suggests a need to reevaluate research strategies and to examine closely those cases which cannot be predicted using traditional, social, economic, and environmental approaches. Incorporating deviant case analysis, the authors outline an alternative approach to determine whether policy maker variables should be added to more broadly based models.     

Community Crime Prevention and the ‘Partnership Approach’: A Safe Community for Everyone?

If creating a safer community is merely reduced to controlling and disciplining the most vulnerable groups, their opportunities for participation and emancipation are blocked. Installing such a crime prevention model leads to the further exclusion of these groups. Starting from research that focuses on the interagency relationships within community crime prevention, this article offers a model of creating some possibilities to create a safer community on the one hand and that holds back the dynamics of social exclusion on the other. It focuses on the relations between (community oriented) welfare agencies on the one hand and police agencies on the other hand. Starting from the empirical data, two polarising models are put forward in order to analyse the evaluate this co-operation: a consensus model and a conflict model. Referring to a normative framework, it will be argued that a conflict model has to be preferred in order to develop a socially just crime prevention model.     

That Was Then, This Is Now, What About Tomorrow? Future Directions in State Crime Studies

Research and theorizing on state crime has come to play an important role in the fields of criminology and criminal justice for understanding the worst of crimes: those of powerful state agencies and agents. Since William Chambliss’ (1989) ASC presidential address, scholars of state crime have made advances in theoretical modeling and analyzing core enactment and etiological factors of crimes of the state (e.g., Barak 1991; Friedrichs 1998; Grabosky 1989; Kauzlarich and Kramer 1998; Kramer and Michalowski 2005; Kramer et al. 2005; Michalowski and Kramer 2006; Mullins and Rothe 2008a, b; Pearce 1976; Ross 1995, 2000; Rothe 2009; Rothe and Mullins 2006, 2008). Nonetheless, the study of state crime still has a long way to go before it ever reaches the magnitude or legitimacy afforded to the study of traditional street crime. It is with this in mind that several leading scholars of state criminality have come together and reevaluated the state of state crime and the ways in which the field must move forward. This kind of inventory, where scholars examine the past, present and future of the field, is not without precedent. For example, almost a decade ago (Ross et al. 1999) explored the difficulty of conducting state crime research and made a series of recommendations on how it could be improved. Nearly 7 years later (Rothe and Friedrichs 2006) re-evaluated the state of state crime and called for more attention to those beyond US crimes of the state and include crimes of globalization and also international controls such as the International Criminal Court (Friedrichs and Friedrichs 2007; Rothe and Mullins 2006; Rothe et al. 2006, 2008). Since that time, there has been substantial movement by scholars of state crime in these other areas, yet, as we note, there still remains key issues that need to be addressed and overcome: it is with this that we again revisit the field of state crime. We wish to thank all of those that contributed to our discussions and thoughts during the American Society of Criminology Roundtable on State Crime I and II, November 2007.

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Does Incapacitation Reduce Crime?

Questions and answers about incapacitation abound in all discussions about criminal justice policy. They are among the most pressing of all research issues, yet estimates about the incapacitation effect on crime vary considerably, and most are based on very old and incomplete estimates of the longitudinal pattern of criminal careers. This paper provides an overview of the incapacitation issue, highlights information on recent estimates of criminal careers that are useful to the incapacitation model, and outlines an ambitious research agenda for continued and expanded work on incapacitation and crime that centers on developing better estimates of the characteristics of criminal careers and their relevance to policy choices.

Crime in the 2016 Presidential Election: a new era?

Issues pertaining to crime and criminal justice have long been part of presidential campaigns. Voters want to know how candidates plan to solve the problem of crime and keep them safe. In turn, candidates respond to voters’ concerns and describe their crime control ideas in hopes of increasing voter support. In doing so, they often rely on symbolic statements that provide little detail but make people “feel good”. This study analyzes the criminal justice rhetoric used by the three major presidential candidates in the 2016 election cycle to determine what issues they discussed and how often. The analysis also examines if candidates relied on symbolic statements, and how the issues were debated between the candidates. The findings show that the issues discussed were somewhat different than in previous years, and that the candidates relied on symbolic statements about crime – a change from the previous election cycle. Additionally, the candidates used crime control as a way to reach out to voters in their own political party, suggesting an interesting shift in how issues of criminal justice are being approached within elections.     

Is Terrorism a Crime or an Aggravating Factor in Sentencing?

Common law systems, in criminal cases, distinguish between theguilt/innocence proceedings and the sentencing stage. This isnot the case in civil law systems where criminal trial consistsof a single phase, combining the inquiry into guilt with sentencing.Under common law practice many facts relevant for sentencingare considered irrelevant at the stage of finding guilt forthe commission of the crime. Aggravating elements, therefore,address a fundamental distinction of substantive criminal lawbetween guilt and dangerousness: guilt is a determination ofresponsibility for a prior wrongdoing; dangerousness is a speculativefuture determination. The intensification of terrorist activityin the past few years has made terrorism one of today's mostpressing problems. But is terrorism a crime or an aggravatingfactor in sentencing? In this article, the author challengesconventional wisdom regarding the meaning of ‘terroristcrimes’, by providing a conceptual understanding of ‘terrorism’,as well as articulating a theory of guilt. Terrorists seldomexpress ‘guilt’. The word ‘terrorism’describes, instead, an overriding motivation, a way of acting,rather than the objective circumstances of acting. Terrorismis nothing but common crimes although committed with an overridingmotivation of imposing extreme fear on the nation as such. Theauthor presents the conceptual grounds of the phenomenon ofterrorism as it has evolved through history, before enquiringinto the meaning of ‘terrorist crimes’: the overridingmotivation associated with the concept of terrorism constitutesthe degree of cognate dangerousness of terrorist crimes.     

White-Collar Crime and Police Crime: Rotten Apples or Rotten Barrels?

In the research literature on white-collar crime, there seems to be a tendency to claim individual failure rather than systems failure. Occupational crime is often emphasized at the expense of corporate crime. In the research literature on misconduct and crime by police officers, however, there seems to be a tendency to claim systems failure. It is argued that police crime is a result of bad practice, lack of resources or mismanagement, rather than acts of criminals. Based on two empirical studies in Norway of business and police crime, this paper is concerned with the extent to which the rotten apple theory versus the rotten barrel theory can explain crime in business organizations and police organizations.     

What Can We do to Engender a More Rational and Less Punitive Crime Policy?

This paper examines the question of what can we do, at a practical level, to respond to penal populism. It is argued that a comprehensive understanding of the nature of penal populism provides the best base for considering a range of responses across the full spectrum of precipitating factors. The paper begins with a sketch of the main understanding of penal populism articulated in earlier works, principally Roberts et al. (2003), then the putative causes of penal populism are expanded considering the contributions of precipitating factors at six levels. A number of suggestions and strategies at each of the six levels is then provided. Rather than being competing these strategies at different levels are seen as complementary although some will be more realizable than others. The paper finishes with a focus on the topic of public inclusion into the development of policy. A democratization of policy, it is argued, is crucial and, ultimately, the most profound way of addressing the challenge of penal populism.     

A System��s Approach to Crime Prevention: The Case of Macao

Macao has the world’s largest casino industry and represents a unique political, social, and cultural system that differs significantly from Western societies. The overall crime rate in Macao is relatively low. Scholarly knowledge about crime and crime prevention in Macao, however, is very limited. This paper first reviews crime prevention theories, typologies, and various strategies in Western societies, followed by an introduction and discussion of crime prevention practices in Macao. Crime prevention strategies in Macao may be characterized as a tripod structure with three major supporting legs: traditional criminal justice practices, social prevention beyond the criminal justice system, and situational crime prevention measures. The paper then discusses the factors that may contribute to the low level of crime in Macao and points out the direction for future research in Macao.     

Do Crime Hot Spots Exist in Developing Countries? Evidence from India

Objectives

To determine whether concentrations of crime documented in American cities such as Boston, Jacksonville, Minneapolis, Sacramento, and Seattle generalize to unique environments such as India.

Methods

Two years of motor vehicle theft (MVT) and burglary incidents from two police stations in Jaipur, India are analyzed. The degree to which crime clusters is documented using nearest neighborhood hierarchical clustering (NNHC). These results are compared to several widely cited studies documenting concentrations in the United States.

Results

The NNHC procedure identified five MVT hot spots, which accounted for just .09 % of the two station’s land, but over 13 % of these incidents, and four burglary hot spots, which accounted for less than 1 % of its land, but nearly 23 % of the incidents.

Conclusions

Given the stark differences in the built environment and sociological makeup of Jaipur, a better understanding of the forces that cause crime to concentrate to a high degree needs to be discerned before implementing law-enforcement driven policies derived from the scholarship of American cities. Additional research should also seek to replicate not just the degree to which crime clusters in these unique environments, but also its stability over time and micro place variation.