Juror decision making for juveniles tried as adults: the effects of defendant age,crime type,and crime outcome

This study examined the influences of the crime type (person or property) and the crime outcome (mild or severe) on mock jurors’ verdict and sentencing decisions for adult defendants and juvenile defendants tried as adults. Jurors read a trial summary depicting a defendant charged with aggravated robbery or second-degree burglary. The crimes had either mild or severe damage inflicted on the person or property, and the defendant's age was presented as 14 or 24. Neither the defendant age nor the crime outcome affected jurors’ verdicts; however, jurors were more likely to convict a defendant charged with a crime against a person. Jurors recommended longer sentences for an adult defendant, a defendant charged with a crime against a person, and a defendant charged with a crime with a severe outcome. The discussion explored these outcomes and the role of bias in jurors’ perceptions of defendants.     

Genocide Trials and Gacaca Courts

After many decades of impunity, Rwanda has embarked upon a courseof transitional justice committed to prosecuting all who aresuspected of involvement in the 1994 genocide. The first phase,which began in 1997 and is still continuing, targets the mostserious offenders. Some 10,000 have been tried under the system.Confronted with its limitations, Rwanda has devised a secondapproach, known as gacaca, which focuses on a lower and lessheinous level of participation in genocide, and which is inspiredby traditional models of local justice. Acting upon legislationadopted in 2001, a pilot phase convinced Rwandan justice officialsof the viability of the process throughout the country. Theinstitutions have been fine-tuned, and become fully operationalin the course of 2005. Because the pilot phase encouraged denunciation,instead of offering ‘closure’, the process has actuallyrevealed a much broader popular participation in the atrocitiesof 1994. Rwandan authorities now say the gacaca process willprosecute more than 1,000,000 suspects.     

论完善外来低收入群体的救助与犯罪的预防

城市中外来低收入务工人群有极不稳定的社会因素，也是城市犯罪主要产生因素之一，追溯其发生原因，可以发现社会收入分配严重失衡导致的贫富两极分化是造成当前城市外来人口犯罪众多的深层原因，城市对于外来边缘人群的救助缺失对于犯罪的高发生率又起到推波助澜作用。从社会救助入手，减小贫富分化缺口，将从根源上起到犯罪预防的作用。     

THE ELUSIVE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS AND CRIME: AN ASSESSMENT ACROSS DISADVANTAGED AREAS OF THE SOUTH BRONX

Several theoretical perspectives posit a negative association between the extent of a neighborhood's organizational infrastructure and crime; yet, empirical support for this proposition has been limited in that researchers generally examine only a few types of organizations or combine them into one aggregate measure. Studies with few measures may omit organizations that are effective at reducing crime, whereas those using aggregate measures obscure differences across organizations in their ability to control crime. Using data from 74 block groups in the South Bronx, NY, this research seeks to specify more clearly the relationship between organizations and crime in a disadvantaged urban environment. We examine the relationship among nine different types of organizations and violent and property crime controlling for prior crime, land use, and area sociodemographic characteristics. Consistent with theories that highlight the importance of organizations for establishing ties outside the neighborhood, we find that block groups with more organizations that bridge to the larger community experience a decrease in crime. Property crime also is reduced in block groups with more organizations that promote the well‐being of families and children. We find that schools are associated with an increase in property crime, whereas the effects of other organizations are context specific and vary based on neighborhood racial composition, commercial land use, and disadvantage.     

EXAMINING THE GENERALITY OF THE UNEMPLOYMENT–CRIME ASSOCIATION

This article examines whether the relationship between unemployment and criminal offending depends on the type of crime analyzed. We rely on fixed‐effects regression models to assess the association between changes in unemployment status and changes in violent crime, property crime, and driving under the influence (DUI) over a 6‐year period. We also examine whether the type of unemployment benefit received moderates the link to criminal behavior. We find significantly positive effects of unemployment on property crime but not on other types of crime. Our estimates also suggest that unemployed young males commit less crime while participating in active labor market programs when compared with periods during which they receive standard unemployment benefits.     

Exposure to Property Crime as a Consequence of Poverty

This paper investigates whether and why the poor are more exposed to property crime than are the non‐poor, despite the reasonable assumption that poor people lack or have little valuable property that can be stolen. If poor people are more exposed to property crime than those who are not poor, there are needs for explanations. The paper investigates two plausible reasons: the significance of the neighbourhood character and routine activities. The results in the paper indicates that poor people are more exposed to property crimes related to the residence, independent of neighbourhood character and routine activities, while exposure to property crimes related to vehicles depends more on the family situation and age than on poverty per se. When it comes to other kinds of property crime, poor people do not seem to be more exposed than do the nonpoor. That poor people are more exposed to property crime related to their residence, and that there are problem areas explaining why, is worrisome. Those who are poor are often vulnerable to other social problems that tend to exclude them from ordinary living patterns. To find out the relation between poverty and exposure to property crimes related to residence is of importance for crime prevention and probably an important step to prevent those who are poor from being further excluded from society.     

Employment,age, race,and crime: A labor theoretic investigation

The fundamental objective of this paper has been to reinvestigate the relationship between employment and crime, while taking account of deterrence, age and race effects. The data, a sample of Brooklyn arrestees, was collected by the Vera Institute of Justice simply to explore, with individual data, the relationship between employment and crime. In this research, a labor theoretic formulation is used incorporating a model that views the problem as one of rational choice between legitimate work and participation in crime. Factors affecting the diminution of crime participation with age are investigated. Changes at age 18 in economic opportunities and in deterrence effects from moving from juvenile to adult status are found to have a significant impact on crime participation. The results are important because they tend to confirm with official crime report data, results found in earlier studies using self-report data, i.e., (1) when the process is appropriately modeled, previous contacts with police are found to cause some experimenters with crime to become desisters, (2) prior work experience and economic opportunities tend to reinforce this tendency to desist, (3) even though blacks are found to have a greater prevalence of involvement in crime, when the data are standardized for all of the aforementioned factors and educational attainment, there is no significant difference between blacks and whites in their tendency to recidivate.     

PATTERNS OF DRUG USE,DRUG TRAFFICKING,AND OTHER DELINQUENCY AMONG INNER-CITY ADOLESCENT MALES IN WASHINGTON,D.C.*

This paper examines (1) the relationship between drug involvement among inner-city youths and the commission of other kinds of crime, (2) the role of drug use in crime commission, (3) the connection between crime and drug procurement, and (4) the factors that distinguish between individuals as a function of (a) levels of involvement in drug trafficking and (b) drug usage and criminal activity. Drug use and trafficking were both related to other criminal activities; the type of drug involvement was related to the type of crimes reported. The heaviest users were significantly more likely than nonusers to commit property crimes and drug traffickers were significantly more likely to commit crimes against persons than were respondents who did not sell drugs. Adolescents who used and sold drugs were the most likely to commit crimes against persons and property, and at the greatest rate. Still, for every type of crime reported in the past year, only a minority of offenders reported ever using drugs while committing the crime or said that they committed any type of crime in order to obtain drugs or money to obtain drugs. Most youths appear to commit crime for reasons completely independent of drugs.     

Stateless Crimes,Legitimacy, and International Criminal Law: The Case of Organ Trafficking

Organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of organ transplantation are recognized as significant international problems. Yet these forms of trafficking are largely left out of international criminal law regimes and to some extent of domestic criminal law regimes as well. Trafficking of organs or persons for their organs does not come within the jurisdiction of the ICC, except in very special cases such as when conducted in a manner that conforms to the definitions of genocide or crimes against humanity. Although the United States Code characterizes trafficking as “a transnational crime with national implications,” (22 U.S.C. § 7101(b)(24) (2010)), trafficking is rarely prosecuted in domestic courts. It has thus functioned in practice largely as what might be judged a “stateless” offense, out of the purview of both international and national courts. Yet these forms of organ trafficking remain widespread—and devastating to those who are its victims. In this article, we begin by describing what is known about the extent of organ trafficking and trafficking in persons for the purpose of removal of organs. We then critically evaluate how and why such trafficking has remained largely unaddressed by both international and domestic criminal law regimes. This state of affairs, we argue, presents a missed chance for developing the legitimacy of international criminal law and an illustration of how far current international legal institutions remain from ideal justice.     

FEAR OF CRIME IN RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES

Three variables were hypothesized to cause a fear of crime and a potential change in behavior. These were: (1) crimes against a person rather than crimes against property; (2) a crime committed in an area frequented rather than a crime occurring in an area one never entered; (3) a recurring crime rather than a crime that occurred once. Two different samples of female subjects (n = 249) were approached at their residences and were asked to read one of a number of fictitious crime stories that the news media supposedly had not reported and to complete two scales measuring: (1) an emotional response to crime and (2) a potential behavioral response to crime. The results indicate that a physical assault produces both more fear and more potential behavioral change than a burglary. A crime that occurs eight times causes people to consider taking precautions in comparison to a crime that occurs once. There is some evidence that a crime in an area one frequents causes more fear than a crime occurring in an area one never enters.     

The effect of police on crime,disorder and victim precaution. Evidence from a Dutch victimization survey

Using individual data from a large-scale Dutch crime victimization survey, we are able to expand the analysis of the effect of police on crime to crimes types that do not easily find their way into police statistics, and to public disorder and victim precaution. To address heterogeneity and simultaneity in the relation between police and crime, we model the police funding formula – used to distribute police resources across municipalities – to identify the endogenous variation in police levels. We use the remaining variation in police levels to identify the effect of police. We find significantly negative effects of higher police levels on property and violent crime, public disorder, and victim precaution. The effect on victim precaution is a hitherto largely ignored benefit of higher police levels not reflected in lower rates of crime and public disorder.     

Pathways through drugs and crime: Desistance, trauma and resilience

Purpose

To develop theoretical understandings of pathways through drugs and crime.

Method

Critical and theoretical review.

Content

Discourse about drugs and crime tends to focus either on delinquency, nowadays including some drug use, or on drug dependence. There are other pathways through drugs and crime, which deserve further exploration, not forgetting that most people desist from offending, or that drug dependence is a relatively rare outcome of drug use. A notable pathway involves a temporary period of intense substance use and offending which often remits without intervention. It is hypothesised that such periods are often caused by traumatic life events, or the persisting effects of earlier trauma, and that intense use converts to more protracted drug dependence when trauma and/or its effects continue. One way that this can happen is that drug use itself causes or perpetuates trauma and, then, use continues to cope with the negative psychological effects of trauma, in a vicious circle.

Conclusions

There is need to assess and treat trauma amongst substance users and to avoid over treating intense substance use that might remit untreated. Normative adult substance use outcomes need to be researched and theorised.     

DEALERS,THIEVES, AND THE COMMON DETERMINANTS OF DRUG AND NONDRUG ILLEGAL EARNINGS*

Drug crime often is viewed as distinctive from other types of crime, meriting greater or lesser punishment. In view of this special status, this article asks whether and how illegal earnings attainment differs between drug sales and other forms of economic crime. We estimate monthly illegal earnings with fixed‐effects models, based on data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Although drug sales clearly differ from other types of income‐generating crime, we find few differences in their determinants. For example, the use of cocaine or heroin increases illegal earnings from both drug and nondrug crimes, indicating some degree of fungibility in the sources of illegal income. More generally, the same set of factors—particularly legal and illegal opportunities and embeddedness in criminal and conventional networks—predicts both drug earnings and nondrug illegal earnings.     

The Difference Law Makes: Domestic Atrocity Laws and Human Rights Prosecutions

This article offers the first systematic analysis of the effects of domestic atrocity laws on human rights prosecutions. Scholars have identified various political and sociological factors to explain the striking rise in human rights prosecutions over the past 30 years, yet the role of domestic criminal law in enabling such prosecutions has largely been unexamined. That is surprising given that international legal prohibitions against human rights atrocities are designed to be enforced by domestic courts applying domestic criminal law. We argue that domestic criminal laws against genocide and crimes against humanity facilitate human rights prosecutions in post‐authoritarian states by helping to overcome formal legal roadblocks to prosecution, such as retroactivity, amnesties, immunities, and statutes of limitations. Using original data on domestic atrocity laws and human rights prosecutions in new democracies, we find that atrocity laws increase the speed with which new democracies pursue prosecutions, as well as the overall numbers of trials they initiate and complete.     

JUVENILE CRIME AND WHY WAIVER IS NOT THE ANSWER

Many states deal with the issue of juvenile crime by charging juveniles as adults. This is done by a method of waiver. Waiver allows adult criminal courts to have the power to exercise jurisdiction over juveniles.¹ In effect, a juvenile is tried and sentenced as an adult when his or her case is waived (removed) from the juvenile court to the adult court. Waiver in juvenile (youths seventeen and younger) cases should never be allowed because juvenile offenders are too immature and incompetent to appreciate the nature of their crimes and because the juvenile justice system is a more appropriate place to rehabilitate juvenile offenders.     

Gacaca Courts: Between Fantasy and Reality

Faced with an overflowing caseload and imperatives of nationalreconciliation, Rwandan authorities have established a systemof justice, meted out through gacaca courts under the legalframework created by organic laws. The following contributionanalyses this framework, within the context of national andinternational legal systems, and pinpoints the shortcomingsof the proposed form of justice. These include legal issuessuch as the problem of retroactivity, as well as the definitionof crimes and concerns over due process and the right to a fairtrial for defendants. Practical and material obstacles arisein implementing the organic laws, alongside broader implicationsowing to the traditional nature of such courts and possibleinterference by political authorities. In this respect, thegacaca courts may be victims of their own ambitions, by seekingto respond to judicial, societal and philosophical concernsalike.     

Having a Bad Month: General Versus Specific Effects of Stress on Crime

We examine whether particular types of stress are related to particular types of crime or whether all types of stress are related to all types of crime. Our estimates are based on analyses of within-individual change over a 36 month period among recently incarcerated offenders. We find that assault is most strongly related to family stress, suggesting that conflicts between family members lead to assault. Economic crimes (property crimes and selling illicit drugs) are most clearly related to financial stress, suggesting that these crimes often reflect attempts to resolve financial problems. On the other hand, crime is generally unrelated to stress from illness/injury, death, and work. The results support the idea that criminal behavior is a focused response to specific types of problems rather than a general response to stress. They are more consistent with explanations that focus on perceived rewards and costs (e.g., the rational-choice approach) than with explanations that portray negative affect as a generalized impetus toward violence or crime (e.g., frustration aggression approaches).     

SUBNATIONAL DETERMINANTS OF KILLING IN RWANDA*

Nearly one million people were killed in the Rwandan genocide in 1994. Although scholars have theorized why this violence occurred, we know comparatively less about how it unfolded. Accordingly, this article assesses the determinants of subnational levels of killing in 142 Rwandan communes by relying on data from the Rwandan Ministry of Local Administration and Community Development, the National University of Rwanda, and the 1991 Rwandan census. Fixed effects analyses reveal that top‐down and bottom‐up factors coalesced to influence violence across Rwanda. The state orchestrated and implemented the violence, and more violence occurred near the extremist center of the country as well as where state actors met strong opposition. Local conditions also shaped the violence, however, and indicators of low community cohesion and social control are associated with comparatively more violence. When put together, a unique model is introduced that integrates state conflict theories and social control theories of crime to explain subnational killing during the genocide in Rwanda.     

唐以前盗罪之变迁研究

尽管名称不一,但盗罪无疑是古今刑事法律均极为关注的罪名,今人也习惯于以财产性犯罪来理解传统中国的盗罪。然而,在中国文字初创之时,“盗”其实是泛指“不正”“不当”之义的词汇;至战国时代,才被相对明确地用来指称侵犯财产的行为,但其“不正”“不当”之义也并未完全消失。此种日常语义的多层次性也影响到战国秦至汉代的法律对盗罪的设计,使盗罪一方面以非法取财为主旨,另一方面又保留着超越财产性犯罪之概念限定的可能,从而表现出一定的含义复杂性。至魏晋南北朝,立法者们虽试图对盗罪予以分化或净化,但由于“盗”字的日常语义依然具有多层次性,作为法律术语之盗罪的含义复杂性也无法彻底改变并最终遗留在唐律之中。     

COLLECTIVE SECURITY AND THE OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS FOR PROTECTION

This paper examines the hypothesis that people purchase firearms for protection when confidence in collective institutions of justice and security declines. Analysis of survey data from Detroit indicates that gun ownership for protection is inversely related to confidence in the police and in the courts, and that these relationships are independent of demographic and socioeconomic variables and fear of crime.