There's Regulatory Crime, and then there's Landlord Crime: from 'Rachmanites' to 'Partners'

This article considers local authority strategies towards the regulation and prosecution of private landlords who commit the criminal offences of unlawful eviction and harassment. Generally, local authorities operate compliance-based strategies, rarely (if ever) resorting to prosecution. In seeking to explain this approach, the article draws upon the literature concerning regulatory crime, but also distinguishes local authority responses to landlord crime from regulatory crime as more typically conceived. Broadly, it is argued that, while there are clear parallels with other areas of regulatory activity, there is much that is different about landlord crime, particularly as a result of central government strategies towards the private rented sector, the legislative background to landlord crime, and the motivations behind local approaches to regulation.     

Understanding the essential principles of landlord and tenant laws in Nigeria through judicial decisions

Tenancy relationships in Nigeria are largely regulated by statutes. Most of the provisions of these statutes to lawyers and other stakeholders are susceptible to inconsistent interpretations. In recent times, the courts in Nigeria have taken steps to look beyond the law books and give flesh to areas in tenancy matters where there seem to be inadequacies in the provisions of the laws. In doing this, the courts have come up with some legal principles that the relevant statutes do not explicitly provide for, but arguably flow from the provisions of such statutes – a good example being the principle that a tenant who contests ownership with the landlord loses right to statutory notice to quit. Terms such as ‘landlord’ and ‘tenant’ are not as simple as they appear, especially considering the statutory definitions given to them by some of the tenancy statutes in Nigeria – particular attention is given in this regard to Tenancy Law of Lagos State 2011. This paper considers the intricacies of the definition of and relationship between the landlord and the tenant as provided in statutes and as interpreted by overtime by courts in Nigeria. The paper analyses the nature of the relationship between the landlord and the tenant as may be conceived and disambiguates the scope of law of a landlord and tenant relationship in Nigeria.     

The economy,crime and time: An analysis of recorded property crime in England & Wales 1961–2006

We seek to determine whether one of the unanticipated side-effects of social and economic changes associated with the adoption of neoliberal and monetarist economics during the 1970s/1980s was rising crime rates. Undertaking time series analysis of social and economic determinants of property crime (using official statistics on recorded crime for England and Wales from 1961 to 2006) we develop a model of the effect of changes in socio-economic variables (unemployment, inequality, welfare spending and incarceration) on property crime rates. We find that while three of these had significant effects on change in the property crime rate, income inequality did not. We conclude with a discussion of the extent to which neoliberal economic and welfare (and later criminal justice) policies can be held to have influenced the property crime rate since the early 1980s and what this tells us about the social and economic determinants of crime at the macro-level.     

明代土地租佃的法律调整

明代法律对租佃关系的调整主要是依据私契关系所确立的规则 ,一方面保护地主的收租权和产业权 ,另一方面也保护佃农的耕作权。随着商品经济的发展 ,地主与佃农之间对土地与佃权的争夺加剧了 ,传统租佃关系发生了新的变化 ,而“永佃”制、“一田二主”的出现 ,正是庶民地主为主干的中国封建地主制出现解体的征兆。     

收入差距、经济增长与中国的财产犯罪——1978-2005年的实证研究

通过对中国1978-2005年间收入差距、经济增长等宏观经济因素对财产犯罪的影响所进行的实证研究发现,全国、城镇内部、农村内部以及城乡之间的收入差距对财产犯罪产生了显著的影响,经济增长与财产犯罪呈显著的负相关关系,同时中国的财产犯罪还表现出明显的惯性特征。而诸如人均GDP、城市化、福利开支等虽然对财产犯罪产生了影响,但都不显著。     

GENDER,NEIGHBORHOOD DANGER,AND RISK‐AVOIDANCE STRATEGIES AMONG URBAN AFRICAN‐AMERICAN YOUTHS*

Research consistently reveals that fear of crime and perceived risk are demographically and ecologically patterned. Women and individuals in disadvantaged community settings report increased fear and perceptions of risk. For women, these fears and perceptions are tied to concerns about sexual violence specifically, whereas for individuals in distressed neighborhoods, crime rates, “incivilities,” and poor police‐community relations are often identified as important correlates. Here, we build from the insights of previous research by examining the gendered nature of perceived risk and risk‐management strategies among urban African‐American adolescents. Our findings suggest that both risk and risk‐avoidance strategies are strikingly different for young women and young men and are shaped by the gendered organizational features of neighborhood life. We propose that future research will benefit by continuing to investigate how social vulnerabilities function in tandem to structure risks across ecological settings.     

A Radical Economic Model of Crime with an Empirical Test in Non-city Zip Codes

This article addresses three main issues. First, the structural explanation of crime rates across zip codes within a US county outside of that county’s major city’s limits. Second, this article addresses whether the traditional social disorganization argument which links measures of disorganized neighborhoods and in particularly deficiencies in informal social control to race, income inequality and poverty provides an adequate explanation of variations in non-city zip code crime rates. Third, this article also examines a radical critique of the kind of structural model posed by social disorganization, and tests an alternative radical economic model of crime at the zip code level. The empirical evidence illustrates the weakness of social disorganization explanations of crime at the zip code level. In contrast to those results, the empirical results for the proposed radical economic model of crime support its use for explaining crime across county zip codes. This type of empirical evidence demonstrates that radical models of crime have utility in explaining how economic structures influence the distribution of crime independently of variable identified in orthodox criminology.     

Exploratory spatial analysis of crimes against property in Turkey

Turkey, a rapidly developing country, is a junction point between Asia and Europe in terms of its social and economic structure. Turkey is both the most advanced economy in the Turkish-speaking world and the largest economy in the Muslim world. In the last few years, with the development of Turkey’s economic and social structure, the level of criminality in the country has attracted attention. Consequently, we aimed to explore potential spatial associations of crimes against property rates across the 81 provinces of Turkey (NUTS3) from 1997 to 2009. Geographical information systems and explorative methods of spatial data analysis were employed in the analyses of crime rates. Since crime is a phenomenon that arises from the interaction between social, economic, psychological circumstances and, especially, geographical factors, this study attempts to rectify the possible deficiencies of traditional statistical analyses of geography. Because of the very different population sizes in each province, comparing the volume of crimes makes a major impact on the stability of the crime rates; therefore in this study an empirical Bayes smoothing method was used to interpret the crime rates correctly. Global spatial autocorrelation indices were used to test the spatial dependence of the distribution of the crime rates. Besides the excess risk rates, local spatial autocorrelation methods were used to detect and interpret the clustering of crime rates. In order to model the crime rates, a set of socioeconomic parameters (migration rates by province, gross national product according to purchasing power parity by province, registered number of touristic facilities and number of rooms by province, electricity consumption statistics, provincial unemployment rates and urbanisation index values were handled with geographically weighted regression. According to the results, criminal activities were non-random in terms of time and space. Property crime, except for smuggling, is densely clustered in the west and south-west of Turkey. The present study demonstrates the utility of spatial analysis and geographically weighted regression to detect some important geographical dimensions and crucial geographical aspects of property crimes in Turkey.     

Fear of Crime among Gang and Non-Gang Offenders: Comparing the Effects of Perpetration,Victimization, and Neighborhood Factors

This is the first study to examine adult offenders’ fear of property, personal, and gang crime. We examine five research questions among 2,414 jail inmates, focusing on how afraid offenders are of crime. We compare current, ex-gang, and non-gang members. We ask if more experience with crime perpetration and victimization and more perceptions of social disorganization increase offenders’ fear of crime. Finally, we ask if the importance of these factors in predicting fear varies by gang status. Results show that offenders, generally, were not very afraid of crime. Although ex-gang and current gang members believed they were more likely to experience property, personal, and gang crime, they reported less fear than non-gang members. Crime perpetration did not influence offenders’ fear, but less experience with personal crime victimization predicted fear of personal and gang crime among non-gang members. The results also indicate that perceptions of social disorganization better explain fear among non-gang members than ex-gang and current gang members.     

A Block-Level Analysis of Medical Marijuana Dispensaries and Crime in the City of Los Angeles

The liberalization of marijuana laws may have implications for neighborhood crime insofar as the distribution of marijuana through a dispensary system may provide additional opportunities for criminal behavior to take place. This project fills an important gap in the scant literature on medical marijuana dispensaries and neighborhood crime rates by integrating perspectives from environmental criminology and social organization theories in investigating the dispensary-crime nexus through interaction models and flexibly assessing dispensaries’ relationship to crime at different spatial scales. This study found the placement of a medical marijuana dispensary in the previous year to be associated with crime rate change, in both the block and the surrounding area, over and above predictor variables drawn from social organization theory. And, this study’s interaction models suggest that marijuana dispensaries may increase crime rates on socially organized blocks, with such blocks potentially experiencing a slight perturbation in their ecological continuity from a dispensary’s establishment.     

A contextual analysis of crime rates: The Korean case<Superscript>⋆</Superscript>

During recent attempts to understand crime in relation to its environments, studies have focused on a single aspect of either economic or organizational context. Furthermore, scant attention has been given to the independent role of the political influence on response to criminal activity. This study examines the relative roles of economic conditions, organizational constraints of police, and political climate in explaining changes in crime rates by incorporating these three contexts into a single study. By using a variety of official statistics, we conducted time-series analyses to examine the social context of crime over the past three decades in South Korea. Findings indicate, first, that the unemployment rate is the best predictor of changes in crime rates; it consistently increased the level of both property and violent crimes. Second, organizational capacity, as indicated by police per capita, is found not to have any consistent effect on crime rates. Third, the impact of political repression, measured by the presence of extraordinary laws and the number of political prisoners, also shows inconsistent effects on crime. However, crime rates were somewhat lower during the past three military regimes, which support the argument that authoritarian governments exercised more punitive sanctions to deter crimes. Implications are discussed and suggestions are offered for future research on this topic.This work was supported by Korean Research Foundation Grant (KRF-2004-003-BO0142). An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 2004 mettings of the American Society of Criminology. We would like to thank Ivan Sun for his insightful comments and helpful suggestions.     

The Dark Figure of Online Property Crime: Is Cyberspace Hiding a Crime Wave?

A pronounced drop in crime, since the early 1990s, has encompassed every crime category tracked by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports, including property crime. However, over the same period, the rates of online property crime (OPC) have been on the rise according to available evidence. We delineate the extent of our knowledge and data concerning cybercrime and identity theft and, using data from several nationally representative victimization surveys, offer an alternative view of property crime trends while pointing out the glaring gap in crime reporting and accounting in relation to the growing category of property crimes perpetrated online. In addition, we compare estimated costs of traditional property crime vs. OPC. Finally, we identify the main challenges for obtaining reliable data on OPC and discuss their implications, especially when applying the traditional methods of compiling crime statistics.     

FUNDING COMMUNITY POLICING TO REDUCE CRIME: HAVE COPS GRANTS MADE A DIFFERENCE?*

Research Summary: This research examines how funding from the U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), has affected violent and property crime rates in the United States from 1995 to 1999. Drawing on six years of panel data, we examine the effects of three types of awards made by COPS to 6,100 law enforcement agencies serving more than 145 million citizens. We estimate their impact on crime reduction over time in jurisdictions receiving funding and controlling for baseline levels of crime, socioeconomic characteristics, city size, and population diversity and mobility. Our analyses suggest that COPS hiring and innovative grant programs have resulted in significant reductions in local crime rates in cities with populations greater than 10,000 for both violent and nonviolent offenses. Multivariate analysis shows that in cities with populations greater than 10,000, an increase in one dollar of hiring grant funding per resident contributed to a corresponding decline of 5.26 violent crimes and 21.63 property crimes per 100,000 residents. Similarly, an increase in one dollar of innovative grant funding per resident has contributed to a decline of 12.93 violent crimes and 45.53 property crimes per 100,000 persons. In addition, the findings suggest that COPS grants have had no significant negative effect on violent and property crime rates in cities with less than 10,000 population. Policy Implications: The findings of this study imply that COPS program funding to medium‐ and large‐size cities has been an effective force in reducing both violent and property crime. Federal government grants made directly to law enforcement agencies to hire additional officers and promote innovations may be an effective way to reduce crime on a national scale.     

THE IMPACT OF ECONOMIC CONDITIONS ON ROBBERY AND PROPERTY CRIME: THE ROLE OF CONSUMER SENTIMENT*

Despite its long history in criminology, research on the relationship between macroeconomic conditions and rates of common crime remains limited. That is in part because many analysts doubt that any systematic relationship exists and in part because of disagreement with regard to the validity of the indicators typically used to measure economic conditions. We argue in this article that good theoretical reasons exist to expect macroeconomic effects on crime rates, but many theories imply that collective perceptions of economic hardship should have effects on crime that are independent of those of more “objective” economic indicators. To evaluate this argument, we examine the relationships between the Index of Consumer Sentiment and regional robbery, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft rates in the United States between 1970 and 2003, which was a period of large swings in both consumer sentiment and instrumental crime. Controlling for several factors thought to influence temporal variation in crime rates, we find that consumer sentiment had significant effects on robbery and property crime rates over the period that were largely independent of the effects of unemployment and economic growth. We also find that consumer sentiment accounted for a sizable fraction of the crime decline during the 1990s and yields reasonably accurate predictions of changes in the four offenses in 2004 and in two of the four offenses in 2005. We conclude that the effects of collective economic perceptions should become an important focus of future research on crime trends.     

Racial Context and Crime Reporting: A Test of Black’s Stratification Hypothesis

Contextual factors that contribute to race differences in reporting crime to the police are an important element in Donald Black??s theory of the behavior of the law, yet few studies have investigated whether these differences vary depending on social context. The present study investigates whether the relationships between victim and offender race and the reporting of crime are moderated by the level of racial stratification in a given place as Black??s stratification hypothesis would predict. Using victim survey data from 40 metropolitan areas, as well as data from other sources, we find results that are consistent with Black??s stratification hypothesis, namely, that victim and offender race are more strongly associated with the reporting of crime in those metropolitan areas where the gap in economic status between blacks and whites is larger and the groups are more residentially segregated. The theory, however, is unable to account for the high rates of reporting of black-on-black assaults found across the 40 metropolitan areas. The question of how the needs of black victims may outweigh their reluctance to call the police is an important issue for future research.     

The Relationship Between Crime and Stop,Question, and Frisk Rates in New York City Neighborhoods

The current study builds on prior research in an analysis of the relationship between monthly violent and property crime rates in New York City census tracks and the New York City Police Department’s highly contentious stop, question, and frisk (SQF) policy. We find that higher doses of SQF are associated with small crime reductions generally and specific crime reductions for stops of blacks, Hispanics, and whites. But the way the policy was implemented precludes strong causal conclusions. Now that a federal court has intervened and SQF is undergoing change, the court monitor, New York Police Department, and city officials should partner with researchers in experimental evaluations to determine the optimal mix and dosage of enforcement strategies that safeguard the rights and liberties of citizens while enhancing public safety.     

‘Becoming a waste land where nothing can survive’: resisting state-corporate environmental crime in a ‘forgotten’ place

Environmental justice advocates have made visible the practice of disproportionately siting hazardous waste facilities in low-income communities of color throughout the USA. Typically, state-corporate actors decide where to place these environmentally undesirable projects, with an eye toward the bottom line rather than the health and safety of particular community members. Through an analysis of secondary data and archival materials, ranging from public hearings to court documents and newspaper accounts, a case study of state-corporate environmental crime and how one rural, historically African American town in Arizona organized to resist the siting of a fourth landfill in their community is explored. Theoretical concepts advanced by Ruth Wilson Gilmore, such as ‘forgotten places’, are put into conversation with the literature on state-corporate crime. An examination of the relationship between environmental inequality, state-corporate crime, and people’s capacity for resistance is presented.     

Spatial justice and criminal victimization

Spatial variation in crime rates generally has been attributed to differences in culture, economic status, and the social organization of communities. Rarely have policies and practices of criminal justice professionals been examined as causes of this variation. If these policies and practices do place citizens at a higher risk of victimization, a sense of fairness requires that all communities in a region share equally in this increase. This article examines the spatial justice resulting from sentencing practices in Pennsylvania. It demonstrates that certain locations in Philadelphia bear an unequal burden because of these practices. The relatively high crime rates of these areas are due partly to decisions made by criminal justice professionals.     

‘Rolling back the state’: Mrs. Thatcher's criminological legacy

Of late, there has been a growing interest in understanding the social, economic and cultural changes that have taken place since the 1950s and the experience of crime in the UK since the 1970s. Key amongst these texts have been those respectively by Garland and Young. My aim in this essay is to seek to understand the role of New Right government policies in bringing the UK to the point where it is now, and how these policies have shaped crime and some people's experiences of it since. This account stands in contrast to that offered by Garland which makes little reference to specific administrations or their policies. My aim is to show that changes in government policy can (and did) have quite dramatic effects on people's experiences of crime. This essay stands as a counter to one of Garland's central claims that structural patterns cannot be rendered visible in case studies.