Employment,peers, and life-course transitions

One of Sampson and Laub's central findings from their analysis of the Gluecks' data was that reductions in adult criminal behavior were associated with stable employment. In support of their theory of informal social control, they maintained that employment builds social capital that, in turn, bonds young adults to social institutions. Using data from the National Youth Survey we examine the effects of associating with prosocial coworkers on changing delinquent peer networks and on criminal behavior and drug use. The results demonstrate that prosocial coworkers disrupt previously established delinquent peer networks and are associated with reductions in adult criminal behavior.     

Crime and Expected Punishment: Changes in Perceptions at the Age of Criminal Majority

This paper assesses whether perceived punishment severity changesdiscontinuously when an individual becomes an adult in the eyesof the courts. I find that the perceived chance of jail increasesby 5.2 percentage points at the age of criminal majority, whichis over and above the general effect of aging. The magnitudeof this subjective change in the chance of jail at the age ofmajority appears to be substantially smaller than that foundin objective data. Finally, a reduced-form analysis of whetherself-reported criminal behavior changes discontinuously at theage of criminal majority finds little consistent evidence ofdeterrence.     

ATTRIBUTIONS,AFFECT, AND CRIME: STREET YOUTHS' REACTIONS TO UNEMPLOYMENT*

This research examines the role familial, school, labor market, and street factors play in the criminality of 200 homeless male street youths. Of particular interest is the way these youths interpret their labor market experiences and how together these experiences and interpretations influence criminal behavior. Findings reveal that familial and school factors have minimal influence on current criminal behavior. Instead, criminal behavior is influenced by such immediate factors as homelessness, drug and alcohol use, and criminal peers who engage in illegal activities. Further, criminal behavior is influenced by a lack of income, job experiences, and perceptions of a blocked opportunity structure. While labor market conditions and reactions to those conditions have some effect on crime, the findings also suggest that lengthy unemployment, job experiences, and a lack of income work in tandem with anger and external attributions to increase street youths' criminal activities.     

Friends,Cognition, and Delinquency: Proactive and Reactive Criminal Thinking as Mediators of the Peer Influence and Peer Selection Effects among Male Delinquents

The purpose of this study was to determine whether criminal thinking underpins peer influence and selection. It was predicted that proactive criminal thinking would mediate the peer influence effect (peers?→?offending) and reactive criminal thinking would mediate the peer selection effect (offending?→?peers). Participants were 1,170 male delinquent youth from the Pathways to Desistance study. The Moral Disengagement scale (proactive criminal thinking) and Peer Delinquent Behavior scale (peer delinquency) were cross-lagged to predict criminal offending, and the Weinberger Impulse Control scale (reactive criminal thinking) and criminal offending were cross-lagged to predict peer delinquency. Consistent with predictions, proactive but not reactive criminal thinking successfully mediated the peer?→?offending relationship and reactive but not proactive criminal thinking successfully mediated the offending?→?peer relationship. Whereas delinquent peer associations appear to promote proactive criminal thinking and peer influence, early criminal offending appears to promote reactive criminal thinking and peer selection.     

SELF-CONTROL, CRIMINAL MOTIVATION AND DETERRENCE: AN INVESTIGATION USING RUSSIAN RESPONDENTS

With data from respondents in Nizhni Novgorod, Russia, we address the generality of self-control theory. We also assess two hypotheses. The first focuses on the attractiveness of criminal acts, that is, motivation toward crime. The second concerns the contention that the mediating link between self-control and criminal conduct is the failure of those with less self-control to anticipate the long-term costs of misbehavior. Although the magnitude of associations between self-control and indicators of criminal behavior is about the same in this study as it is in others, which suggests that the theory is not culturally bound, those associations are largely overshadowed by criminal attraction. Consistent with that, failure to anticipate costly long-term consequences does not appear to be the mediating link between self-control and criminal behavior: the evidence shows no tendency for sanction fear to be greater among those with greater self-control. In fact, sanction fear is modestly and significantly related to the crime measures independent of self-control, though sanction fear also appears to be influenced by criminal attraction. The results suggest that in the production of criminal behavior, motivation may be more important than controls inhibiting criminal impulses.     

Legal,Psychological, and Behavioral Outcomes

States have responded to the public's outrage at rising juvenile crime by revising their transfer statutes to make it easier to transfer juvenile offenders for trial and sentencing in criminal court and possible incarceration in adult prisons. These changing trends in juvenile justice raise three questions about what actually happens to juveniles once they are in the adult criminal justice system. To what extent does trial in adult court and/or incarceration in adult prisons promote or retard community protection, juvenile offenders' accountability, and the development of competencies in juvenile offenders? This article discusses state transfer laws and the legal consequences of criminal court prosecution, and analyzes current research on deterrence effects of transfer laws, conviction and sentencing in juvenile versus criminal court, recidivism rates in juvenile versus criminal court, and conditions and programming in juvenile versus adult correctional facilities. The research findings have two important implications for juvenile justice policy: the number of juvenile cases transferred to criminal court should be minimized, and imprisonment of juveniles in adult facilities should be avoided whenever possible. These implications are discussed, and directions for future research are identified.     

FAMILY VIOLENCE,TELEVISION VIEWING HABITS,AND OTHER ADOLESCENT EXPERIENCES RELATED TO VIOLENT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR*

This study employs multivariate analyses with retrospective self-report data to assess the relative importance of certain childhood and adolescent experiences to the commission of violent crimes as an adult. Specifically, the relationship is examined between violent criminal behavior and exposure to family violence, exposure to television violence, school performance, other adolescent activities, and differential reinforcement for previous illegal acts. The exploratory model is based on data collected on 100 male inmates incarcerated for violent crimes and 65 nonincarcerated, nonviolent males matched in terms of age, race, and neighborhood. Findings, from analyses which estimate both additive and interactive effects, indicate that the background experiences associated with violent crime vary depending upon an individual's race. The discussion focuses on the implications of these findings for further research on the causes of violent criminal behavior.     

The effect of maternal incarceration on adult offspring involvement in the criminal justice system

Researchers have estimated that 63 percent of incarcerated women have one or more minor children and most reported living with their children prior to incarceration (Mumola, 2000). Unfortunately, children of incarcerated parents have been a relatively invisible population in the research on the collateral consequences of incarceration. The goal of the current study was to examine the long-term effect of maternal incarceration on adult offspring involvement in the criminal justice system using data from the mother child sample of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979. Based on existing research, it was hypothesized that the adult offspring of incarcerated mothers would be more likely to have been convicted of a crime or to be sentenced to probation. The effect of maternal incarceration on correlates of criminal behavior in adolescence and early adulthood (e.g., negative peer influences, positive home environment) was also modeled to assess possible indirect effects. The results highlighted the direct effect of incarceration on adult offspring involvement in the criminal justice system, but parental incarceration had little association with correlates of criminal behavior.     

Urban Environment, Genetics, and Crime

Gene-environment interactions are important for the development of much human behavior. We examined the possibility that a genetic propensity to criminal behavior interacts with the type of environment in which an individual is raised. Using a cohort of adoptees, we found evidence for independent contributions of biological parent criminality (genetic influence) and urban environment rearing to prediction of adoptee criminality, but no evidence for a gene-environment interaction involving these factors.     

论共同犯罪人与身份

犯罪是一种特定的危害社会行为的符号,是反社会的行为方式之一,不仅仅是一种社会现象,也是一种法律现象,该行为包括刑事违法性的法律内容与严重社会危害性、应受刑罚处罚性的社会内容。在形形色色的犯罪现象中,对某些犯罪而言,其犯罪主体除须具备一般刑事立法中要求的具有自然人与刑事责任能力两个基本条件外,特殊身份作为主体的内容,影响甚至决定着行为人的刑事责任有无及大小。身份与行为人刑事责任的关系,决定着其在特定犯罪构成中的地位,特别是涉及共同犯罪中的身份犯问题,身份对共同犯罪的定性及各共同犯罪人刑事责任的承担产生重要的影响。因此,身份问题是现代刑法理论中一个不容忽视的问题,尤其是与有着“绝望之章”称谓的共犯论相交叉时。本文拟就共同犯罪人与身份的相关问题略述管见。     

The impact of adult drug courts on crime and incarceration: findings from a multi-site quasi-experimental design

Objectives  

To test the impact of adult drug courts on future criminal behavior and sentence length on the precipitating criminal case; and to examine whether the magnitude of the drug court impact varies based on drug use or criminal history, social ties, mental health, or offender demographics.     

Bad nature, bad nurture, and testimony regarding MAOA and SLC6A4 genotyping at murder trials

Recent research-in which subjects were studied longitudinally from childhood until adulthood-has started to clarify how a child's environment and genetic makeup interact to create a violent adolescent or adult. For example, male subjects who were born with a particular allele of the monoamine oxidase A gene and also were maltreated as children had a much greater likelihood of manifesting violent antisocial behavior as adolescents and adults. Also, individuals who were born with particular alleles of the serotonin transporter gene and also experienced multiple stressful life events were more likely to manifest serious depression and suicidality. This research raises the question of whether testimony regarding a defendant's genotype, exposure to child maltreatment, and experience of unusual stress is appropriate to present during the guilt or penalty phases of criminal trials, especially when capital punishment is a consideration. The authors present their experience in genotyping criminal defendants and presenting genetic information at criminal trials.     

A Life-Course Perspective on Stress,Delinquency, and Young Adult Crime

This study uses General Strain Theory (GST) to describe and examine one potential pathway of delinquency/crime escalation and de-escalation across adolescence and young adulthood. In particular, the time-varying consequences for delinquent behavior and young adult crime of persistent or increasing levels of strain are addressed using data from the Family Health Study, an eight-year longitudinal data set (n = 840). The results indicate that there is a positive association between experiencing one type of strain—stressful life events—and involvement in delinquent or criminal behavior during this period of the life-course. However, the impact of stressful life events on these behaviors is diminished among young adults. Moreover, delinquent/criminal peer associations attenuate the age-specific effects of stressful life events, thus suggesting that peers play a central role in the association between strain and these behaviors. Implications of the results for theory and policy are discussed.     

Adult child-parent bonds and life course criminality

Parents and parenting practices are often implicated as predictors of early childhood offending in criminological research, but little is known about the role of parents in adulthood in promoting or inhibiting criminal behavior. As juveniles mature into adult roles, parents also continue to mature and interact with their children in numerous roles throughout the life course. Unlike peers and romantic partners, parents are not easily discarded. Adults who have built a good foundation with their parents, then, possess additional social capital that has the potential to better adult life course outcomes, including criminal behavior. Social bonds formed within romantic relationships and stable employment have been the dominant factors identified within criminological literature in promoting criminal desistance, but in today's society with high rates of divorce and an unstable low-skilled job market, parents of origin may be an important stabilizing force in the lives of adults, particularly those lacking other conventional bonds. Using three waves of data from the Ohio Lifecourse Study, a project that spans some twenty-one years, the findings showed that strong relationships with parents are a significant predictor of criminal desistance for adult children, mainly through the emotional benefits these relationships have for the adult children. Furthermore, the data revealed that the adult child-parent relationship is a stronger predictor of desistance among the subjects with poor romantic relationship bonds. Implications for the life course theory are discussed.     

Selective Attrition and the Age-Crime Relationship

One of the most widely accepted findings in criminology is the strong curvilinear association between age and crime. Studies have indicated that involvement in criminal behavior rises throughout the teenage years until it levels off during the late teenage and early adult years and then declines throughout the remainder of the life span. Many of these studies, however, have relied on cross-sectional or repeated cross-sectional officially recorded data. In recent years, researchers investigating changes in self-reported criminal behavior among the same individuals as they age have discovered that involvement in criminal behavior actually declines during the adolescent years. Although there are a number of possible explanations for this phenomenon, we explore the extent to which this decline can be attributed to selective or non-random panel attrition.     

Criminal Contemplation,National Context,and Deterrence

Using random samples of adults from three European countries rarely surveyed about crime-related issues, this study seeks to identify, with more extensive indicators than is typical, individuals who are likely to contemplate the commission of criminal acts. Then, it assesses the contextual universality of deterrence claims by estimating the deterrent effectiveness of perceived formal and informal sanctions for theft and violence among crime contemplators in Greece, Russia, and Ukraine. With criminal contemplation taken into account, our findings confirm the patterns established in past research. Whereas the threat of formal punishment shows little deterrent effect, perceptions of informal sanctions appear to influence projected crime. However, supportive findings hold only in Russia and Ukraine. Overall, it appears that the deterrent effectiveness of sanctions may be to some extent contingent on cultural or contextual characteristics.     

预防性犯罪化立法:路径、功能、弊端与完善

预防性犯罪化立法作为我国近年来刑法立法的重要实践,在预防犯罪方面发挥了极其重要的作用。我国预防性犯罪化立法主要有预备行为犯罪化、持有行为犯罪化、煽动行为犯罪化、抽象危险犯这四种实践方式,具有抵御日益积聚的刑事风险、实现刑罚双面预防目的、贯彻宽严相济刑事政策的重要刑法功能。然而,预防性犯罪化立法又存在着引发刑法工具主义滥觞、冲击谦抑主义刑法精神的弊端。随着风险社会的到来,预防性犯罪化立法还将呈现扩张趋势,探索预防性犯罪化立法的科学有效路径势在必行。就未来的预防性犯罪化立法而言,必须以宪法为引领,以刑法的基本原则为遵循,并采取多轨制的刑法立法模式。     

Parenthood and crime: The role of wantedness, relationships with partners, and ses

Purpose

Parenthood may play a pivotal role in the criminal desistance process, but few studies have examined the conditions under which becoming a mother or father is most likely to lead to reductions in criminal behavior.

Methods

The current longitudinal study draws on four waves of adolescent and young adult interview data (N = 1,066) and HLM regression models to examine the impact of parenthood on criminal trajectories, as well as the degree to which the prosocial potential of parenthood is modified by socioeconomic factors, the nature of the relationship between the biological parents, and pregnancy wantedness. The analysis also draws on narrative life history accounts elicited from a subset of these respondents (N = 22).

Results

SES and the wantedness of the pregnancy condition the relationship between parenthood and criminal involvement, however some gender differences emerged. Status of the relationship (married or cohabiting and single) was in general not a strong predictor.

Conclusions

Highly disadvantaged young men and women are not as likely as more advantaged young adults to evidence lower levels of criminal behavior after becoming parents, however wanted pregnancies may reduce female involvement in crime regardless of socioeconomic status. In-depth qualitative data further elucidate the conditional nature of the parenthood-crime relationship.     

犯罪动机的本源、性质和形成

犯罪动机的本源是人的需要，需要与动机的区别在于动机具有需要中所没有的行为指向和行为手段与方式。需要无是非善恶之分。通常所谓的犯罪意图或意向就是犯罪动机。犯罪动机具有主观恶性和有意识性的特点，不存在所谓中性的或善的犯罪动机，也不存在所谓的无意识犯罪动机。犯罪动机的形成过程经历从需要不能满足、缺乏调节能力、采用犯罪手段三个阶段。犯罪动机可以独立于犯罪行为而存在，犯罪动机的产生并不意味着犯罪行为的必然发生。     

NONSHARED ENVIRONMENTAL INFLUENCES ON ADOLESCENT DELINQUENT INVOLVEMENT AND ADULT CRIMINAL BEHAVIOR*

Findings gleaned from behavioral genetic research have revealed that nonshared environments are particularly important sources of behavioral variation. Surprisingly little criminological research has examined directly the effects of the nonshared environment on adolescent delinquent involvement and adult criminal behavior. The current study addressed this gap in the literature by calculating difference scores in a sample of 289 monozygotic (MZ) twin pairs to examine the effects of the nonshared familial environment on delinquent involvement, adult criminal behavior, levels of self‐control, and contact with antisocial peers. Analysis of MZ twin pairs from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) revealed that one nonshared family environment—maternal disengagement—was associated with delinquent involvement and the development of self‐control. The remaining nonshared familial environments, however, were not associated with antisocial outcomes. Implications of the findings are discussed.