UP IT UP: GENDER AND THE ACCOMPLISHMENT OF STREET ROBBERY*

Attempts to understand women's participation in violence have been plagued by a tendency either to overemphasize gender differences or to downplay the significance of gender. The goal of this research is to reconcile these approaches through an examination of the experiences of female and male street robbers in an urban setting. Based on in-depth interviews with active offenders, the study compares women's and men's accounts of why they commit robbery, as well as how gender organizes the commission of the crime. The research suggests that while women and men articulate similar motives for robbery, their enactment of the crime is strikingly different—a reflection, in part, of practical choices women make in the context of a gender-stratified street setting.     

ENERGY LAW IN SUPPORT OF THE LOW-CARBON TRANSITION: LESSONS FROM THE UNITED KINGDOM AND CHINA

Law is an important tool for national governments to promote the transition to a low carbon energy sector. However, law is the servant of national politics and policies and is embedded in a wider institutional environment, both nationally and internationally. This comparative analysis of the United Kingdom (UK) and China shows that, although national law plays a role in supporting the transition to a low-carbon energy system, the nature of the law and the role it plays depends greatly on the wider institutional environment. The UK is a parliamentary democracy and a liberal market economy. Therefore, the laws passed by the legislature form a critical part of the framework for the low-carbon transition. In contrast, the authority of the executive in China allows the executive to govern the energy sector through decrees and regulations, and diminishes the role of law passed by the legislature. Energy law and policy in both the UK and China are formulated in the light of the prevailing energy policy paradigm: the market-oriented regulatory state paradigm in the UK and a state-centered paradigm in China. Together, these differences explain the contrasting experiences in promoting the low-carbon transition, in general, and the deployment of renewable energy in particular.     

STICK-UP,STREET CULTURE,AND OFFENDER MOTIVATION*

Motivation is the central, yet arguably the most assumed, causal variable in the etiology of criminal behavior. Criminology's incomplete and imprecise understanding of this construct can be traced to the discipline's strong emphasis on background risk factors, open to the exclusion of subjective foreground conditions. In this article, we attempt to remedy this by exploring the decision-making processes of active armed robbers in real-life settings and circumstances. Our aim is to understand how and why these offenders move from an unmotivated state to one in which they are determined to commit robbery. Drawing from semistructured interviews with 86 active armed robbers, we argue that while the decision to commit robbery stems most directly from a perceived need for fast cash, this decision is activated, mediated, and shaped by participation in street culture. Street culture, and its constituent conduct norms, represents an essential intervening variable linking criminal motivation to background risk factors and subjective foreground conditions.     

CLINICAL ETHICS COMMITTEES IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: TOWARDS EVALUATION

In the United Kingdom there is a growing conviction that CECs have an important role to play in helping health care professionals address ethical dilemmas. For example, the Royal College of Physicians, the Nuffield Trust and the unofficial Clinical Ethics Network, which has received financial support from the Department of Health, commend the use of CECs in the UK. The growth of such committees has been influenced by the legal and policy support they have received in the United States. However, there is increasing concern about both the benefits and the quality of work produced by CECs. In addition, despite the rapid increase in the number of CECs in the UK, outside of the United States they remain under-researched and no formal mechanism exists to assess their performance. As a result we know little about the structure, function, impact and effectiveness of CECs. We are currently conducting a research project funded by the Wellcome Trust that seeks to interrogate the competing claims regarding the benefits and disbenefits of CECs. This initial account of our research provides a detailed analysis of theoretical issues that surround the development and use of CECs and points towards the questions that lie at the heart of the social science strand of our project.     

FURTHERING THE INTEGRATION OF ROUTINE ACTIVITY AND SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORIES: SMALL UNITS OF ANALYSIS AND THE STUDY OF STREET ROBBERY AS A DIFFUSION PROCESS

Attempts to integrate the two predominant spatial theories of crime, social disorganization and routine activity theories, may benefit from examining empirical relationships at units of analysis smaller than the relatively large units characteristic of most ecological research (cities, SMSAs, census tracts, multiple city blocks). Small units of analysis, specifically, face blocks (both sides of a city block between two intersections) are analyzed in a study of street robbery within a medium-size southeastern U.S. city. Models of street robbery and street-robbery "potential" suggest a crime diffusion process. Several interaction effects between variables of social disorganization and routine activity theory are found, which may form the basis in future research for successful theoretical integration.     

THE POLITICS,AND PLACE,OF GENDER IN RESEARCH ON CRIME*

The study of gender and crime has grown exponentially over the past 40 years, but in some fundamental respects, it remains underdeveloped. Few scholars have considered both the similarities and the differences in the predictors of offending among males and females and the implication of this for middle‐range theories. Victimization has been put forth as a major explanatory factor for female offending; yet the study of female victimization has been ghettoized because it has failed to address the ways in which it is related to the larger literature of victimization. Female inmates have always been characterized as having special needs, but the basic necessities (housing and employment) inmates require once they are released from prison are in fact gender neutral. These bodies of research all have suggested that the salience of gender varies in different contexts and is intermixed with other forms of stratification. As such, we would do well to attend to those situations and relational processes that foreground gender and focus our efforts on where gender‐based paradigms are important and can have a real impact.     

麻醉抢劫案件中咪达唑仓的检验

讨论了用薄层色谱和GC/MS分析咪达唑仑的定性方法,在实际检案中用此方法可作出准确鉴定.     

GIRL FRIENDS ARE BETTER: GENDER,FRIENDS, AND CRIME AMONG SCHOOL AND STREET YOUTH*

In recent years, popular media has drawn attention to “mean girls” and their negative treatment of others, particularly other females. But while the attention to girls' aggression and their mistreatment of their peers highlights understudied aspects of female behavior, it neglects the beneficial aspects of female friendship. We argue that compared to relationships with males, friendships with females provide more social control, fewer opportunities and less motivation for offending and may therefore discourage crime. Because an adolescent's gender likely influences the association between the gender of one's friends and crime, we anticipate that the association will be stronger for females than for males. The relationship is also likely affected by the context in which relationships originate; we expect that those that develop in less conventional contexts will have weaker effects on crime. We explore these hypotheses with a comparative analysis of effects of friendships on property crime in two samples of youth: those who live at home and attend school and those who are homeless and spend their days and nights on the street. Our findings support our hypotheses. The relationship between female‐dominated friendship networks and property crime is negative and significant; however, this association is strongest for school females, weaker for school males and females who live on the street, and nonsignificant for homeless males.     

THE CONTEXT OF MARRIAGE AND CRIME: GENDER,THE PROPENSITY TO MARRY,AND OFFENDING IN EARLY ADULTHOOD*

Marriage is central to theoretical debates over stability and change in criminal offending over the life course. Yet, unlike other social ties such as employment, marriage is distinct in that it cannot be randomly assigned in survey research to more definitively assess causal effects of marriage on offending. As a result, key questions remain as to whether different individual propensities toward marriage shape its salience as a deterrent institution. Building on these issues, the current research has three objectives. First, we use a propensity score matching approach to estimate causal effects of marriage on crime in early adulthood. Second, we assess sex differences in the effects of marriage on offending. Although both marriage and offending are highly gendered phenomena, prior work typically focuses on males. Third, we examine whether one's propensity to marry conditions the deterrent capacity of marriage. Results show that marriage suppresses offending for males, even when accounting for their likelihood to marry. Furthermore, males who are least likely to marry seem to benefit most from this institution. The influence of marriage on crime is less robust for females, where marriage reduces crime only for those with moderate propensities to marry. We discuss these findings in the context of recent debates concerning gender, criminal offending, and the life course.     

THE INTERACTION OF RACE, GENDER, AND AGE IN CRIMINAL SENTENCING: THE PUNISHMENT COST OF BEING YOUNG, BLACK, AND MALE

Prior theory and research on sentencing oversimplify the role of race, gender and age in judicial decision making. In this article we present a "focal concerns" theory of judicial decision making to frame hypotheses regarding the effects on sentencing of these social statuses, both singly and in combination. Analyzing statewide sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania for 1989–1992, we find that, net of controls: (1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the joint effects of race, gender, and age on sentencing, and of using interactive rather than additive models.     

TESTING FOR TEMPORALLY DIFFERENTIATED RELATIONSHIPS AMONG POTENTIALLY CRIMINOGENIC PLACES AND CENSUS BLOCK STREET ROBBERY COUNTS

This study examined street robbery patterns in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from the years 2009 to 2011 to determine whether the effects of potentially criminogenic places are different across different periods of the day. Census block (N = 13,164) street robbery counts across four periods (6:45 a.m . to 9:59 a.m., 10:00 a.m . to 4:29 p.m ., 4:30 p.m . to 9:14 p.m ., and 9:15 p.m. to 6:44 a.m. ) were modeled with 12 different potentially criminogenic places, 3 measures of illicit markets, 4 compositional control variables, and spatially lagged versions of the 12 potentially criminogenic places and population using simultaneously estimated negative binomial regression models. Differences in the magnitudes of the parameter estimates across the time periods were assessed with Wald tests. Overall, the patterns across the four models were mostly consistent with the effects hypothesized based on the study's crime pattern theory and time‐geography theoretical frame; yet differences in the magnitudes of the coefficients were less pronounced than hypothesized. Overall, the results provide moderate support for the crime pattern theory and time‐geography explanation of spatial‐temporal robbery patterns; however, numerous points are raised for future crime and place research.     

HISTORICAL CONTINGENCIES AND THE EVOLVING IMPORTANCE OF RACE,VIOLENT CRIME,AND REGION IN EXPLAINING MASS INCARCERATION IN THE UNITED STATES

This article combines insights from historical research and quantitative analyses that have attempted to explain changes in incarceration rates in the United States. We use state‐level decennial data from 1970 to 2010 (N = 250) to test whether recent theoretical models derived from historical research that emphasize the importance of specific historical periods in shaping the relative importance of certain social and political factors explain imprisonment. Also drawing on historical work, we examine how these key determinants differed in Sunbelt states, that is, the states stretching across the nation's South from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, from the rest of the nation. Our findings suggest that the relative contributions of violent crime, minority composition, political ideology, and partisanship to imprisonment vary over time. We also extend our analysis beyond mass incarceration's rise to analyze how factors associated with prison expansion can explain its stabilization and contraction in the early twenty‐first century. Our findings suggest that most of the factors that best explained state incarceration rates in the prison boom era lost power once imprisonment stabilized and declined. We find considerable support for the importance of historical contingencies in shaping state‐level imprisonment trends, and our findings highlight the enduring importance of race in explaining incarceration.     

RACE,CODE OF THE STREET,AND VIOLENT DELINQUENCY: A MULTILEVEL INVESTIGATION OF NEIGHBORHOOD STREET CULTURE AND INDIVIDUAL NORMS OF VIOLENCE*

The study outlined in this article drew on Elijah Anderson's (1999) code of the street perspective to examine the impact of neighborhood street culture on violent delinquency. Using data from more than 700 African American adolescents, we examined 1) whether neighborhood street culture predicts adolescent violence above and beyond an adolescent's own street code values and 2) whether neighborhood street culture moderates individual-level street code values on adolescent violence. Consistent with Anderson's hypotheses, neighborhood street culture significantly predicts violent delinquency independent of individual-level street code effects. Additionally, neighborhood street culture moderates individual-level street code values on violence in neighborhoods where the street culture is widespread. In particular, the effect of street code values on violence is enhanced in neighborhoods where the street culture is endorsed widely.