Delinquency theory and prevention: A radical alternative

Twentieth century America has seen several delinquency prevention programs come into vogue and then collapse under the pressure of ever increasing rates of delinquency; pressuring policy makers to continue their search for new and better programs. Yet, new prevention programs are not pulled out of a hat. Because these programs are based on certain assumptions about human behavior they are, for the most part, derived from theories of crime and delinquency causation. Pursuing this relationship between theory and practice, this paper grounds the emergence of delinquency prevention with the development of positivist criminology, identifies the conceptual and practical deficiencies of positivist theories of crime and subsequent prevention strategies and presents the prevention directive of contemporary Marxist “Critical Criminology.”     

The Institutional Determinants of International Female Crime

In this article the author estimates the relative influences of the four broad social institutions of education, politics, family, and economy, plus the process of modernization upon proportionate female crime by using international data for 1974 derived from Interpol statistics. Each of the institutions is operationalized into three empirical indices, as is modernization, using data from the Handbook of International Data on Women. Then these 15 independent variables are intercorrelated with 7 specific categories of female offenses plus total female crime, each rendered in proportionate form as a ratio of female crime to all crime detected by the police in each category. The correlational analysis is constructed so as to constitute a test of three competing theories of female crime: the violence-prone “new female criminal,” the theory of economic need, and economc opportunity theory. The data provide only weak support for the theory of the “new female criminal,” but considerably stronger support for both the economic need and economic opportunity theories. It is not possible to choose unambiguously between the need and opportunity theories with the evidence at hand.     

Could Innovations in Policing have Contributed to the New York City Crime Drop even in a Period of Declining Police Strength?: The Case of Stop,Question and Frisk as a Hot Spots Policing Strategy

Available data make it impossible to reach strong conclusions about the role of policing in the New York crime decline. Instead, we examine whether innovations implemented in New York fit with what is known about effective policing strategies. Our main analysis focuses on how the New York City Police Department (NYPD) could have continued to contribute to the crime drop over the last decade when the number of police declined significantly. We examine geographic data on crime and stop, question and frisks (SQFs) to show that SQFs are concentrated at crime hot spots. We also show that the NYPD increased these specific hot spots policing strategies despite declining numbers. In our discussion, we speculate on whether this “doing more with less” could be an explanation for the continued crime drop in New York, noting the limitations of drawing conclusions from existing data. We also raise concerns about possible backfire effects of SQF hot spots approaches.     

Law,the State,and the Dialectics of State Crime

Drawing on material from a study of civil society and state crime in six countries, this article reflects on two themes from Chambliss’s work: the debate between state-centred and more pluralistic views of law, and the “dialectical” approach to the analysis of state crime. It argues for a more pluralistic approach to law than Chambliss and Seidman adopted in Law Order and Power, along with a broader approach to the definition of state crime as a form of deviant behaviour. Case studies from the civil society research illustrate how the strategies adopted by organizations challenging state practices can be understood in terms of an interplay between different forms of law. With some qualifications, we support Chambliss’s dialectical approach, and attempt to clarify just what the term “dialectical” means. Finally we bring together the two strands of the argument to propose an approach to state crime founded on “dialectical legal pluralism”.     

CRIMINOLOGY, CRIMINAL JUSTICE, AND THE WAR ON CRIME

This detailed assessment reviews the nation's “war on crime” during the past ten years, examines what has heen accomplished in that period, and outlines the likely prospects for the future. Although important and tangible progress in improving criminal justice has been made. it has not produced relief from high crime rates. In fact, “things are worse than ever.” For the future, there will be both more advances and frustrations in the war on crime. It is emphasized that the progress achieved so far has been to create a more efficient and fairer rystem of justice and that we should take pride in this. If not eclipsed by the quarterly release of crime statistics, we can maintain our momentum and gain even more significant improvements in the next decade.     

AGE,PEERS, AND DELINQUENCY*

Hirschi and Gottfredson (1983; Gottfredson and Hirschi, 1990) have argued that the age distribution of crime cannot be explained by any known variables. and they point specifically to the failure of sociological theories to explain this phenomenon. This paper examines a quintessentially sociological theory of crime—differential association—and evaluates its ability to explain the age distribution of crime. Analysis of data from the National Youth Survey on persons aged 11–21 reveals that peer relations (exposure to delinquent peers, time spent with peers, loyalty to peers) change dramatically over this age span, following much the same pattern as crime itself When measures of peer influence are controlled, the effects of age on self-reported delinquency are largely rendered insignificant. Additional analyses show that delinquent friends tend to be “sticky” friends (once acquired, they are not quickly lost) and that Sutherland's arguments concerning the duration and priority of delinquent associations are only partially correct.     

Does police patrol in large areas prevent crime? Revisiting the Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment

Research Summary

The Kansas City Preventive Patrol Experiment (KCPPE) was seen by its developers to have produced “consistent evidence of the lack of effects of any consequence on crime,” a conclusion that was to have a strong impact on assumptions about police patrol for almost half a century. We identified the original official crime data from the KCPPE, and reanalyzed outcomes focusing on a comparison of the “proactive” versus “control” beats (“reactive beats” were criticized because of violations of treatment integrity); examining broad categories of crime (to increase statistical power); and using count regression models. Our findings are not unequivocal, but point to modest impacts of police patrol on crime in police beats.

Policy Implications

Our findings suggest that lessons drawn for half a century from the KCPPE need to be revisited. The KCPPE does not show that police patrol in large areas has no influence on crime, and this finding is consistent with several more recent studies. At the same time, we note that the effects of patrol in the KCPPE using our analysis strategy, and those found in other studies of preventive patrol in larger areas, are about half that found in hot spots policing studies. This suggests that police agencies ideally should invest in focused hot spots policing initiatives. However, absent an ability to manage such initiatives, or the crime analysis capabilities to identify crime hot spots routinely, simpler preventive patrol schemes to utilize uncommitted patrol time can be seen as potentially effective in preventing crime.     

VULNERABLE VICTIMS,MONSTROUS OFFENDERS,AND UNMANAGEABLE RISK: EXPLAINING PUBLIC OPINION ON THE SOCIAL CONTROL OF SEX CRIME

With the possible exception of terrorists, sex offenders in the United States experience a greater degree of punishment and restriction than any other offender group, nonviolent or violent. Members of the public overwhelmingly support “get tough” sex crime policies and display an intense hostility toward persons labeled “sex criminals.” The theoretical literature has identified three models potentially explaining public opinion on the social control of sex crime: the victim‐oriented concerns model, the sex offender stereotypes model, and the risk‐management concerns model. However, empirical work that directly tests these models is absent. This article addresses that gap by analyzing national survey data that includes measures of the key concepts outlined in the different theoretical models and items gauging support for punitive sex crime laws as well as support for sex offender treatment. The findings provide partial support for all three models but suggest that extant theories can better explain support for punitive sex crime policies than views about sex offender treatment.     

General Theory and Global Criminology: Childhood Environments,Problem Behaviors,and a Focus on Prevention

General theories of crime and delinquency are tested in part by their ability to explain the empirical findings of cross-national research. Systematic research using comparable survey methods provides a rich body of data from many countries and settings that inform such tests. There are several aspects of the general theory proposed by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) that facilitate the idea of global criminology which, coupled with this growing research literature, support the idea of general theories of crime. These include use of a “crime-free” definition for dependent variables, disciplinary-free assumptions about human nature, appreciating the distinction between propensities and events in crime theory, incorporating the burgeoning empirical literature from many disciplines stressing the importance of childhood environments and self-control, and focusing on recent successful prevention efforts. A set of research needs stimulated by modern global criminology are also proposed.     

WHITE COLLAR AND ECONOMIC CRIME: AN INTERNATIONAL PERSPECTIVE

In recent years increased attention has been paid by various international forums to the dangerous upsurge in internationally oriented white collar and economic criminality. At the same time, organs like the United Nations or the Council of Europe are attempting to effectively deal with economic crime occurring on national levels. The author traces the development of international efforts in the field by focusing on the relevant United Nations resolutions and agreements, as well as on documents adopted by the Council of Europe. It is demonstrated that the use of terminology which is not substantially different from theories of white collar crime developed on national levels, as well as indirect references to Sutherland's ideas, constitute the conceptual link between the international instruments dealing with white collar crime (including specific United Nations agreements and codes, and the work undertaken by the Council of Europe), and traditional, nationally-oriented theories. This similarity has far-reaching practical implications: except for purely international white collar crimes, many of which are of very recent origin, white collar crime theory can be applied in combating international crime occurring within national boundaries, the seriousness of which is evident from an examination of the relevant documents. The author advances a theory of international white collar crime and suggests that its increase necessitates the adoption of new theoretical horizons and new practical methods for dealing with this dangerous form of law-breaking which defies traditional notions of “crime” and “criminal”.     

Crime,politics, and minority populations: Use of official statistics in the united states and Japan

Although the governments of the United States and Japan differ markedly in racial ideology, official crime statistics in both nations reflect political arrangements which marginalize minority populations. In both nations, official crime statistics reveal more about the attempts of majority populations to label minority populations as a criminal class than about variations in criminal behavior across racial populations. While there is no racially pure Black population in the United States, there is a “black” category within official statistics, and the statistics are used to justify crime control policies which have a disparate impact on the diverse peoples who are socially‐perceived as Black. While there are undeniably non‐Japanese populations in Japan, there are no racial categories for them in official statistics which define them out of existence; except where crime statistics are concerned, so that the police can monitor the criminality of “foreigners.” In both societies, official categorization of race in crime statistics implies that crime is a minority problem; government statistics reinforce official ideology that crimes by “foreigners” and “black violence” are the real threats to civil society.     

A Rush to Judgment?: The Origin of the 2001 Australian “Heroin Drought” and its Implications for the Future of Drug Law Enforcement

This paper reassesses the origins of what has been referred to as the Australian “heroin drought.” It looks at the theories that circulated in drug policy circles immediately after the supply shortage was discovered in 2001. It concludes that there may have been a ”rush to judgment” as these inferences were based on unsatisfactory data. As such, none of the theories that were advanced at the time hold true — the shortage was almost certain to have been the result of a Taliban- enforced reduction of Afghanistan grown opium. As interdiction strategies were one of the main theories for the shortage, this might seem disappointing, especially as supply reduction strategies struggle to maintain relevancy against a growing shift to demand reduction and harm reduction strategies. But this situation should not be the case — drug seizures should not be hailed as law enforcement's central strength in this or any other situation. Instead, the strong point of policing should be seen as the broad approach it takes to reduce crime through its attack on all criminal enterprises, not just its assault on a particular criminal sector — like the drug trade.     

Gun Control in a Developing Nation: The Gun Court Act of Jamaica

Generally, the study of Third World crime can be approached from two acutely different theoretical perspectives. “Modernization” theory attempts to attribute crime in Third World societies to the rapid pace of industrialization and attempts to apply a variety of criminological theories that focus on the individual and the immediate social context of the actor. “Political economy/dependency” theory attempts to address the processes of imperialism and underdevelopment and the whole range of law violations and legal controls present in post-colonial societies.

This paper explains the Jamaican firearm crime problem, and the societal response to it, during the 1970's and early 1980's by applying the political economy/dependency theoretical framework. The legislative policy designed to curb increases in firearm crimes in Jamaica during the study period was the Gun Court Act. This mandatory piece of criminal legislation is examined in order to develop the connection between crime in underdeveloped nations and crime and social control.     

THE STRUCTURAL SIMILARITY OF PROCESSES GENERATING CRIMINAL AND ANALOGOUS BEHAVIORS*

It is possible to distinguish between broad-domain theories that offer an explanation for all phenomena of interest to a discipline and narrow-domain theories that attempt to explain a subset of those phenomena. In criminology, this distinction has prompted theorists and researchers to confront the question of whether the same etiological process can explain variation in all types of criminal offending behavior or whether it will be necessary to adopt different theories to explain variation in different kinds of criminal behavior. One broad-domain theory, advanced by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), contends that a variable called “self-control” can account for variation in all kinds of criminal conduct as well as variation in many acts that are “analogous” to crime in some ways but are not actually criminal. Analogous behaviors include, among other things, smoking, drinking, involvement in accidents, gambling, and loitering. Using data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development (N = 369 males), we attempt to define operationally the concept of self-control with a set of variables measured at ages 8–9. We then examine the empirical association between this self-control measure and self-reported involvement in a variety of criminal and analogous acts during adolescence. In support of Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, our results indicate that self-control is associated with both outcomes and that the strength of the association is approximately equal. Contrary to the expectations of their theory, however, was our finding that the covariance between criminal and analogous behaviors could not be explained entirely by variations in self-control. This finding suggests that factors other than time-stable differences in criminal propensity do matter for criminal and legal, but, risky behaviors.     

From tong war to organized crime: Revising the historical perception of violence in Chinatown

An analysis of New York City press accounts and official documents from 1894 to 1908 challenges many assumptions about Chinese organized crime in the United States. Contrary to conventional wisdom, this analysis provides strong evidence that Chinese organized crime is neither “emerging” nor “nontraditional” and that it predates, in structure and sophistication, organizations of other ethnic origins later recognized as “modern” organized crime by academics, the media, and the government. A qualitative, document-based case study of the first “tong war” between the Hip Sing Tong and the On Leong Tong (1899–1907) shows that both organizations were heavily involved in a multiethnic social system of organized crime that extended across the United States and to China itself. The turn-of-the-century tongs were involved with police and political corruption, labor racketeering, price fixing, prostitution, gambling, immigrant smuggling, slavery, drug trafficking, and violent crimes. They are still associated with these activities.     

IS BEING “SPIRITUAL” ENOUGH WITHOUT BEING RELIGIOUS? A STUDY OF VIOLENT AND PROPERTY CRIMES AMONG EMERGING ADULTS

Although prior research has had a tendency to confirm a negative association between religiousness and crime, criminologists have been slow to incorporate new concepts and emergent issues from the scientific study of religion into their own research. The self‐identity phrase “spiritual but not religious” is one of them, which has been increasingly used by individuals who claim to be “spiritual” but disassociate themselves from organized religion. This study first examines differences in crime between “spiritual‐but‐not‐religious” individuals and their “religious‐and‐spiritual,” “religious‐but‐not‐spiritual,” and “neither‐religious‐nor‐spiritual” peers in emerging adulthood. Specifically, we hypothesize that the spiritual‐but‐not‐religious young adults are more prone to crime than their “religious” counterparts, while expecting them to be different from the “neither” group without specifying whether they are more or less crime prone. Second, the expected group differences in crime are hypothesized to be explained by the microcriminological theories of self‐control, social bonding, and general strain. Latent‐variable structural equation models were estimated separately for violent and property crimes using the third wave of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The overall results tend to provide a partial support for the hypotheses. Implications for criminology and future research are discussed.     

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.     

America's response to terrorism: An empirical analysis of federal intervention strategies during the 1980s

Despite considerable interest among criminologists, the literature on terrorism has been largely atheoretical and nonempirical. This paper provides the results of a national study of federal criminal cases that arose from the FBI's Counterterrorism Program during the 1980s. The strategies of federal prosecutors are discussed in relation to Turk's notions of “explicit politicality” and “exceptional vagueness.” Evidence shows that in keeping with historical studies of American political crime, prosecutorial efforts to depict terrorists as common criminals have been the most frequently used and most successful strategy. Prosecutors' efforts to explicitly politicize the terrorists' crimes have been largely unsuccessful and are rarely employed.     

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.     

Newsmaking criminology: Reflections of the media,intellectuals, and crime

Although academicians in criminology and criminal justice have come to appreciate the importance of the media in constructing ideological images of crime and punishment, apparently they have not considered how to use mass communications for the purposes of informing, interpreting, and altering those images to reflect more realistically the social, political, and economic conditions of crime and social control. Beginning with an analysis of the relationships among the developing political economy of the mass media, intellectuals, and conceptions of crime and justice, this essay introduces a criminological practice that can take advantage of the available opportunities in the production of crime news. I call this practice “newsmaking criminology.” It refers to the conscious efforts of criminologists and others to participate in the presentation of “newsworthy” items about crime and justice.