MEASURING PROTECTIVE HANDGUN OWNERSHIP*

Hill et al. (1985) have suggested a measure of protective handgun ownership that can be implemented in an omnibus survey like the General Social Survey (GSS), which does not ask respondents why they own the gun. Using the 1980 GSS and their refined measure, Hill et al. report (among other things) that fear of crime and prior victimization increase the likelihood that men, but not women, will own handguns for protection. Their analysis, however, is Jawed because (1) they made errors in their analysis and (2) their measure of protective handgun ownership is biased. This paper explains why the measure is biased and shows how the measure alters parameter estimates.     

FEAR OF CRIME AND HANDGUN OWNERSHIP

The levels of handgun ownership and the fear of criminal victimization Abstract are both considered social problems in American society. The present study attempted to test for causal effects among these and several other variables through the use of a nonrecursive simultaneous equation model to analyze data for 1,818 men. The results indicated that handgun ownership had the effect of reducing the fear of crime while fear had no statistically signficant effect on handgun ownership. These variables, in turn were influenced by religious membership, region, income, size of place of residence, political orientation, and age. The Findings do not support claims that the fear of crime motivates increased handgun ownership but do confirm arguments that in the contemporary United States. Handgun ownership provides some men with a sense of personal security.     

ASSESSING AGE AND GENDER DIFFERENCES IN PERCEIVED RISK AND FEAR OF CRIME*

Much of the research on fear of crime indicates that women and older persons are highly afraid of crime. These findings, especially older persons' fear of crime, are widely communicated in the scientific and popular media. This study examines age and gender differences in perceived risk and fear of crime. The data are from telephone interviews of 320 randomly selected residents in a southeastern metropolitan area of the United States. The relationships of age and gender to fear of crime are compared using a National Crime Survey (NCS) measure of fear of crime and 11 alternative indicators of fear of specific offenses. Women reported signifcantly greater perceived risk and fear of crime than men regardless of how fear of crime was measured and older adults reported the greatest fear of crime when the NCS measure was used. but not when the alternative individual measures of fear of crime were used. A LISREL model with latent constructs for fear of personal crime and fear of property crime also indicates that older adults do not have higher levels of fear of crime. In short, the extent of fear in the everyday lives of most older persons has been overestimated in many previous studies because of measurement problems.     

RACE AND GENDER EFFECTS ON FEAR OF CRIME: AN INTERACTIVE MODEL WITH AGE*

While the literature on fear of crime is not wholly consistent, results generally indicate that blacks, women, and the elderly are the groups most fearful. In those instances where race, gender, and age have been simultaneously taken into account, studies have generally assumed that the relationships are additive. However, the gerontological literature suggests that age ofen interacts with other status characteristics in producing quality of life differences. Multiple regression techniques are used on survey data from eight Chicago neighborhoods to assess whether or not the effects of age, race, and gender on fear of crime are interactive. Findings indicate that significant interactions are present, and the relevance of these findings are discussed in terms of actual and perceived risks of victimization and of subcultural interpretations of crime and fear of crime.     

GENDER,STREETLIFE AND CRIMINAL RETALIATION*

Recent work in criminology has highlighted the central role of retaliation in shaping criminal violence in America's inner cities. Most of this work, however, has been based on male offenders. It has also failed to consider whether and how gender structures payback in real‐life settings and circumstances. In this paper, we analyze in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with forty men and twelve women who recently engaged in one or more episodes of retaliatory violence to examine the ways in which gender shapes vengeance. We hope to provide an insider's view of how gender frames the context and dynamics of retaliatory events for both men and women.     

GENDER,FAMILIAL CONTROL,AND DELINQUENCY*

This research addresses a key process in power-control theory, namely, the gender stratification of social control. Using a multidimensional measure of familial control, the authors find evidence that the types of familial control employed are stratified by gender: male children are more typically aligned with paternal support and appearance rules, and female children are more often the objects of maternal support and curfew rules. All four dimensions have significant negative effects on delinquency. Brief attention is given as well to the effects of these variables on contact with formal social control agencies.     

GENDER,SOCIAL NETWORKS,AND RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY*

Criminological researchers have devoted substantial attention to the nature and dynamics of residential burglary, but the role played by gender in shaping this offense remains largely unexplored. Feminist ethnographers have documented the fact that streetlife is highly gendered, and that this typically serves to marginalize women's participation in criminal networks and activities. Therefore, it appears likely that residential burglary—a prototypically social offense that requires good network connections—will be strongly influenced by gender dynamics. In this study, we analyze in‐depth, semi‐structured interviews with 18 female and 36 male active residential burglars to examine the ways in which gender structures access to, participation in, and potential desistance from, residential burglary. In doing so, we aim to provide an insider's view of how gender stereotypes are expressed, reinforced, and exploited within streetlife social networks, and how these networks shape the lived experience of men and women engaged in residential burglary.     

FEAR,TV NEWS,AND THE REALITY OF CRIME*

Data from a 1997 survey of 2, 250 Florida residents are used to assess whether and how the reality of crime influences the relationship between watching TV news and fear of crime. Local crime rates, victim experience, and perceived realism of crime news operationalize the reality of crime and are included in ordinary least squares (OLS) estimates of the TV news and fear of crime relationship. These measures of reality are also used as contexts for disaggregating the analysis. Local and national news are related to fear of crime independent of the effects of the reality of crime and other controls. Local news effects are stronger, especially for people who live in high crime places or have recent victim experience. This contextual pattern of findings is consistent with a conclusion that TV news is most influential when it resonates the experience or crime reality of respondents.     

GENDER AND VARIETIES OF WHITE-COLLAR CRIME*

The Wheeler et al. (1982) data set of white-collar defendants is used to compare men's and women's socioeconomic profiles and occupations and the nature of their illegalities. The results show that a minority of men but only a handful of women fit the image of a highly placed white-collar offender. Most employed women were clerical workers, and most employed men were managers or administrators. Women were more likely to be nonwhite, less likely to have completed college, and owned less in economic assets. Men were more likely to work in crime groups and to use organizational resources in carrying out crimes, and their attempted economic gains were higher. Occupational marginality, not mobility, better explains the form of women's white-collar crime. The results raise questions about white-collar arrest data and the nature of crime and offenders in white-collar sentencing samples. They compel an investigation of the multiple injuences of gender, class, and race relations in generating varieties of white-collar crime and in being caught and prosecuted for white-collar crime.     

GENDER,RACE, AND HABITUAL OFFENDER SENTENCING IN FLORIDA*

This study explores the effects of race and gender on habitual offender sentencing in Florida. The sample consists of 1,103 female offenders admitted to the Florida Department of Corrections in fiscal year 1992–1993 who were eligible for sentencing under the habitual offender statute. Controlling for prior record, crime seriousness, crime type, and sentencing county contextual variables through logistic regression analysis, defendant race was found to be a relevant and statistically significant factor in the enhanced sentencing of female offenders. This factor was most noticeable with black female drug offenders and under structural contexts that were “high,” i.e., the percent of the population black, drug arrest rates, and violent crime rates. The race effects found with this sample of female offenders were often stronger than those in the Crawford et al. 1998 study of 9,960 eligible male offenders in Florida. The relevance of these findings is discussed.     

CITIZEN GUN OWNERSHIP AND CRIMINAL DETERRENCE: THEORY,RESEARCH, AND POLICY*

Research on the general and specific deterrents emanating from citizenowned firearms is examined under assumptions about deterrence. Only slight and indirect empirical evidence for deterrence exists in the area of citizen gun ownership. The crime-reducing effects associated with public policies that support civilian gun ownership are balanced in light of other, negative public health factors associated with citizen-owned guns.     

RACIAL COMPOSITION OF NEIGHBORHOOD AND FEAR OF CRIME*

A relationship between fear of crime and the racial composition of place has been widely assumed but seldom tested. Interviews conducted with a random sample of adults residing in a major state capital in the early months of 1994-at the height of a media-driven panic about violent crime-are used to test the proposition that as the percentage of blacks in one's neighborhood increases, so too will the fear of crime. We use objective and perceptual measures of racial composition, and we examine the effects of racial composition and minority status on fear of crime for black and white respondents. We distinguish between perceived safety or risk of victimization and fear, with the former used as an intervening variable in path models of fear of crime. Results show that actual racial composition has no consequence for the fear of crime when other relevant factors are controlled. Perceived racial composition is significant for fear among whites, but not among African-Americans. In particular, the perception that one is in the racial minority in one's neighborhood elevates fear among whites but not among blacks. All effects of perceived racial composition on fear are indirect and mediated by the perception of risk of crime.     

ONSET AGE,PERSISTENCE, AND OFFENDING VERSATILITY: COMPARISONS ACROSS GENDER*

Offending specialization has received considerable attention in past research on criminal careers. Relatively little attention has been given to examining the relationships between various sub‐group differences and the extent to which individuals tend toward specialization or versatility in their criminal careers. In the present analysis, we examine hypotheses derived from Moffitt's recent developmental theory that bear directly on offending specialization. Our analysis examines direct relationships between gender, onset age, persistence and offending specialization as well as the interaction of these influences and offending specialization. Our findings reveal results that are both consistent and inconsistent with Moffitt's dual taxonomy of offending behavior.     

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.     

GENDER AND SOUTHERN PUNISHMENT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR*

Recent scholarship raises two questions about the historical relationship between gender and official responses to criminality. First, to what extent has the formal social control of women changed in the past two centuries? Second, to what extent can changes in the presence of women within the criminal justice system be traced to the same factors that account for the changing presence of men? To address these questions, I focus on women incarcerated for felonies in a southern state (Georgia) between 1870 and 1940. Along with a comparable sample of male offenders, this population forms the basis of a time-series analysis that compares, and seeks to account for, trends in admission rates. The analysis yields little evidence that women disappeared from formal system of punishment. Instead, there were gender similarities in punishment trends and in explanations for those trends. Concluding the paper is a discussion of its implications for further research on gender differences in punishment.     

SELF-ESTEEM AND DEVIANCE: THE EFFECTS OF RACE AND GENDER*

Provision of occupational and educational opportunities has been the accepted means of reintegrating offenders into society because, with assumption of conventional roles, they are believed to experience improved economic conditions and renewed feelings of respectability. However, given the limited legal options available to them, offender self-esteem may continue to depend on immersion in deviant subcultures. To examine the effects of subcultural and conventional life-styles on offender self-esteem, a sample of 372 heroin addicts in treatment was surveyed. Employment had a positive effect on the self-esteem of white male addicts only; the self-evaluations of black male, black female, and white female addicts were unaffected by employment because these users were subjected to less stable working conditions. Subcultural integration had no impact or negative impact on the self-esteem of black male, black female, and white female addicts while subcultural involvement was associated with higher self-esteem in white males. The fact that white male addicts experienced favorable self-evaluations with involvement in both conventional and deviant life-styles is inconsistent with research which suggests an antagonism between crime and work: rather, these data seem to indicate that the join pursuit of legal and illegal professions may be more common.     

CLASS,GENDER, AND ARREST: AN INTERGENERATIONAL ANALYSIS OF WORKPLACE POWER AND CONTROL*

Power‐control theory posits that parental workplace positions affect adolescent law violation. To date, however, no test of the theory has directly measured occupational power and control. This paper tests whether parental and adolescent workplace freedom and control affect criminal behavior and arrest as the theory predicts, using data from a prospective longitudinal survey of 1, 000 adolescents and their parents. The results suggest sex differentials in the effects of maternal authority position and parental freedom and control. In particular, daughters whose mothers hold authority positions are more likely to be arrested than are daughters whose mothers do not hold such positions. The effects of adolescent employment also differ by sex, with perceived workplace power and control reducing rates of arrest among females but increasing them among males.     

EXTENDING SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: MODELING THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN COHESION,DISORDER, AND FEAR*

In this study, we build on recent social disorganization research, estimating models of the relationships between disorder, burglary, cohesion, and fear of crime using a sample of neighborhoods from three waves of the British Crime Survey. The results indicate that disorder has an indirect effect on burglary through fear and neighborhood cohesion. Although cohesion reduces disorder, nonrecursive models show that disorder also reduces cohesion. Part of the effect of disorder on cohesion is mediated by fear. Similar results are obtained in nonrecursive burglary models. Together, the results suggest a feedback loop in which decreases in neighborhood cohesion increase crime and disorder, increasing fear, in turn, further decreasing cohesion.