THE RELATIONSHIP OF POLICE AND CRIME

This study develops a model to measure the impact of police expenditure on crime rates across cities. It specifically allows for the two-way relationship between police and crime. Other things being equal, cities with more police per capita should have lower crime rates, if police reduce crime. Simultaneously, the higher the crime rate, the greater the public demand for police. In its final formations, the model contains two identifiable equations with two endogenous variables, police expenditure per capita and the crime rate. Following a discussion of the reliability of crime statistics, the model is estimated by two-stage least squares, using FBI crime data for 119 cities in 1960. These two-stage results are compared with ordinary least-square estimation results and are found to be clearly superior.     

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL SUPPORTS ON POLICE STRESS*

Utilizing a theoretical perspective (the “social supports model”) increasingly applied by stress researchers in other fields, the present endeavor explores whether social supports operate to shield officers from the stresses emanating from police work To investigate this issue, 91 suburban officers were administered a questionnaire that contained scales measuring four job-related stressors, four types of social supports, and two forms of psychological stress—work and life. With regard to the stressors, the data analysis revealed that feelings of dangerousness were significantly and positively related to both stress scales, while shift change and court problems increased only general lye stress. It was also found that supervisory support mitigates work stress while family support helps to reduce more general psychological discomfort. These latter results rein force the assertion that future research could profit by systematically exploring the circumstances, such as social supports, which enable police to cope effectively with the more stressful features of their work.     

PROTECTION OF MALE SEXUAL RIGHTS IN THE CRIME OF RAPE

Crimes relevant to sexual offence in the current Criminal Law of the PRC, such as the crime of rape, the crime of forcible molestation and humiliation of women, the crime of indecency with a child, establish a relatively close net for protecting female sexual rights. However, the protection of male sexual rights is surprisingly neglected or disregarded. In current China, sexual offences against males （including sexual offence against a male by male and sexual offence against a male by female） are getting worse. Unfortunately, male victims of sexual offences cannot seek for legal remedy due to the lack of legal provisions. In theory, the Criminal Law needs to bring in the protection of male sexual rights. This thesis will focus on the issue relevant to sexual offences against males on the crime of rape. The authors will present increasing evidence of sexual offences against males and explore the reasons. We will analyze the necessity of amending the provisions of the crime of rape based on theoretical and practical research, and learn from the advantages of legislations of different times and places in China and other countries. We will conclude with suggestions for amending the current Criminal Law about the crime of rape in order to fill up the gap in legal protection of male sexual rights in China.     

EVALUATION OF POLICE SERVICES IN MEDIUM-SIZED CITIES

Citizen evaluations of police services in four medium-sized cities are investigated in this article. Socioeconomic characteristics as well as police attitudes and political attitudes were found not to be good predictors of citizen evaluation. Complaint efficacy was found to be the best predictor of citizen satisfaction with police services.     

THE IMPACT OF FLORIDA'S HABITUAL OFFENDER LAW ON CRIME*

Research examining the impact of habitual offender laws on crime has suffered from numerous methodological problems, including failure to consider incapacitation effects that may be responsible for most of the laws' impact but that may not appear until years after the law is passed; not addressing simultaneity issues; and omitting needed control variables to avoid spurious or suppressed results. The present study specifies procedures that can be used to mitigate these problems. These procedures are used in the current study to estimate the impact of Florida's habitual offender law on crime using a multiple time series design, with data for 58 counties from 1980–1998.     

THE IMPACT OF REAPPORTIONMENT ON POLICY EXPENDITURES: A Quasi-Experimental Time-Series Analysis

While there is little question that court-ordered reapportionment has changed the composition of state legislative personnel, it is still unclear whether reapportionment has had any significant impact on public policies. Evidence to date has been both contradictory and methodologically suspect. Using time-series regression in a quasi-experimental design, we examine the effects of reapportionment on expenditures in three policy areas within eight states—four control (states well apportioned before 1964) and four experimental (states egregiously malapportioned before 1964). Contrary to recent time-series analyses on this topic, we find that the implementation of the "one man, one vote" ruling had little significant effect on the distribution of state expenditures believed beneficial to urban interests.     

EXPLAINING THE GENDER GAP IN CRIME: THE ROLE OF HEART RATE

Although it is well established that males engage in more crime compared with females, little is known about what accounts for the gender gap. Few studies have been aimed at empirically examining mediators of the gender–crime relationship in a longitudinal context. In this study, we test the hypothesis that a low resting heart rate partly mediates the relationship between gender and crime. In a sample of 894 participants, the resting heart rate at 11 years of age was examined alongside self‐reported and official conviction records for overall criminal offending, violence, serious violence, and drug‐related crime at 23 years of age. A low resting heart rate partially mediated the relationship between gender and all types of adult criminal offending, including violent and nonviolent crime. The mediation effects were significant after controlling for body mass index, race, social adversity, and activity level. Resting heart rate accounted for 5.4 percent to 17.1 percent of the gender difference in crime. This study is the first to produce results documenting that lower heart rates in males partly explain their higher levels of offending. Our findings complement traditional theoretical accounts of the gender gap and have implications for the advancement of integrative criminological theory.     

AN EXPLORATION OF THE DETERMINANTS OF REPORTING CRIME TO THE POLICE IN THE CITY OF TIANJIN,CHINA*

Western research has investigated three types of correlates of crime reporting–victim‐specific (individual or household), incident‐specific, and environment‐specific variables. The current study applies this general, analytical framework to explore the determinants of crime reporting to the police in contemporary urban China. Using data collected from a recent survey of criminal victimization in Tianjin, we assess the determinants for reporting of robbery, assault, personal theft, and household burglary. The results consistently show that offense seriousness is a significant predictor of reporting for all offenses studied. Also, a nonlinear relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and reporting of burglary is found. In contrast, individual‐specific and household‐specific factors do not affect reporting, with the exception of a cumulative measure of victimization experience. Measures of neighborhood social cohesion and informal control are also not associated with reporting. The implications of these findings are discussed with reference to the unique neighborhood organizational infrastructure in urban China.     

CRIME AND THE POLICE A Multivariate Analysis

In an effort to assess the correlates of the variations in the rate of crime aggregated at a city level, data are analyzed using multiple correlation analysis that includes indicators of socioeconomic and social control (police) characteristics of the cities The results indicate that the rate of police and money budgeted to police contributes little to the explained variation in rates of crime. In addition, these indicators of social control variations do not correlate with variations in clearance rates The data are interpreted in terms of their implications for public policy, evaluation of police, and deterrence theory.     

THE IMPACT OF POLICE INTERVENTION UPON JUVENILE DELINQUENTS

Police intervention is thought to have an impact upon the juvenile's perception of himself and his role expectations. The data indicate the degree to which the frequency and severity of official delinquency, as well as the severity of disposition, office the juvenile's see-satisfaction. delinquent identification, commitment to delinquent others, commitment to future delinquency, and attitudes toward police. the results of partial correlation coefficients and stepwise regression suggest that police intervention has little impact upon the juvenile when socioeconomic status and, especially, involvement in delinquent behavior are controlled. It is concluded that the juvenile's perceptions of himself and his attitudes toward others, as they relate to delinquency, are more likely to be grounded in the experience of his delinquency involvement than in the experience of coming to the attention of social control agents.     

THE IMPACT OF POLICE INVESTIGATIONS ON POLICE-REPORTED RATES OF GANG AND NONGANG HOMICIDES*

This paper is concerned with the utility of police-reported rates of gang violence, particularly important in an era which stresses officially determined rates of violence. The basic question is whether police investigation procedures have a major impact on the police designations of homicides as gang related, a question of causal order answerable only by the triangulation provided by multiple forms of data analysis. With minor qualification, the results suggest that“gang” designations of homicides reject characteristics of the incident settings and participants, that intrusion of investigative processes on reported gang versus nongang homicide rates was minimal, and that gang homicide rates reported by these departments could be used as reasonable criteria for evaluating program impact.     

PRODUCING PERSONAL SAFETY: THE EFFECTS OF CRIME RATES, POLICE FORCE SIZE, AND FEAR OF CRIME

Aggregate data from a sample of 23 Canadian cities are used to examine relationships among crime rates, police staffing rates, fear of crime, and citizens'crime prevention behaviors. Bivariate and path analyses reveal positive correlations between fear of crime and parallel production (crime prevention behaviors) and negative impacts of police force size on such behaviors. Crime rates have both direct and indirect positive effects (via fear of crime) on parallel production. while police force size does not have any real effect on fear of crime.     

DEMEANOR,CRIME, AND POLICE BEHAVIOR: A REEXAMINATION OF THE POLICE SERVICES STUDY DATA*

Recent research has called into question the seemingly well-established conclusion that the likelihood of arrest by the police rises when suspects display a disrespectful or hostile demeanor toward the police. In this article we reanalyze data collected for the Police Services Study, on which a substantial body of supporting evidence for this conclusion is based, to determine whether previous analyses of these data have misestimated the effects of demeanor on police behavior. We find that, insofar as the data permit us to address the criticisms, the original findings hold.     

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.