GANG MEMBERSHIP AS A TURNING POINT IN THE LIFE COURSE*

Gang‐involved youth are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior, especially violence. The processes accounting for this enhanced illegal activity, however, remain speculative. Employing a life‐course perspective, we propose that gang membership can be conceptualized as a turning point in the lives of youth and is thus associated with changes in emotions, attitudes, and routine activities, which, in turn, increase illegal activity. Using prospective data from a multisite sample of more than 1,400 youth, the findings suggest that the onset of gang membership is associated with a substantial change in emotions, attitudes, and social controls conducive to delinquency and partially mediate the impact of gang membership on delinquent activity. Desistance from gangs, however, was not associated with similar systematic changes in these constructs, including delinquent involvement.     

STRICTLY LIABLE: GOVERNMENTAL USE OF THE PARENT–CHILD RELATIONSHIP AS A BASIS FOR HOLDING VICTIMS LIABLE FOR THEIR CHILD'S WITNESS TO DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

Studies estimate that between three and ten million children in the United States witness domestic violence annually. Although studies have demonstrated a co‐occurrence of domestic violence and child abuse, there is no concrete evidence to support the assumption that a child's exposure to domestic violence increases the risk to the child of abuse or neglect. Recently the New York State Court of Appeals determined that a child's witness to abuse does not suffice, in and of itself, to show that removal of the child is necessary or that removal is in the “best interests” of the child. Programs which have developed alternatives to presumptive removal understand the importance of viewing the interests of the battered parent and children as being in accord with each other rather than in opposition. Private and government sponsored programs have demonstrated some success in protecting the parent‐child relationship, ensuring the safety of both parent and child, and increasing accountability of batterers while reducing the necessity for removals. Alternative programs are less costly to the state than foster care, and emotionally less costly to the families.     

REEXAMINING SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY USING CALLS TO THE POLICE AS A MEASURE OF CRIME*

This study examines social disorganization theory using calls to the police during 1980 in 60 Boston neighborhoods. These data, based on complainant reports of crime rather than official police reports, allow further investigation of differences in findings based on victimization data and official crime data. The rates of assault, robbery, and burglary are regressed on poverty, mobility, racial heterogeneity, family disruption, and structural density. Interaction terms for poverty and heterogeneity, poverty and mobility, and mobility and heterogeneity are also explored. Results from this study support findings from recent victimization studies and earlier ecological studies using official counts of crime. Poverty and heterogeneity, along with family disruption and structural density, are found to be important ecological variables for understanding the distribution of crime rates among neighborhoods.     

JUDICIAL ROTATION AS CENTRIPETAL FORCE: SENTENCING IN THE COURT COMMUNITIES OF SOUTH CAROLINA*

Courts as communities theory emphasizes the sentencing differences that can arise between localities within a single state. The results of published studies have highlighted how local differences emerge based on informal sociological and political processes defined by the communities perspective. The findings from recent quantitative studies from South Carolina have revealed notably less county variation in sentencing than has been observed elsewhere. I use qualitative interviews with 13 South Carolina trial judges to investigate sentencing processes and to shed light on these findings. The interviews explore the state's legal structure and culture, including the practice of circuit rotation in which judges travel among counties holding court. The results suggest rotation serves as a centripetal force of sentencing culture, homogenizing what might otherwise be a more varied collection of county‐specific norms. Rotation leads to increased uniformity through judge shopping and the cross‐pollination of ideas and norms. Defendants can strategically judge shop and plead in front of a lenient judge—a process that gives rise to the term “plea judge,” which is a label for the most lenient judges who sentence a large number of defendants. Rotation also increases the interactions among judges and prosecutors, expanding networks and grapevines, and leading to cross‐pollination and the sharing of ideas.     

PRISON GUARDS AND THE USE OF PHYSICAL COERCION AS A MECHANISM OF PRISONER CONTROL*

This paper examines the dynamics of the use of unofficial force by prison guards in a Texas penitentiary. The findings suggest that rather than being idiosyncratic or sporadic, guard use of physical coercion was highly structured and deeply entrenched in the guard subculture Upperranking guards served as mentors and socialized younger nonmnking guards into the process of using physical coercion. These nonranking guards actually served as apprentices. Most importantly, guards who used physical force were rewarded for their behavior with improved duty posts or even promotions.     

UNDOCUMENTED IMMIGRANTS AS PERCEIVED CRIMINAL THREAT: A TEST OF THE MINORITY THREAT PERSPECTIVE*

The link between immigration and crime has garnered considerable attention from researchers. Although the weight of evidence suggests that immigration is not linked to crime, the public consistently views immigrants, especially undocumented immigrants, as criminal and thus a threat to social order. However, little attention has been paid to why they are perceived this way. By drawing on the minority threat perspective, this article investigates the effects of objective and perceptual measures of community context on perceived criminal threat from undocumented immigrants. Analyses of data collected from four Southwest states and the U.S. Census show that the perceived size of the undocumented immigrant population, more so than the actual size of the immigrant population and economic conditions, is positively associated with perceptions of undocumented immigrants as a criminal threat. Additional analyses show that objective measures of community context do not affect native respondents’ perceptions of the size of the undocumented immigrant population. The study's findings and their implications for theory, research, and policy are discussed.     

PROTECTING CHILDREN WHO WITNESS DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

This article argues that the Nicholson v. Williams case was decided wrongly because it does not adequately protect the interests and welfare of children who witness domestic violence. It contends that the legal system must do more to ensure the well-being of children who witness domestic violence before permitting them to remain in the custody of their mothers who were living in violent relationships. The article does not support the notion that victims of domestic violence should be prosecuted for failure to protect or child abuse but argues that evidence reveals how detrimental witnessing domestic violence is on a child and that this necessitates the need for stricter measures to be taken to protect children from this danger.     

Exploring the Sequential Lineup Advantage Using WITNESS

Advocates claim that the sequential lineup is an improvement over simultaneous lineup procedures, but no formal (quantitatively specified) explanation exists for why it is better. The computational model WITNESS (Clark, Appl Cogn Psychol 17:629–654, 2003) was used to develop theoretical explanations for the sequential lineup advantage. In its current form, WITNESS produced a sequential advantage only by pairing conservative sequential choosing with liberal simultaneous choosing. However, this combination failed to approximate four extant experiments that exhibited large sequential advantages. Two of these experiments became the focus of our efforts because the data were uncontaminated by likely suspect position effects. Decision-based and memory-based modifications to WITNESS approximated the data and produced a sequential advantage. The next step is to evaluate the proposed explanations and modify public policy recommendations accordingly.     

SCHOOLS AS COMMUNITIES: THE RELATIONSHIPS AMONG COMMUNAL SCHOOL ORGANIZATION,STUDENT BONDING,AND SCHOOL DISORDER*

Research has indicated that school factors such as communal school organization and student bonding are predictive of school disorder, with greater communal organization and greater student bonding leading to less delinquency and victimization. Data from a nationally representative sample of 254 public, nonalternative, secondary schools were used to examine structural equation models representing hypothesized relationships among communal school organization, student bonding, and school disorder. The hypothesis that communally organized schools would have less disorder held true for teacher victimization and student delinquency, but not for student victimization. In addition, the hypothesis that the relationship between communal school organization and school disorder would be mediated by student bonding was supported for student delinquency, but not for teacher victimization.     

AN EMPIRICAL FRAMEWORK FOR STUDYING DESISTANCE AS A PROCESS*

Recent reviews of the desistance literature have advocated studying desistance as a process, yet current empirical methods continue to measure desistance as a discrete state. In this paper, we propose a framework for empirical research that recognizes desistance as a developmental process. This approach focuses on changes in the offending rate rather than on offending itself. We describe a statistical model to implement this approach and provide an empirical example. We conclude with several suggestions for future research endeavors that arise from our conceptualization of desistance.     

CRIME AS HAZARD: PERCEPTIONS OF RISK AND SERIOUSNESS*

The study of crime suffers from an inattention to the social consequences of criminal acts. Conceiving crimes within the larger context of “hazard,” data are reported on the relative seriousness of conventional and white-collar crimes, as well as other hazards, using a sample of Washington state respondents. The results indicate that there is an inverse relationship between the perceived likelihood of a hazard and its seriousness. Generally, the more immediate the threat of a hazard, such as white-collar crimes, the more serious it is perceived to be. There are also implications from these consequences for perceptions of institutional effectiveness and interpersonal relationships. This suggests that future studies of the consequences of criminality, especially white-collar and corporate violations, might be directed toward the notions of risk and, eventually, social trust.     

MEASUREMENT ERROR IN CALLS-FOR-SERVICE AS AN INDICATOR OF CRIME*

Several recent studies have used records of calls-for-service (CFS) to police 911 centers to measure crime at the address, neighborhood, and city level. This article examines the limitations of this “new” indicator of crime. After pointing out several types of error in dispatch records, we use data from an observational study of policing in 60 neighborhoods to examine empirically how these errors might bias CFS-based crime counts and discuss the consequences of such bias. We conclude with suggestions for future research on the validity of CFS as an indicator of crime.