Estimating the numbers of prison terms in criminal careers from one-step probabilities of recidivism

A method of using estimates of one-step probabilities of recidivism, i.e., conditional probabilities of individuals returning to prison for the jth time given release for the (j-1)st time, to estimate the numbers of prison terms expected to be accumulated by the individuals, is presented. The method is illustrated by calculating the expected numbers of prison terms separately for racial and gender groups in a large data base of Western Australian prisoners. The recidivism probabilities for these data were estimated by fitting Weibull mixture models to the (possibly censored) times to recidivate. The probabilities increase strongly asj increases from 1 to 6, then level off. Large differences between them are due to racial and gender group and these are reflected in the differing expected prison career durations for these groups. The effect of interventions which might lower recidivism is discussed in the light of the method as applied to these estimates.     

Micro-models of criminal careers: A synthesis of the criminal careers and life course approaches via semiparametric mixed poisson regression models,with empirical applications

Much recent research and debate in criminology have centered around how to conceptualize and model longitudinal sequences of delinquent and criminal acts committed by individuals. Two approaches dominate this controversy. One originates in thecriminal careers paradigm, which emphasizes a potentialheterogeneity of offending groups in the general population—thus leading to a distinction between incidence and prevalence of criminal offending, a focus on the onset, persistence, and desistence of criminal careers, and the possibility that criminals are a distinctive group with constant high rates of offending. Another approach places criminal events within a broader context ofstudies of the life course by explicitly substituting the conceptualization of “social events” for that of “criminal careers”. With respect to analytical models, this approach emphasizes a potentialheterogeneity of offenders with respect to order of criminal events from first to second to higher orders and thus suggests an analysis of the “risks” or “hazards” of offending by order of offense. Some extant commentaries on the criminal careers and life course approaches to conceptualizing and modeling longitudinal sequences of delinquent and criminal events committed by individuals have emphasized their differences and incompatibilities. In contrast, we apply recently developed semiparametric mixed Poisson regression techniques to develop conditions under which the two conceptual/modeling approaches are formally equivalent. We also modify the semiparametric mixed Poisson regression model of criminal careers to incorporate information on order of the delinquent/criminal event and develop an empirical application. This modification demonstrates the complementarity of the criminal careers and life course approaches, even though they have somewhat different foci.     

刑事政策执行方式研究——兼论宽严相济刑事政策的贯彻

中国刑事政策源远流长，因时因地不同而产生了不同的刑事政策，而各个刑事政策的执行方式也大相径庭，而其直接后果则是刑事政策执行的失败与成功。学界历来不缺对刑事政策本身的研究，但对刑事政策的执行方式却鲜有论述，本文分析了现存刑事政策执行方式的不足，提出了刑事政策执行在理论上存在的三种可能方式，并认为综合式执行方式是中国目前刑事政策执行方式的首选。     

Specialization in juvenile careers: Markov results for a California cohort

In this paper, we examine the arrest careers through September 1985 of a highly active cohort of youth paroled by the California Youth Authority in the early 1980s. Our results are in some ways similar to and in other ways different from those reported by other researchers. We find that while adjacent transition matrices appear constant, the same cannot be said for nonadjacent matrices. We reject the first-order Markov hypothesis and find support for specialization in the statistical significance of the forward specialization coefficients. Our results also suggest that, in addition to transitions to the same type of offense, an oscillating pattern of offending is common for our subjects. We also compare the transition matrices of three racial/ethnic and four regional groups. These results indicate differences in the patterns of offending by the racial/ethnic groups in our sample and similar offense-transition behavior in three of the four regions that differs significantly from that of the fourth region.Points of view are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official policy of the National Institute of Justice, U.S. Department of Justice, or U.S. General Accounting Office.     

Estimation of arrest careers using hierarchical stochastic models

This paper introduces a general procedure using hierarchical stochastic models for characterizing criminal careers within a population of heterogeneous offenders. Individuals engage in criminal careers which are treated as stochastic processes governed by fixed parameters (e.g., a rate parameter), and these parameters come from specified distributions. The parameters of these distributions at the upper level of the hierarchy must then be specified. The models are estimated using data on all persons arrested at least once in the six-county Detroit Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area during the 4 years 1974–1977 for a criterion offense (an index crime other than larceny) and arrested at least once for robbery through April 1979. The collected data set is not a random sample of all such offenders in the population. There is a bias toward selecting those with a higher arrest frequency. In order to make more general inferences, statistical adjustment was needed to overcome the arrest-frequency sampling bias. We construct a series of models for the arrest career and fit the models with the data set of arrests. After correcting biases in the data, we estimate the model parameters using empirical Bayes methods and then examine the resulting models.     

The multidimensionality of crime: A comparison of techniques for scaling delinquent careers

The construction of typologies of criminal behavior can benefit from the use of multidimensional analytic methods. Yet while some studies have applied such techniques to crime data (e.g., Shortet al, 1963; Nutch and Bloombaum, 1968; Chaiken and Chaiken, 1982), few have examined the assumptions of these methods as they apply to arrest histories. We argue that arrest histories represent a special form of data that are not ideally suited to standard multidimensional analyses. An examination of the different theoretical assumptions of factor analysis, multidimensional scaling, and variance centroid scaling (a form of correspondence analysis) reveals marked difierences in what is being uncovered by the analysis. In general, these claims are supported by an application of each technique to the arrest histories of 767 chronic juvenile delinquents.     

An exploration of burglary in the criminal histories of sex offenders referred for civil commitment

Commission of nonsexual crimes generally antedates officially recorded sexual offenses. In particular, burglary has been hypothesized to be a potential ‘stepping stone’ in the development of one's sexual criminal career in the same way that marijuana has often been considered a ‘gateway drug’ to more serious drug-related offenses. The present study examined the officially recorded criminal histories of 828 male sex offenders to determine the relevance of burglary in their criminal histories. One third of the men in the sample (n=281, 34%) had been charged at least once for burglary. These 281 men committed a total of 762 separate incidents of burglary. Offenders with at least one officially recorded charge for burglary (BSOs) were compared with those with no such charges (SOs). Next, the characteristics of each burglary were examined and four distinct types of burglary were identified: nonsexual, covertly sexual, overtly sexual, and combination burglary/rape. BSOs accrued twice as many charges as the SOs and were significantly more likely to have an earlier age of onset, a longer criminal career, more employment problems, elementary school problems, antisocial behavior, and substance abuse.     

The measurement of specialization and escalation in the criminal career: An alternative modeling strategy

Recent research using indices of specialization and escalation, such as the forward specialization coefficient and the escalation coefficient, have generally shown that repeat offenders tend to commit the same type or a more serious type of crime on successive arrests. Unfortunately, there are two important limitations to the use of specialization and escalation indices: (1) the meaning and interpretation of the coefficients is often unclear, and (2) the coefficients cannot be tested for statistical significance across groups. In an attempt to account for these limitations and to extend prior research in this area, this paper applies a class of log-linear models developed for studying social mobility tables with matched categories (for one or more groups) to crime-type switching tables. The benefits of using these models, in comparison with prior specialization and escalation research, are that the parameter estimates can be interpreted directly as tests of specialization and escalation in a meaningful way and the parameter estimates can be tested for equality across groups, such as age, race, and gender. The application and interpretation of these models are illustrated with arrest data from a sample of felony offenders in Michigan.     

试论刑事政策与国际刑法的关系

刑事政策是对犯罪有组织的反应,国际刑法以研讨国际犯罪为己任,对国际犯罪的研究需要以刑事政策为视角。本文通过分析刑事政策的含义及其国际化特征与国际刑法的发展方向,在刑事政策的视野下,揭示国际刑法的发展趋势——刑事政策的国际刑法化与国际刑法的刑事政策化,进而把握刑事政策与国际刑法两者的契合性。     

Age and crime in a Stockholm cohort

This study reports some findings on the age-crime relationship from a study of a 1953 Stockholm cohort (Project Metropolitan) through youth and young adulthood. The study includes 15,117 males and females. Basic data about crime in the cohort are presented along with more detailed data about the age-crime relationship. Special emphasis is given to sex and social class differences. The findings are discussed in the context of the recent debate on the value of longitudinal studies of crime as regards the study of the age-crime relationship. The results show that overall there are many general similarities with the findings from U.S. and British research on age, crime, and criminal careers.Project Metropolitan operates on grants from the Commission for Social Research and the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research. Until 1985 the project was supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Project Metropolitan is directed by Professor Carl-Gunnar Janson, Department of Sociology, University of Stockholm.     

Partner similarity for self-reported antisocial behaviour among married,cohabiting and dating couples: the Generation R Study

Abstract

From a criminological perspective, romantic relationships are supposed to decrease the risk of antisocial behaviour (Laub, Nagin, & Sampson, American Sociological Review, 63, 225–238, 1998). However, the effects of these relationships probably depend on the romantic partner's behaviour. In the current study we examined partner similarity for antisocial behaviour in an ethnically heterogeneous community sample of 4135 married, cohabiting and dating couples from Rotterdam, the Netherlands, using self-reports. Spousal correlations were consistently positive for antisocial behaviour but differed in strength according to the type of antisocial behaviour. Associations between spouses remained strong after adjusting for age and educational level depending on the type of antisocial behaviour. In addition, antisocial behaviour was positively associated between partners across marital status and ethnicity, but the strength of this association varied to some extent. Results are discussed in light of the phenotypic assortment, the socialization and the social homogamy hypotheses.     

论行政刑法的性质和概念

行政刑法在我国是一个崭新的研究领域。行政刑法在法律上兼具行政法与刑法的双重性质,行政刑法是国家为了实现行政管理的目的,维护正常的行政管理秩序,规定行政犯罪并追究其行政刑法责任的特殊法律规范的总称。     

Repositioning the corporate criminal: comparing and contrasting corporate criminal liability in Canada and Finland

ABSTRACT

Over the past two decades, a number of states in the Global North have introduced laws aimed at holding corporations criminally liable. While there is an important literature examining these legal regimes there is a paucity of comparative work interrogating the different political struggles and processes leading to corporate criminal liability (CCL) legislation. This paper addresses this lacuna by comparing and contrasting the development of CCL in Canada and Finland. By scrutinizing the law reform processes in each jurisdiction, the paper documents how CCL emerged under different conjunctures in each country, yet were shaped similarly by hegemonic beliefs in the non-criminal status of corporation, the importance of advancing private enterprise and established jurisprudence. Of particular note are the ways in which dominant notions of legal individualism and the universal legal subject constrained legislative efforts to hold corporations criminally to account therein preventing corporate misconduct from being processed as “real” crimes.     

刑事立案监督的现状与制度完善

刑事立案监督工作是检察监督的重要组成部分,是塑造检察监督形象,提高检察机关权威、整体推进检察监督的重要环节。本文在对我国当前司法实践中刑事立案监督工作存在问题及其原因进行分析的基础上,提出相关完善建议。     

Making space for restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curricula and courses

Restorative justice, rooted in the practices of indigenous people across the globe, has grown exponentially in both theory and practice since its beginnings in Canada in the 1970s. Restorative justice has influenced the interactions between offenders and victims, helped community members address crime and develop self-efficacy, and changed the way some countries rebuild after a history of oppression. Despite these restorative justice influenced changes, many criminology and criminal justice programs pay scant attention to restorative justice in curricula. This paper will examine ways to include restorative justice in criminal justice and criminology curriculum and the challenges involved in the process. The paper will then examine how the Law and Justice Department at Central Washington University has incrementally added restorative justice components to its curriculum, culminating most recently with the addition of a Community and Social Justice course. The paper will conclude with several examples of classroom activities and assignments that have helped connect students with the theory and practice of restorative justice.     

改革开放30年的刑事法制——以刑法立法为视角

本文以刑法立法为视角,对1979年以来我国刑法的发展进行了基本梳理。文章将30年来的中国刑法立法分为两个阶段,即"中国刑事法制由初创到成熟(1979——1997)"和"中国刑事法制由成熟到完善(1997——2008)";同时,对30年来我国刑法立法的主要成就及其特点做了简明扼要阐释。认为,2008年后中国刑法的应然走向是:(1)在刑法的立法理念上,提倡保障人权、确立客观主义;(2)在刑法立法形式上,以修正案为主,立法解释和司法解释为辅的刑法修改和解释模式将长期并存;(3)在刑法立法内容上,既着力解决现有刑法规范上的遗留问题,又根据国家法制进程和社会需要增减内容。     

转型时期刑事涉案财物扣押冻结问题研究

针对转型时期经济发展中出现的新型刑事案件和复杂的侦查工作局面,公安机关如何正确理解、适用法律,把握法律、政策界限,做到合法、合理地扣押冻结及妥善处理刑事涉案财物,是公安机关当前需要研究的课题。     

军事刑事诉讼概念的反思与重塑

军事刑事诉讼既是国家刑事诉讼的有机组成部分,同时又是与普通刑事诉讼相对而言的一种特殊刑事诉讼。对国家刑事诉讼来说,二者是部分与整体的关系;对普通刑事诉讼来说,二者则是个别与一般的关系。军事刑事诉讼之所以有存在的必要,不是基于它的一般性,而是基于它的特殊性,本文所要探讨的正是后者。     

A Criminal Career Study of the Continuity and Discontinuity of Sex Offending during the Adolescence-Adulthood Transition: A Prospective Longitudinal Study of Incarcerated Youth

Longitudinal research has seriously challenged assumptions that juvenile sex offenders (JSO) are characterized by high level of dangerousness, mental health problems, and crime specialization in sex offenses. The current study examines the longitudinal pattern of offending among a sample of JSO and a sample of juvenile nonsex offenders. The research design includes longitudinal data over a nine-year period allowing the examination of offending patterns and the crime mix from age 12 to age 23. The findings highlight that, while JSO are prone to persist offending in adulthood, there is limited continuity of sex offending. Further, the findings stress the importance of taking into account nonsexual juvenile delinquency, more specifically, youth violence, to make a better assessment of early adult offending outcomes of JSO.     

一个根本不存在的共犯种类--胁从犯--胁从犯的刑法依据和政策依据质疑

以刑法第28条作为胁从犯的存在依据,实属牵强附会,刑法第28条是关于主犯和从犯的补充规定;按作用分类法的理论,胁从犯是不存在的,刑法中只有主要作用和次要作用、辅助作用的规定,一些论者关于胁从犯的"较小作用"、"作用小于从犯"、"作用最小"的观点没有刑法依据.以毛泽东同志关于"首恶必办、胁从不问、立功受奖"的论述作为胁从犯的政策依据,也值得推敲,毛泽东选集中的"胁从"之说在当时主要是指听从"首恶"指挥跟从"首恶"国民党官兵,是今天刑法中"从犯"的立法依据,而不是胁从犯的政策渊源.