Understanding differences in crime reporting practices: a comparative approach

Despite a large body of literature detailing crime reporting practices, scant research examines the correlates of the crime reporting decision in developing nations with newer democracies, newer economies, or developing economies. Using a sample of 23 nations from the 2000 International Crime Victimization Survey (ICVS), this study tests the generalizability of correlates of robbery and assault reports to the police in a non-US sample to determine whether there are national differences in reporting practices. Based on this analysis emphasizing the developing world and countries in transition, an expanded model, integrating incident, demographic, police-related, and national variables, is developed that will enhance our understanding of differences in reporting practices in developing and developed nations. Results identified both similarities and differences in crime reporting practices between developed and developing nations. Although the findings reinforce the importance of incident and demographic characteristics on reporting crime to the police, they also suggest that national variables, reflecting economic and social context, should not be excluded from studies examining reporting practices.     

Comparing crime reporting factors in EU countries

Through crime-reporting citizens make their security needs explicit to the police. This information helps the police in the allocation of resources. In the European Union, there are significant differences among countries, both in terms of overall and specific crime-reporting rates. Factors highlighted by the literature that might explain these differences are not entirely satisfactory. There is little comparative research, and most published studies are nation-centred, based on the experience of central and northern European countries, and largely focused on the situational variables related to the criminal incident itself. It is widely assumed that situational variables have a universal explanatory capacity in crime reporting. This article questions this assumption and shows that a number of factors weight differently in explaining national rates. Following a literature review, we identified four groups of causal factors and analysed their explanatory capacity. These are related largely to the incident (rational models) and victims’ perception (psychological models). In addition, we also analysed the influence of institutional and community factors. The European Survey on Crime and Safety database was used for our analysis. Results show the existence of two areas in Europe, the north-central area and the south-eastern area, in terms of crime reporting rates and the factors that explain these differences. Rational and psychological models explain crime-reporting practices better in the north-central area. In contrast, socio-demographic variables and social inequalities are more relevant for explaining crime reporting in the south-eastern area of Europe. Institutional variables are also important in eastern countries. Community factors are not significant explanatory variables due to the limitations of indicators available in the database. Our research reveals that crime-reporting is a rather more complex phenomenon than is often assumed, and highlights the limitations of existing knowledge and methodologies on comparative crime-reporting.     

The roles of victim and perpetrator alcohol use in intimate partner violence outcomes

Alcohol use increases the risk of intimate partner violence (IPV), yet little research has examined its role in victimization outcomes (e.g., physical injury, police reporting). This study examined the roles of perpetrator and victim incident-specific alcohol use in IPV outcomes. The sample included 501 men and 1,756 women who had experienced an IPV physical assault. Logistic regression analyses showed that after controlling for relevant covariates, women whose partners had been drinking were significantly more likely to be injured than were women whose partners had not been drinking. A woman's own alcohol use was unrelated to victimization outcomes. Men were significantly more likely to report the incident if their partners had been drinking but were marginally less likely to report if they had been drinking. Findings suggest that perpetrators' incident-specific alcohol use is important in understanding which victims are most likely to be injured and report the incident to the police.     

Investigating the impact of extended bar closing times on police stops for DUI

Researchers have often studied whether changes in the availability of alcohol impact associated problem behaviors like drunk driving. In July of 2003, the state of Minnesota approved legislation to extend by one hour the closing time for eating and social establishments that serve alcohol. This study utilized a time-series model to examine the impact of the extended closing time on the number of police stops for DUI in one jurisdiction in Minnesota. While results of the time-series indicated that there was a significant increase in the number of police stops for DUI following this legislative change, incident-specific analyses suggested that this increase might have been largely a result of increased proactive responses by local police. Implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.     

Can the United Nations support "objective" and unhampered illicit drug policy research?

Policies towards mind-altering drugs are controversial and vary among countries and cultures. Many nations feel that the United Nations should be a forum where anti-drug issues can be discussed openly and `objectively'. During the 1990s I participated frequently in U.N. sponsored research projects. This essay summarize what has been a challenging and exciting experience and raises many questions about the U.N.'s capacity to do and or fund `objective' drug research. This is so because of pressures on the U.N. from drug-policy setting countries, lack of independent funds for the U.N. drug policy agencies, the structure and internal dynamics of the U.N. bureaucracies, and the background of the involved U.N. staff. As a result of these factors, the U.N. has promoted a repressive anti-drug agenda and does not allow open debate of many of key anti-drug issues currently discussed in many coutries. This is unfortunate because the UN. has the largest amount of information about illicit drugs anywhere in the world and can play a key role improving anti-drug policies that currently are unsatisfactory to both, drug hawks and doves.     

MAKING DELINQUENT FRIENDS: ADULT SUPERVISION AND CHILDREN'S AFFILIATIONS*

Although having delinquent friends is one of the strongest known correlates of delinquent behavior, criminologists have been curiously silent as to why some adolescents acquire delinquent friends and others do not. Analysis of data from the national Survey of Parents and Children reveals a strong association between forms of direct and indirect parental supervision and the kinds of friends that adolescents make. Parents who closely monitor their children's affiliations exhibit a variety of traits typical of involved or conscientious parents. Indirect supervision also appears to mediate the effect of attachment to parents, one of the few established correlates of delinquent friendships. These and other findings illustrate the critical role that parent‐child relations play in the process of making delinquent friends.     

REPORTING CRIME TO THE POLICE, 1973–2005: A MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF LONG-TERM TRENDS IN THE NATIONAL CRIME SURVEY (NCS) AND NATIONAL CRIME VICTIMIZATION SURVEY (NCVS)*

Although many efforts have been made during the past several decades to increase the reporting of crime to the police, we know little about the nature of long-term crime-reporting trends. Most research in this area has been limited to specific crime types (e.g., sexual assault), or it has not taken into account possible changes in the characteristics of incidents associated with police notification. In this article, we advance knowledge about long-term trends in the reporting of crime to the police by using data from the National Crime Survey (NCS) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and methods that take into account possible changes in the factors that affect reporting at the individual and incident level as well as changes in survey methodology. Using data from 1973 to 2005, our findings show that significant increases have occurred in the likelihood of police notification for sexual assault crimes as well as for other forms of assault and that these increases were observed for violence against women and violence against men, stranger and nonstranger violence, as well as crimes experienced by members of different racial and ethnic groups. The reporting of property victimization (i.e., motor vehicle theft, burglary, and larceny) also increased across time. Overall, observed increases in crime reporting account for about half of the divergence between the NCVS and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) in the estimated magnitude of the 1990s crime decline—a result that highlights the need to corroborate findings about crime trends from multiple data sources.     

The pharmaceutical industry's responsibility for protecting human subjects of clinical trials in developing nations

Pharmaceutical companies increasingly perform clinical trials in developing nations. Governments of host nations see the trials as a way to provide otherwise unaffordable medical care, while trial sponsors are drawn to those countries by lower costs, the prevalence of diseases rare in developed nations, and large numbers of impoverished patients. Local governments, however, fail to police trials, and the FDA does not monitor trials in foreign countries, resulting in the routine violation of international standards for the protection of human subjects. This Note proposes independent accreditation of those institutions involved in clinical trials--the institutional review boards which oversee trial protocol; the organizations, such as pharmaceutical companies, which sponsor the trials; and the research organizations that conduct the trials. Accreditation, similar to that used in the footwear and apparel industries, would increase the transparency of pharmaceutical trials and would enable the United States government and consumers to hold trial sponsors accountable for their actions.     

中美电子政务及其相关法律规定的比较

伴随着网络化、信息化的发展以及对国家政府服务性的定位、高效率的要求,电子政府的构建正成为一大世界性的潮流,诸多国家均加快了这一步伐。中国与美国作为发展中国家和发达国家的两大代表,在电子政务建设中存在着一定的差异。相应地,也导致了中美两国对此发展过程中所涉及的相关法律规定的不同。通过比较可以发现:相较美国,中国的相关法制建设仍然还存在着差距,需要予以完善。     

Human trafficking law and social structures

Human trafficking has only recently emerged at the forefront of policy reform, even in developed nations. Yet, heightened awareness of the issue has not translated into effective policy as the majority of nations have ineffective antitrafficking practices; many countries have failed to criminalize human trafficking, whereas others do not actively enforce statutes in place. By applying Black's theory of law, this study offers a preliminary understanding into the variation of global prosecutorial efforts in human trafficking and adequacy of antitrafficking law. To isolate this relationship, the effects of trafficking markets are controlled. As with prior research, the study finds limited support for the theory. The article concludes with a discussion on the implications of the quantity of antitrafficking law and morphology association for policy development.     

Public Perceptions of the Legitimacy of the Law and Legal Authorities: Evidence from the Caribbean

Research on procedural justice and legitimacy has expanded greatly across the social sciences in recent years. The process‐based model of regulation, which links people's assessments of procedural justice and legitimacy to their compliance with the law and legal authorities, has become particularly influential in criminology and sociolegal studies. A review of the previous research on perceived legitimacy highlights two important features. First, legitimacy has been conceptualized and measured in many different ways. Second, most of the research on legitimacy has focused on only a handful of developed nations. Using survey data from Trinidad and Tobago, this article examines the conceptualization and measurement of the perceived legitimacy of the law and legal authorities. The findings indicate that some of the prominent conceptual and measurement models used in previous research are not empirically valid in the Trinidadian context. The implications of the results for conceptualization, theory, and future research are discussed.     

Examining Police Effectiveness as a Precursor to Legitimacy and Cooperation with Police

Numerous studies by Tyler and colleagues, as well as other scholars, support a normative, process model to account for variation in the public’s cooperation with police in the USA and other developed nations. However, a recent study in Ghana suggests that in developing countries fraught with high levels of violent crime and corruption, cooperation may instead be accounted for by a utilitarian, rational-choice model. Our study examines whether public cooperation with police in the developing nation of Trinidad and Tobago is associated with the process model or rational-choice model. Using in-person structured interviews with residents, we examined whether victims’ decisions to report to police were related to individuals’ perceptions about police effectiveness or police legitimacy. We found support for the process model. We discuss possible explanations for the divergence with Tankebe’s research in Ghana and suggest avenues for future research.     

LEVELS AND PREDICTORS OF RECIDIVISM: THE MALTA EXPERIENCE*

Research on recidivism has been confined primarily to a few highly industrialized Western nations (e.g., United States, Great Britain, Canada, and Australia) in which the data and resources needed for such research are readily available. The restriction of recidivism research to such a small number of nations begs the question: Do these results reflect patterns of offending and products of the criminal justice systems unique to these nations, or do they describe patterns of recidivism across a much wider range of social and cultural contexts? In this study I extend the scope of recidivism research by examining levels and patterns of recidivism in the Republic of Malta, a small Mediterranean island that differs considerably from the typical context in which recidivism is studied. Specifically, I examine the likelihood of recidivism among persons released from Malta's only prison between 1976 and 1994. In addition, I examine factors shown in previous research to be strong predictors of recidivism to assess their value as predictors of recidivism among Maltese prisoners. Proportional hazards regression models reveal that levels and predictors of recidivism in Malta approximate those observed in societies that are socially and culturally quite different. The findings suggest that the role of social institutions in reintegrating offenders into society may be more complex than commonly believed.     

The Global Trade in Live Cetaceans: Implications for Conservation

Cetaceans—small whales, dolphins and porpoises—have long been popular performers in oceanaria. Captive cetaceans have also been used for research and employed in military operations. In some jurisdictions cetacean display facilities have been phased out or prohibited, and in the US and Hong Kong a high proportion of the whales and dolphins now in captivity have been captive-bred. A large, growing and increasingly opportunistic trade in dolphins and small toothed whales nevertheless exists, its centres of supply having shifted away from North America, Japan, and Iceland to the Russian Federation and developing nations in Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Southeast Asia. Demand for live captures is being driven by: a new wave of traditional-type oceanaria and dolphin display facilities, as well as travelling shows, in the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean; increasingly popular programs that offer physical contact with cetaceans, including the opportunity to feed, pet, and swim with them; and the proliferation of facilities that offer ‘dolphin assisted therapy’ to treat human illness or disability. Rigorous assessment of source populations is often lacking, and in some instances live capture is adding to the pressure on stocks already at risk from hunting, fishery bycatch, habitat degradation, and other factors. All too often, entrepreneurs appear to be taking advantage of lax (or non-existent) regulations in small island states or less developed or politically unstable countries to supply the growing global demand for dolphins and small whales. The regulation of trade in live cetaceans under CITES is fraught with problems, not least the poor quality of reporting and the lack of a rigorous mechanism for preparation, review, and evaluation of non-detriment findings.     

The Police Reporting Behavior of Intimate Partner Violence Victims

In the current research, we draw on Canadian national data to examine the police reporting decisions of married and cohabiting intimate partner violence victims. Our analyses examine how police notification decisions are influenced by the demographic characteristics of victims and incident-specific factors. We find that the victims who contact the police more often live in a cohabiting relationship and with children. In contrast to predictions, we find that visible minority women more often call the police. Income, education, and employment status do not appear to shape the police reporting decisions of women. Finally, women who call the police are also likely to have experienced severe forms of violence including threats with weapons, injury, and the destruction of their property.     

APPLYING CASE STUDY METHODOLOGY TO CHILD CUSTODY EVALUATIONS

The child custody evaluation (CCE) can play a critical role in the resolution of custody disputes in the Family Court. There have been a number of significant methodological advances made in this field by various researchers over the past 20 years. It is timely that a scientifically‐based, integrative, methodological framework be developed within which existing methods might be situated. In this paper, case study methodology is proposed as an appropriate methodological framework for CCEs. The application of this methodology to CCEs is explicated with particular attention being paid to the methodological tasks of data collection and data interpretation. An orienting model is proposed to guide the collection of data, and strategies are described for applying population level research findings to individual cases in the form of risk and resilience models. Finally, coherence, analogy, and making methodology explicit are proposed as evaluation criteria for the CCE process and reports, and suggestions are made about outcome research.     

Self-Reported Delinquency in India: A Study of High School and Approved School Boys in Tamil Nadu

Findings from a self-reported delinquency survey among high school (N = 517) and institutionalized (N = 306) boys in the Indian state of Tamil Nadu are reported as part of a larger study designed to tap several aspects of delinquency phenomena in a developing society. The present research suggests that self-reported delinquency in India resembles that of juveniles in economically developed nations in several respects but differs from it in other ways. Specifically, as found elsewhere, self-reported delinquency in Tamil Nadu largely consists of minor property offenses or status-technical violations. Also, institutionalized boys (official delinquents) more frequently report delinquency involvement compared to high school boys. However, while a general inverse relationship was found between the SES rank of boys in various high schools and institutions and their reported delinquency involvement, it appears that this is not necessarily a direct linear relationship. In contrast to the findings of self-report research in developed nations, both the volume and frequency of self-admitted involvement in delinquency is comparatively low for Tamil Nadu boys, reflecting the comparatively low offense and arrest rates for juveniles reported in official crime data in India. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

Shades of blue: Confidence in the police in the world

Purpose

The present study tests the hypothesis that regime nature as a structural characteristic explains variations in public confidence in the police.

Methods

Combining five sources of data from 50 nations with 69,309 respondents, the current article extends the extant research by using hierarchical logistic regression analyses with ample sample sizes at both levels to test the hypothesis with a series of control variables.

Findings

In addition to the largely consistent findings from the individual-level predictors, the results show that that there is a U-shaper convex curvilinear relationship between the levels of democracy and confidence in the police. Residents in long-term stable authoritarian regimes as well as in long-term stable democracies display elevated levels of confidence in the police, whereas short-term or unstable authoritarian nations and nations in democratic transition have the lowest level of confidence in the police. Besides, confidence in the police is higher among citizens in nations with more government efficiency and is lower among residents of countries with higher homicide rates.

Conclusion

Regime nature is important in understanding confidence in the police. In addition, governments should make more efforts to promote their efficiency in order to win citizens’ support and they are expected to reduce homicide rates.     

我国知识产权法律与国家发展政策的整合

内容提要:我国就知识产权保护议题在与发达国家谈判的过程中屡遭挫败,甚至制定出“超国际标准”的知识产权保护规范。知识产权法的立法意旨在于奖励创造与发明,进而促进科学及文化的进步,但是与发达国家一致的知识产权保护标准,并不能使发展中国家从中获益。然而并非所有的发达国家或国际组织在思考国际间知识产权保护政策的走向时均固守本位主义,他们的许多支持发展中国家利益的研究成果,对我国未来制定新的知识产权法规与政策均甚有助益。应就知识产权与人权之间发生的冲突,及其与宪法基本权冲突时的优位选择理论做出探索,以此作为我国日后制定知识产权法律及与发达国家进行相关谈判的政策依据。