A general theory of crime and computer crime: An empirical test

Computer crime has become a global issue and continues to rapidly grow; however, few studies had examined the applicability of a general theory of crime in explaining computer deviance. Using a panel of 2,751 Korean youths, the current study examined whether low self-control theory can be useful as a theoretical framework for explaining computer crime. The results indicated the applicability of low self-control theory in explaining both illegal download of software and illegal use of others’ personal identification online. Consistent with the theory's prediction, opportunity variables, especially hours of computer use, were found to be significant predictors of computer crime. The shortcomings of the current research and the directions for future research were discussed.     

A randomized test of initial and residual deterrence from directed patrols and use of license plate readers at crime hot spots

Objectives

To test the effects of short-term police patrol operations using license plate readers (LPRs) on crime and disorder at crime hot spots in Mesa, Arizona.

Methods

The study employed a randomized experimental design. For 15 successive 2-week periods, a four-officer squad conducted short daily operations to detect stolen and other vehicles of interest at randomly selected hot spot road segments at varying times of day. Based on random assignment, the unit operated with LPRs on some routes and conducted extensive manual checks of license plates on others. Using random effects panel models, we examined the impact of these operations on violent, property, drug, disorder, and auto theft offenses as measured by calls for service.

Results

Compared to control conditions with standard patrol strategies, the LPR locations had reductions in calls for drug offenses that lasted for at least several weeks beyond the intervention, while the non-LPR, manual check locations exhibited briefer reductions in calls regarding person offenses and auto theft. There were also indications of crime displacement associated with some offenses, particularly drug offenses.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that use of LPRs can reduce certain types of offenses at hot spots and that rotation of short-term LPR operations across hot spots may be an effective way for police agencies to employ small numbers of LPR devices. More generally, the results also provide some support for Sherman’s (1990) crackdown theory, which suggests that police can improve their effectiveness in preventing crime through frequent rotation of short-term crackdowns across targets, as it applies to hot spot policing.     

Surveillance cameras and crime: a review of randomized and natural experiments

Research on the effectiveness of surveillance cameras in reducing crime suffers from potential threats to causal validity. This paper reviews seven studies that address some of these problems using the rigorous research designs of randomized and natural experiments. Included studies that reported changes in total crime found crime reductions ranging from 24 to 28% in public streets and urban subway stations, but no desirable effects in parking facilities or suburban subway stations. Moreover, surveillance cameras may help reduce unruly behaviour in football stadiums and theft in supermarkets/mass merchant stores. These findings indicate that video surveillance can reduce crime in several settings.     

Islam, modernization and crime: A test of the religious ecology thesis

Using a United Nations (United Nations, 1977) cross-national data set on offender and offense rates for a variety of crimes, this article qualifies recent research into religiosity by investigating the relationship between Islamic religion, economic development, and crime rates. Considerable research has demonstrated a positive correlation between economic development (often defined as modernization) and crime. Other research has suggested that religion is an impedence to crime, although the results are a little less clear. No previous studies have examined the relationship between the Islamic religion and crime. Results suggest that, when level of economic development is held constant, Islamic countries do not differ significantly in crime rates compared to nonIslamic countries.     

Life domains and crime: A test of Agnew's general theory of crime and delinquency

Purpose

This study presents a preliminary test of Agnew's general theory of crime and delinquency. This study examines whether each of the five life domain variables at the core of Agnew's theory is related to recidivism, whether there is a non-linear relationship between the life domains and recidivism, and whether the five life domains interact in causing recidivism.

Methods

Data were derived from the baseline survey of the Maryland Boot Camp Experiment and through a criminal records check conducted by the Maryland Department of Public Safety.

Results

Overall, the results lend weak support for Agnew's general theory. In particular, only two of the five life domains, having a bad job and being a high school dropout, are significantly correlated with recidivism. Further, with the exception of the peers domain, there is neither a linear nor a non-linear relationship between the life domains and recidivism. The results also reveal that none of the two-way bivariate interactions are significant in a multivariate linear probability model.

Conclusions

Although our findings are not supportive of Agnew's (2005) general theory of crime, the theory contains many other implications that we simply did not have the data to address.     

The effects of closed-circuit television on crime: meta-analysis of an English national quasi-experimental multi-site evaluation

This article reports results obtained in an English national quasi-experimental multi-site evaluation of 14 closed-circuit television (CCTV) projects in residential areas, town and city centers, a city hospital, and car parks (parking lots). Both police and victimization data were collected before and after the installation of CCTV in target, control and buffer areas, and police Divisions. The results showed that CCTV was effective in reducing crimes in train station car parks but not in city centers or residential areas, seemed to be effective in reducing vehicle crimes (but not other types of crimes), and was most effective when the degree of coverage by CCTV was high and when CCTV was combined with other interventions such as improved lighting. Implications for situational crime prevention theory are drawn. There was no evidence of displacement or diffusion of benefits. It is concluded that CCTV needs to be implemented more effectively, based on an analysis of the crime problem and its causes, and needs to be evaluated using a randomized experimental design.

Modeling violent crime rates: A test of social disorganization in the city of Tshwane, South Africa

Tests of social disorganization theory are commonplace in international criminological literature. Indeed a plethora of studies had emerged over the past seventy years examining and extending the theory throughout much of the developed world. The testing, however, of the landmark theory's key propositions in Africa in general, and South Africa in particular, is in its infancy. This study aimed to address this shortcoming by analyzing associations between various census measures of social disorganization and violent crime rates in the city of Tshwane, South Africa. Overall, marginal support was found for the social disorganization theory: violent crime in Tshwane was associated with certain measures of socioeconomic deprivation, and residential mobility. The study not only demonstrated the applicability of certain elements of Western criminological theory to contemporary urban South Africa, but also revealed important differences in the ecological dynamics of violent crime across differing cultural contexts.     

The impact of adult drug courts on crime and incarceration: findings from a multi-site quasi-experimental design

Objectives  

To test the impact of adult drug courts on future criminal behavior and sentence length on the precipitating criminal case; and to examine whether the magnitude of the drug court impact varies based on drug use or criminal history, social ties, mental health, or offender demographics.     

Measuring the crime displacement and diffusion of benefit effects of open-street CCTV in South Korea

Crime prevention strategies are implemented to reduce the damage caused by crimes with CCTV (Closed-Circuit Television) being broadly accepted as one of the main strategies. However, along with CCTV's perceived high expectations as crime deterrent, there is also a growing controversy over CCTV's potentially unexpected limitations. For example, the crime displacement (the presence of CCTV will change the locations of crime and its total number will not change) and the diffusion effects of crime control benefits (the crime prevention effect of CCTV may filter through to neighboring areas) are the representative controversial issues. In this study, we aimed to verify the crime displacement and the diffusion of benefit of open-street CCTV by analyzing the crime tendencies empirically.Gwang Myeong City in Gyeonggi Province, South Korea was chosen to analyze the crime displacement using the WDQ (Weighted Displacement Quotient) which compares the crime tendency of a location with that of its neighboring areas. The results showed that the crime prevention effect of the CCTV was significant. The number of robberies and thefts in the areas with CCTV installed reduced by 47.4%, while the areas without CCTV showed practically no change in the number of crimes. The crime displacement caused by the CCTV was not either found or inconsequential, and the crime rates in the neighboring areas also decreased slightly. Of major cause for concern was the fact that CCTV was marginally effective in deterring violence and as such, there should be a more detailed scientific analysis of the pattern and type of crimes committed in an area where CCTV's are being installed.     

Beyond assumptive deterrence: understanding the socio-environmental dynamics in crimes by Christian clerics and its implications for crime control

Crime, Law and Social Change - Emerging reports are increasingly implicating Christian clerics in array of unlawful and criminal behaviours, thus questioning the deterrence efficacy of Christianity...     

When crime reporting goes high-tech: An experimental test of computerized citizen response to crime

This study investigates the importance of the reporting mode as a factor contributing to citizen crime reporting decisions in the United States. A randomized experimental design involving 140 subjects was used to compare the treatment effects of two crime reporting modes: one which was telephonic and the other computer interactive. The findings of this exploratory study of citizen crime reporting within a controlled laboratory setting revealed significant increases in reporting rates for subjects assigned to the computer reporting mode condition relative to those assigned to the telephonic reporting mode condition. This relationship persisted for reporting behavior examined at both low and moderate levels of crime seriousness. The implications of these findings for predicting future changes in the incidence and distribution of reported criminal behavior or illegal incidents are presented and discussed.     

The relationship between antisocial stereotypes and public CCTV systems: exploring fear of crime in the modern surveillance society

Abstract

Situational crime deterrence measures like CCTV are not always associated with reductions in fear of crime. This study explores this unexpected finding by investigating the interaction between target type and the presence of a CCTV camera, in order to test the effect this has on impressions of the target and corresponding fear of the location the target was shown in. Participants (n=120) were shown either a picture of a male ‘skinhead’, a ‘studious’ female, or no one within an urban setting in which an obvious CCTV camera was either present or absent. Participants then rated the scene using scales estimating crime frequency, worry and target activity. Estimates of location safety fell for the male ‘skinhead’ target and activity impressions were more negative, but only when a CCTV camera was also present. Ironically, in some circumstances, public crime deterrence measures may prime pre-existing negative stereotypes about others and so foster suspicion, undermine trust in others, and increase fear of crime.     

A quasi-experimental test of the effects of criminal justice involvement on later mental health

Objectives

While many criminological theories posit causal hypotheses, many studies fail to use methods that adequately address the three criteria of causality. This is particularly important when assessing the impact of criminal justice involvement on later outcomes. Due to practical and ethical concerns, it is challenging to randomize criminal sanctions, so quasi-experimental methods such as propensity score matching are often used to approximate a randomized design. Based on longitudinal data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development, the current study used propensity score matching to investigate the extent to which convictions and/or incarcerations in the first two decades of life were related to adverse mental health during middle adulthood.

Methods

Propensity scores were utilized to match those with and without criminal justice involvement on a wide range of risk factors for offending.

Results

The results indicated that there were no significant differences in mental health between those involved in the criminal justice system and those without such involvement.

Conclusions

The results did not detect a relationship between justice system involvement and later mental health suggesting that the consequences of criminal justice involvement may only be limited to certain domains.

     

Exploring white-collar crime and the American dream: A partial test of institutional anomie theory

Institutional anomie theory (IAT) suggests that high crime rates in America can be attributed to the commitment to the goal of material success. In this regard, particular emphasis is placed on the motivations derived from the profit goal of economic institutions that dominate the American culture. To date, IAT was only applied to property and violent crime. This study used Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and Census Bureau data to examine the applicability of IAT to a form of white-collar crime, embezzlement, as defined by the UCR. Results provided mixed support for IAT. Limitations and future research directions are discussed.     

A new horizon on organised crime: re-locating organised crime in America

Beginning in 1974, the construction of the Baikal-Amur Mainline Railway (BAM) dominated public life in the Soviet Union for the next decade. Declared complete in 1984, BAM was arguably the greatest and most costly construction feat in post-war Soviet history. Officially, the mainline was to serve as the “path toward communism” that would unite all Soviet citizens. This article explores the crime and corruption that surrounded the propaganda-driven world of the BAM. Although the railway led to few concrete accomplishments in either the industrial or social development of the USSR, the sociological and criminological consequences of BAM were profound. The highly visible presence of both petty and hard-core criminals on the railway revealed that life on the rails was not as progressive or futuristic as the state claimed. Instead, the dynamics of crime and control that intersected during the BAM's ten years of prominence revealed that the peculiarities of human nature, not what the state termed “communist morality,” defined those who worked on the project.     

Race,crime and hegemony: A review essay

Crime, Law and Social Change -