The influence of occupational strain on organizational commitment among police: A general strain theory approach

Purpose

Using a General Strain Theory (GST) framework, this study examines the role of various strains on officers’ organizational commitment to their agencies. In addition, the mediating effect of negative affect is investigated.

Methods

A total of 180 law enforcement personnel from multiple agencies in the Northern Kentucky area were surveyed.

Results

Two strains, the failure to achieve positively valued goals and the removal positively valued stimuli, significantly predicted greater negative affect. Negative affect did not serve as a mediating variable between strain and officers’ commitment to the department. The failure to achieve positively valued goals, the removal of positive stimuli, and the two measures of presentation of noxious stimuli all significantly and directly influenced an officer's commitment to the agency after controlling for negative affect.

Conclusions

GST is a viable theoretical framework in which to study organizational commitment among police officers as various strains have been shown to result in officers being less committed to their police agencies. Consequently, policies that attempt to alleviate those strains or stressors commonly faced by officers can increase the dedication and possibly the job performance of America's law enforcement officials.     

Compstat in Australia: An analysis of the spatial and temporal impact

One of the major trends in policing sweeping across democratic societies since the mid-1990s is a management approach commonly known as COMPSTAT. Despite widespread global adoption, empirical evaluation of the impact of COMPSTAT lags behind popular accounts of its crime control benefits.

Purpose

This article evaluates the crime control impact of Queensland Police Service's version of COMPSTAT known as “Operational Performance Reviews” (OPRs).

Method

A mixed model analytic approach was used to assess the role of OPRs in explaining spatial and temporal variations in crime patterns across Queensland's 29 police districts.

Results

Analysis of the impact of OPRs on reported crime (specifically assaults, robberies and unlawful entries) suggests major differences between police districts, and that some districts are driving overall statewide crime reductions, whilst others confound positive effects of implementation of OPRs in Queensland.

Conclusions

The results demonstrate that the crime drop experienced throughout Queensland found in prior research (Mazerolle et al., 2007) is most likely attributable to a small number of police districts. The implication of these findings is that a number of districts could (and should) be called-upon during maturation of Queensland's OPRs to reduce specific crime problems in their districts and facilitate ongoing crime reductions across the state.     

Social disorganization, Latinos and juvenile crime in the Texas borderlands

Purpose

Using a time-series cross-sectional design, we estimated the effects of social disorganization on juvenile property crime rates in a predominately Latino, Texas-Mexico border region.

Methods

Eighteen years of data from seven independent sources (Bureau of Economic Analysis, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Census Bureau, Texas State Demographer, Internal Revenue Service, Department of Agriculture Economic Research Service, and Uniform Crime Reports) were examined. Counties were utilized as the unit of analysis, and time-series cross-sectional regression models were estimated.

Results

The analysis showed that per capita income was negatively related to juvenile crime in both rural and urban counties. Ethnic heterogeneity was positively related to the outcome in rural, but not urban, counties; while percent foreign-born was negatively related to juvenile crime in urban, but not rural, counties.

Conclusions

The Latino experience, both native- and foreign-born, is important for improving our understanding how economic and social conditions relate to crime. Comparative analyses between distinct geographical environments, such as rural and urban counties, can yield insight how the local context interacts with social disorganization processes.     

Fear of crime and vulnerability: Using a national sample of Americans to examine two competing paradigms

Purpose

A prominent explanation of why certain groups of people fear crime more than others focuses on physical and social vulnerability. Some researchers have argued that physical vulnerability characteristics (e.g., gender, age, health) are more important in determining one's fear of crime while others have argued that social vulnerability characteristics (e.g., race and socioeconomic status) are more important.

Methods

We test the independence of the physical and social vulnerability characteristics through a nationally representative sample of Americans. Using a multilevel path modeling approach, we examine whether the physical or the social vulnerability explanation is more powerful in its explanation, or whether a combination of both vulnerabilities explains fear of crime.

Results

Results suggest that the two explanations are interdependent to some degree; with the direct effects of social vulnerability being most tied to physical indicators of vulnerability through indirect effects. To a lesser degree, the direct effects of physical vulnerability are also tied to fear of crime indirectly through indicators of social vulnerability.

Conclusions

The implications of these results are discussed.     

Science, politics, and crime prevention: Toward a new crime policy

Objective

Crime prevention has entered a new, more robust phase of research activity and holds greater relevance to policy and practice today than ever before. It stands as an important component of an overall strategy to reduce crime. This paper sets out a modest proposal for a new crime policy to help build a safer, more sustainable society.

Materials and methods

Narrative meta-review of the crime prevention literature.

Results

The central features include: ensuring that the highest quality scientific research is at center stage in the policy-making process; overcoming the “short-termism” politics of the day; and striking a greater balance between crime prevention and crime control. Both simulation studies and experiences in Washington State show that early prevention can reduce crime, save money, and reduce the need for costly incarceration.

Conclusions

Quality criminological research should be used to strike a policy balance between crime prevention and crime control.     

A comparative analysis of general strain theory

Purpose

Since its introduction in 1992, general strain theory (GST) has garnered much empirical support. The large share of this support, however, derives from studies conducted in the United States. There is little comparative research on GST, particularly research that examines the effect of the same or similar strains on crime across countries. Thus, we know little about the generalizability of GST. This study attempts to fill this gap by testing GST in five different cities across Europe: Bucharest in Romania, Sofia in Bulgaria, Riga in Latvia, Kaunas in Lithuania and Reykjavik in Iceland.

Methods

We examine the relationship between five strain measures and violent- and property crime among samples of adolescents in each city using regression techniques.

Results

The data are generally supportive of GST, with most of the strains having significant associations with property and violent crime in all or most of the cities.

Conclusion

GST is generalizable to a range of European cities. Implications and examples for future comparative research on GST are discussed.     

Biosocial criminology and modern crime prevention

Objective

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, criminological efforts to prevent or reduce crime were centered on addressing presumed biological causes of crime. Most of these strategies involved calls for eugenics—proposals that today are considered unethical and morally reprehensible. Biologically-oriented criminology and crime control policies have re-emerged with new sophistication and attention to the importance of social context. Additionally, developmental crime prevention, with a special focus on biological/physiological risk factors in the early life course, has become influential in criminology. This paper examines the relevance of biology to modern day crime prevention.

Materials and methods

Narrative review of the theoretical and empirical literature of biology and developmental crime prevention.

Results

There are a growing number of developmental crime prevention programs that address biological risk factors for delinquency and later criminal offending. These programs are found in the family, school, and community domains. Evidence suggests that these programs can reduce crime.

Conclusions

While “biological crime prevention” as a separate field has not yet emerged, findings show that crime prevention programs can and do address biology in a sociologically sensitive manner—and these programs have shown significant impacts on crime.     

Black–white differences in positive outcome expectancies for crime: A study of male federal prison inmates

Purpose

This study was designed to assess whether black inmates hold more positive outcome expectancies for crime than white inmates in an effort to inform the debate on the nature of well documented differences in criminal involvement between blacks and whites.

Methods

Positive outcome expectancies for crime were measured in 393 black male inmates and 154 white male inmates housed in a medium security federal correctional institution using the Outcome Expectancies for Crime (OEC: Walters, 2003b) inventory.

Results

Black inmates reported significantly stronger positive outcome expectancies for crime than white inmates after controlling for preexisting group differences in age, education, marital status, confining offense, response style, general criminal thinking, and negative outcome expectancies for crime. Anticipation of social benefits for crime in the form of love, respect, and security were particularly salient in distinguishing between black and white inmates.

Conclusions

It is speculated that an interaction of motivational (high achievement motivation), structural (blocked economic opportunities), and cultural (peer reinforcement) factors may be responsible for black-white differences in crime with important implications for theory, research, and clinical practice.     

Pathways through drugs and crime: Desistance, trauma and resilience

Purpose

To develop theoretical understandings of pathways through drugs and crime.

Method

Critical and theoretical review.

Content

Discourse about drugs and crime tends to focus either on delinquency, nowadays including some drug use, or on drug dependence. There are other pathways through drugs and crime, which deserve further exploration, not forgetting that most people desist from offending, or that drug dependence is a relatively rare outcome of drug use. A notable pathway involves a temporary period of intense substance use and offending which often remits without intervention. It is hypothesised that such periods are often caused by traumatic life events, or the persisting effects of earlier trauma, and that intense use converts to more protracted drug dependence when trauma and/or its effects continue. One way that this can happen is that drug use itself causes or perpetuates trauma and, then, use continues to cope with the negative psychological effects of trauma, in a vicious circle.

Conclusions

There is need to assess and treat trauma amongst substance users and to avoid over treating intense substance use that might remit untreated. Normative adult substance use outcomes need to be researched and theorised.     

On the relationship of past to future involvement in crime and delinquency: A behavior genetic analysis

Purpose

Criminologists have devoted much attention to identifying the factors that drive stability in antisocial behavior. This body of research has, however, overlooked the contributions of behavior genetic research. This study sought to blend behavior genetics with the different perspectives used by criminologists to explain stability.

Methods

Employing a behavioral genetic research design, the current study analyzed the correlation between adolescent and adulthood crime (a 13 year time span was covered between the two time points) among a sample of sibling pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

Results

The findings revealed that genetic factors accounted for nearly all of the stability in offending behavior from adolescence to adulthood. Environmental factors (particularly, of the nonshared variety) accounted for the majority of the changes in offending.

Conclusions

The implications of these results for criminological research and theory are discussed.     

Violent criminals locked up: Examining the effect of incarceration on behavioral continuity

Purpose

The purpose of the current study was to determine whether, and the degree to which, inmates committing specific types of violent crimes in the community were prone to commit acts of violence while incarcerated.

Materials and methods

Data were collected from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice on the prison stock population and a restricted admissions cohort serving time during FY 2008.

Results

After controlling for pre-prison and post-conviction characteristics, crime of conviction retained a modest degree of influence on inmates’ propensity to commit dangerous rule violations in prison. Inmates convicted of assault, robbery and other miscellaneous violent crimes were more likely to commit dangerous rule infractions than inmates convicted of property crimes, supporting the behavioral continuity thesis. Inmates convicted of homicide were no more likely, and those convicted of sexual assault less likely, to commit dangerous rule violations in comparison to those convicted of property crimes.

Conclusions

The findings suggest that researchers and prison officials should not view all inmates convicted of one of a broad category of “violent crimes” in the community as being equivalent in their propensity for violence while incarcerated.     

General strain and non-strain theories: A study of crime in emerging adulthood

Purpose

Despite continued increase in research on general strain theory (GST), previous studies on the relationship between GST and other criminological theories has been limited. To fill this gap in GST research, the present study aims to examine whether non-strain variables of social bonding theory, social learning theory, and self-control theory, as well as negative emotions mediate and moderate the effects of strain on crime and drug use.

Methods

Ordinary least squares regressions were applied to conduct a simultaneous analysis of mediation and moderation effects, using multiple waves of the restricted-use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

Results

The non-strain variables of social bonds and low self-control, but not deviant peer association, as well as trait anger and state depression/anxiety mediate the effects of strain on crime and drug use, but hypotheses about the moderating effects of these variables receive less support.

Conclusions

The central claims of GST need to be expanded to include non-emotive mediators of the effects of strain on crime, given that negative emotions are not expected to fully mediate the criminogenic effects of strain.     

Foster youth and crime: Employing general strain theory to promote understanding

Purpose

Despite the growing research evidence into vulnerability, disadvantage, and poor outcomes for young people leaving foster care, relatively little attention has been paid to our understanding of criminal engagement. The present study contributes to our understanding of this process by drawing on general strain theory (GST) to examine how specific forms of strain may lead to crime among foster youth.

Methods

Data from a national study of post-care foster youth in England are examined using robust logistic regression analysis, and a thematic analysis of qualitative interviews. Logistic regression was applied to conduct a simultaneous analysis of main and interaction effects of strains and conditioning variables on crime involvement among foster youth. Thematic analysis was utilised to explore themes for explaining the quantitative findings.

Results

Strains such as unemployment, school exclusion, length of time in care and instability of placement were significant predictors for involvement in criminal activity among foster youth. Conditioning factors, namely self-esteem and life skills acquired prior to leaving care, tend to mediate the relationship between these strains and criminal involvement. In-depth qualitative evidence further reinforced the effects of strains and conditional nature of the strains-crime relationship among foster youth.

Conclusions

The findings demonstrate the utility of employing GST in studies of foster youth, and they suggest implications for youth services and other foster youth programmes.     

Procedural justice during police-citizen encounters: The effects of process-based policing on citizen compliance and demeanor

Purpose

Theories of procedural justice have facilitated the development of a process-based approach to policing which emphasizes the fairness of the manner in which the police exercise their discretion. The study examines whether procedurally fair behavior by the police affects two types of citizen behavior during encounters: citizen disrespect toward the police and citizen noncompliance with police requests.

Methods

This study uses data from systematic social observations of police-citizen encounters to examine procedural justice factors on citizen behavior. Because of the reciprocal nature of police-citizen interactions, an instrumental variable is used in the statistical analysis to help address the causal relationship between police force and citizen disrespect.

Results

The statistical analyses find limited support for procedural justice factors. Two types of procedurally fair behavior by the police, police demeanor and their consideration of citizen voice, are significant in reducing citizen disrespect and noncompliance, respectively.

Conclusion

Procedural justice factors have limited and inconsistent impacts on the two types of citizen behavior, and future research should address the limitations of this study and evaluate process-based policing with more data from social observations of police-citizen encounters.     

Reporting violence to the police: Predictors through the life course

Scholarship focused on factors that influence police reporting has a long history in the literature. Yet we lack a complete understanding of how these factors differentially influence reporting by age.

Purpose

This paper aims to enhance our understanding of underreporting by investigating the relationship between reporting and age, and how this relationship differs by crime type. The study further investigates whether a variety of characteristics differentially influence reporting across the life course. Finally, the study asks how the nature of reporting varies by the victim's age.

Methods

National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data were used to assess whether there are age-related differences in the factors influencing the rate and nature of police reporting.

Results

The findings suggest that the rate of reporting differs by crime type but that it generally increases throughout the life course. The influence of incident, victim, and offender characteristics on police reporting varies, not simply between juveniles and adults, but also between young and older adults. The proportion of incidents reported to police by the victim his/herself also continues to increase with age.

Conclusions

This suggests that disparities in police reporting cannot be reduced to juvenile-adult comparisons and should be studied across the full life course.     

Cost-benefit analysis of reducing crime through electronic monitoring of parolees and probationers

Objective

The objective of this study was to estimate the benefits and costs of using electronic monitoring (EM) and home detention to reduce crime committed by parolees and probationers.

Method

Data from a national survey of state prison inmates was adjusted and used to estimate the number of crimes that would have been committed by all parolees and probationers over the course of one year in the absence of EM and home detention. The data were analyzed in combination with existing analyses of the effectiveness and costs of EM and home detention and the economic costs of crime to estimate the benefit-cost ratio of nationwide implementation of EM and home detention with all parolees and probationers.

Results

EM plus home detention could avert an estimated 781,383 crimes every year. The social value of the annual reduction in crime is $481.1 billion. Society would gain $12.70 for every dollar expended on the proposed intervention.

Conclusion

EM plus home detention could be an effective deterrent to crime and could have enormous social benefits, especially if it is applied early and saves what would otherwise be habitual offenders from a life of crime.     

Public opinion on crime causation: An exploratory study of Philadelphia area residents

Purpose

This study examined the views on crime causation from a sample of randomly selected Philadelphia area residents.

Methods

Through the use of a phone survey, residents (N = 359) were asked thirty seven questions related to their level of support for several criminological theories, including classical theory, biological theory, psychological theory, social disorganization theory, strain/general strain theory, subcultural theory, social learning theory, social control/general theory, labeling theory, critical theory, and environmental criminology theory. The analyses assessed whether the views of respondents differed by race, gender, and political ideology. Both across-race and within-race analyses were also conducted to determine the nuances of the support for specific criminological perspectives.

Results

The results pointed to numerous significant gender differences and across-race differences in public opinion on crime causation but few within-race differences. The results also confirmed previous research that supported the notion that one's political ideology is tied to the level of support for certain criminological theories.

Conclusion

Overall, the results point to the merits of including the views of lay persons when there are discussions pertaining to crime causation.     

Incarceration, education and transition from delinquency

Purpose

Much of what is known regarding the transition away from crime is limited to young adulthood and specific life events and samples of non-serious offenders comprised mainly of white males.

Methods

The current study assesses the potential links between educational achievement, post-release schooling, and re-arrest for a cohort of 4,147 incarcerated youths drawn from 115 Florida juvenile institutions and followed for two years post-release.

Results

Incarcerated youths with higher levels of educational achievement are more likely to return to school after release, and those youths who returned to and attended school regularly were less likely to be rearrested within 12 and 24 months. Moreover, among youths who were rearrested, those youth who attended school regularly following release were arrested for significantly less serious offenses compared to youths who did not attend school or attended less regularly.

Conclusions

The study concludes with discussion of the importance of educational achievement as an important turning point for juvenile offenders as they transition into young adulthood.     

Cleaning up your act: Forensic awareness as a detection avoidance strategy

Purpose

Although rational choice researchers has investigated how offenders successfully commit certain crimes, there is a lack of research looking at the factors explaining the use - or not - of certain detection avoidance strategies. This study introduces the concept of “forensic awareness” as a detection avoidance strategy, and proposes to examine the effect of disinhibitors, target selection behaviors, and acts that may potentially leave evidence at the crime scene on its use.

Methods

Factors influencing forensic awareness are tested using logistic regression models on a sample of 222 rape events collected from offenders incarcerated in Canada.

Results

Offenders exhibit less forensic awareness when under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol. However, offenders who show some form of target selection are more likely to take forensic precautions. Finally, offenders who break and enter in the victim's residence, and undertake specific sexual acts during the crime are also more likely to exhibit forensic awareness.

Conclusion

Despite the increasing use and knowledge of forensic evidence by law enforcement, offenders are inconsistent in their forensic awareness and they direct most of their efforts toward protecting their identity, neglecting to either destroy or clean up DNA that could be recovered at the crime scene.     

An empirical examination of adolescence-limited offending: A direct test of Moffitt's maturity gap thesis

Purpose

Provide the first direct test of Moffitt's (1993) hypothesis linking the maturity gap with adolescent delinquency.

Methods

Data were drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and a direct measure of the maturity gap was constructed. Negative binomial regression models—survey-corrected to account for the Add Health research design—were estimated.

Results

Consistent with Moffitt's theory, the results of the analyses revealed that the maturity gap was predictive of minor forms of delinquency and drug use but not of more serious types of offending behaviors for males. Findings were less supportive of Moffitt's hypothesis for females.

Conclusions

Moffitt's maturity gap thesis is a viable explanation of adolescent delinquency, especially for males. This portion of the theory, which has largely gone unexamined, warrants further inquiry from criminologists.