DISTRICT ATTORNEYS AND CORPORATE CRIME: SURVEYING THE PROSECUTORIAL GATEKEEPERS

A mail survey of California district attorneys regarding corporate crime focused on the recent experiences of the prosecutors with such crimes and on factors that limit the likelihood of their prosecuting corporate offenders. A significant majority of the district attorneys had prosecuted a variety of corporate crimes, and a sizable minority anticipated devoting more resources to corporate crime prosecutions in the future. There was a strong consensus among the district attorneys that the primary obstacle to corporate crime prosecutions is not political but practical and inheres in the level of resources available to them. Prosecutors in small districts were more constrained by the potential impact that a corporate prosecution might have on the local economy than their counterparts in large districts. This finding suggests that community context may influence social control responses to corporate lawbreakers.     

On the Origins of the Violent Neighborhood: A Study of the Nature and Predictors of Crime‐Type Differentiation across Chicago Neighborhoods

Little of the literature on crime at the neighborhood level examines whether and why some crime types predominate in a given neighborhood over other types. Many macro‐level theories do make predictions about the sort of crimes that occur in some neighborhoods, although they remain largely untested. This study focuses on one of these theories, differential opportunity, and its predictions about the making of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on various data sources, this inquiry determines whether crime profiles differ across Chicago neighborhoods—that is, whether there is significant variation across neighborhoods on ratio of violent crimes to other crime types. Next, it also investigates whether the structural factors implicated in the differential opportunity perspective distinguish these neighborhoods or only predict the incidence of crime. The results reveal significant differences in the distribution of crimes across neighborhoods, as well as show that certain factors identify neighborhoods that favor violence over other crimes.     

Using data on offender mobility in ecological research

This article presents some findings on neighborhood structure, police recorded crime, and offender mobility for the city of Utrecht, the Netherlands. The highest crime rates were found in the inner-city neighborhoods. The findings further show that the occurrence of different types of petty crime in residential neighborhoods is associated with different neighborhood characteristics. It was found that offenders reside predominantly in lower-social status neighborhoods. Using data on offender mobility it is shown that violent crime and vandalism are the more locally committed crimes, as compared to residential burglary and other property crime. Finally, it is proposed that data on offender mobility can be used to gain more insight into the link between certain neighborhood characteristics and crime.     

“SEEING” MINORITIES AND PERCEPTIONS OF DISORDER: EXPLICATING THE MEDIATING AND MODERATING MECHANISMS OF SOCIAL COHESION

Research shows that residents report high levels of disorder in places with greater concentrations of minorities even after controlling for objective indicators of crime or disorder. Less understood, however, are the mechanisms that explain this relationship. Drawing on a survey of nearly 10,000 residents nested within 297 neighborhoods across two cities, we use a multiple indicators–multiple causes model to examine the cues that lead individuals to distort the presence of minorities in neighborhoods. We then employ multilevel models to test whether these distortions influence perceptions of disorder. Furthermore, we assess whether living in a socially cohesive neighborhood mediates and/or moderates the relationship between “seeing” minorities and perceiving disorder. We find that when residents overestimate the proportion of minorities living in their neighborhood, perceptions of disorder are heightened. Yet social cohesion moderates and partially mediates this relationship: Residents living in socially cohesive neighborhoods not only report less disorder than those living in less cohesive communities, but also they “see” fewer minorities when compared with residents living in less socially cohesive neighborhoods. These results suggest that social cohesion is an important mechanism for explaining how residents internalize the presence of minorities in their neighborhoods and how this then leads to perceived neighborhood disorder.     

上下游犯罪“量刑倒挂”困境与“法益恢复”方案——从认罪认罚从宽制度的视角展开

无论是从法哲学视域的公正视角还是司法实践的立场,基于同一笔犯罪事实的前提,“下游犯罪量刑不高于上游犯罪”原则已被普遍承认。然而,由于上游犯罪来源的多样性与下游犯罪的相对单一性特点,司法裁判中上下游犯罪“量刑倒挂”现象时有发生。为了应对这一不合理现象,近年来司法机关在认罪认罚从宽制度的“背书”下,着力探索了一系列方法,主要包括:将自首、坦白情节“可以减轻处罚”的实质条件模糊化并人为主导“减轻处罚”结果,技术化地创设“下游犯罪量刑轻于上游犯罪的主犯但重于从犯”规则,对下游犯罪大量适用非监禁刑。然而,上述方案与认罪认罚从宽制度并无实质关联。事实上,在认罪认罚从宽制度背景下,下游犯罪行为人退赃退赔的“赎罪”抑或“法益恢复”行为可以作为量刑实质从宽的理论根据。具体而言,下游犯罪行为人在上游犯罪案发前的“法益恢复”情形,可以考虑对其“相对不起诉”,在上游犯罪案发后的“法益恢复”情形,可以考虑对其“定罪免刑”。     

The Spatial Dimensions of Gentrification and the Consequences for Neighborhood Crime

This study examines neighborhood economic improvement, what is occurring in nearby neighborhoods, and the consequences for neighborhood crime rates. Negative binomial regression models are estimated to explain the relationship between the increase in average home values (a component of gentrification) and crime in Los Angeles between 1990 and 2000. We find that the spatial context is important, as gentrifying neighborhoods located on the “frontier” of the gentrification process have significantly more aggravated assaults than gentrifying neighborhoods surrounded by neighborhoods also undergoing improvement. Furthermore, this effect is stronger in neighborhoods that began the decade with the highest average home values. Our findings indicate that the extent to which neighborhoods are more or less embedded in a larger process of economic improvement, and where the neighborhood is at in the economic development process, has differential effects on neighborhood crime.     

Neighborhood Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress and Violence Against Women in Intimate Relationships

A continuing debate in sociological criminology involves the association of crime with economic disadvantage at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis. At the aggregate level, data from law enforcement sources suggest that rates of intimate violence are higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience higher rates of intimate violence for compositional or contextual reasons, or rates may only appear to be higher because of differential reporting. Similarly, at the individual level, intimate violence appears more common among couples that are economically distressed, but whether economic distress triggers intimate violence is not certain. Using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1990 U.S. Census, we investigate the effects of neighborhood economic disadvantage and individual economic distress on intimate violence against women. Controlling for violence at time 1 and other individual level characteristics, we find that neighborhood economic disadvantage, neighborhood residential instability, male employment instability, and subjective financial strain influence the likelihood of violence at time 2. The relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and intimate violence appears to reflect both compositional and contextual effects.     

NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL AND PERCEPTIONS OF CRIME AND DISORDER IN CONTEMPORARY URBAN CHINA*

By drawing on the two streams of Western literature on “neighborhood effects” and perceptions of neighborhood disorder adapted to the distinctive organizational infrastructure of neighborhoods in contemporary urban China, we examine the contextual effects of different forms of neighborhood social control (i.e., collective efficacy, semipublic control, public control, and market‐based control) on different types of perceived disorder (i.e., criminal activity, social disorder, physical disorder, and total disorder) across neighborhoods. The analyses are based on data collected in the year 2013 from a survey of approximately 2,500 households in 50 neighborhoods across the city of Tianjin. Collective efficacy as a form of informal control has a significant effect only for perceived social disorder. Public control as measured by the activities of neighborhood police stations has a significant contextual effect on all forms of perceived disorder, whereas the role of market‐based control as represented by contracted community services is limited to perceived physical disorder. Finally, semipublic control as measured by the activities of neighborhood committees significantly affects all forms of perceived disorder, but the direction of the effect is positive. We interpret this positive effect with reference to the complex processes surrounding the “translation” of neighborhood disorderly conditions into perceptions of disorder.     

Cross-national investigation and prosecution of intellectual property crimes: the example of “Operation Buccaneer”

“Operation Buccaneer” was the name given to a law enforcement operation against “DrinkOrDie,” a highly organised but globally dispersed Internet-based software piracy group. The concerted enforcement action, led by the US Customs Service and Department of Justice, extended to several European countries and Australia. This paper contrasts the legal consequences that flowed, with numerous suspects pleading guilty in the United States, some contested prosecutions in the United Kingdom, and a sole Australian suspect facing extradition to the United States to face charges. Operation Buccaneer illustrates the cross-national reach of both Internet-based intellectual property crime and the law enforcement response, as well as some of the complexities that arise in applying jurisdictional concepts such as the “double criminality” requirement for extradition in this evolving prosecutorial landscape.     

VOLUNTARY ORGANIZATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD CRIME: A DYNAMIC PERSPECTIVE*

Although numerous theories suggest that voluntary organizations contribute to lower crime rates in neighborhoods, the evidence for this proposition is weak. Consequently, we propose a dynamic perspective for understanding the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime that involves longitudinal analyses and the measurement of the age of organizations. By using longitudinal data on a sample of census blocks (N = 87,641) located across 10 cities, we test the relationship between age‐graded measures of different types of voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime rates. We use fixed‐effects negative binomial regression models that focus on change within neighborhoods of the relationship between voluntary organizations and neighborhood crime. Our results show that although each type of voluntary organization is found to exhibit crime‐reducing behavior in neighborhoods, we find that many of them are consistent with what we refer to as the “delayed impact scenario”—there is a pronounced delay between the placement of a voluntary organization and a neighborhood subsequently experiencing a reduction in crime. With protective effects of organizations typically not demonstrated until several years after being in the neighborhood, these patterns suggest a need for long‐term investment strategies when examining organizations.     

Investigation and Prosecution of Large-scale Crimes at the International Level: The Experience of the ICTY

Although the prosecution of large-scale crimes at the internationallevel shares some similarities to the prosecution of organizedcrime at the national level, there are a number of importantdifferences that make the two areas hardly comparable. Two distinctivetraits of international criminal proceedings stand out in thisregard: (i) the lack of any enforcement agency that would allowprosecuting authorities to carry out investigations on the territoryof an interested state without its assistance and the absenceof a general power to carry out such arrests, which render statecooperation of prime importance and (ii) the fact that the proceduralmodel of international criminal tribunals is mixed containingelements of accusatorial (common law) as well as inquisitorial(civil law) systems. As far as prosecutions are concerned, usefulconcepts and procedures adopted from both legal traditions canbe found in the Statute, the Rules of Procedure and Evidenceas well as in the approach of prosecutors, defence counsel andjudges to the introduction of evidence and, more generally,to the manner in which proceedings are conducted. One of themain examples of this is the acceptance of proof of facts bymeans other than oral evidence as a result of the influenceof the civil law tradition, which has progressively made itsway in the procedural system of the International Criminal Tribunalfor the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). Yet, on the other hand, somemethods normally resorted to in national criminal prosecutionmay turn out to be useful at the international level, such asresorting to insider witnesses. Although known to domestic systems,such practice may have a particular significance in the contextof the prosecution of international crimes. So have additionalforms of criminal participation (such as the notion of jointcriminal enterprise). Only a mixing of traditional and innovativeinvestigative tools and the proper balance of the differentlegal cultures can ensure effective prosecution of internationalcrimes.     

Experience,quality of life,and neighborhood context: A hierarchical analysis of satisfaction with police

We test three different conceptual models—“experience with police,” “quality of life,” and “neighborhood context”—for directional accuracy and ability to explain satisfaction with the police. We also investigate whether these models help to explain the common finding that African-Americans are more dissatisfied with the police than are Caucasians. To do so, we use hierarchical linear modeling to simultaneously regress our outcome measure on clusters of citizen- and neighborhood-level variables. The analysis was conducted using recently collected information from the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN). The data file consisted of survey responses from 5,361 citizens residing in 58 neighborhoods located in Indianapolis, Indiana and St. Petersburg, Florida. At the citizen level, the psychologically based “quality of life” model accounts for the greatest proportion of explained variance and provides the greatest directional accuracy. Also, residents of neighborhoods characterized by concentrated disadvantage express significantly less satisfaction with the police. In addition, neighborhood context reduces the negative effect of African-American status on satisfaction with police when a sparse citizen-level specification is used; racial variation in satisfaction with police persists, however, when citizen-level hierarchical models are specified more fully.     

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.     

Saturation Foot-Patrol in a High-Violence Area: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation

Shoplifting is one of the most common and costly crimes, yet little data exist to determine reliably characteristics of the typical shoplifter or the modus operandi of the crime. It is a crime that has most often been studied using official, secondary data provided by either retail security personnel or law enforcement officers. Reliability issues plague these official data. Continuing the “dark figure of crime” tradition, this study examines shoplifting by covert observation with a camera system installed in a typical suburban retail drug store. A standardized data template was used to record the demographic and behavioral characteristics of shoppers. Significant numbers of shoppers (8.5%) were observed shoplifting. Logistic regression analysis reveals that, while members of some demographic groups shoplifted more often than others, behavioral indicators carried far more predictive power. The methodology and findings are considered within the larger context of the law enforcement and “profiling” literatures.     

ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS AND URBAN CRIME: THE STRUCTURE OF SHARED ROUTINE ACTIVITY LOCATIONS AND NEIGHBORHOOD‐LEVEL INFORMAL CONTROL CAPACITY

By drawing on the work of Jacobs (1961), we hypothesize that public contact among neighborhood residents while engaged in day‐to‐day routines, captured by the aggregate network structure of shared local exposure, is consequential for crime. Neighborhoods in which residents come into contact more extensively in the course of conventional routines will exhibit higher levels of public familiarity, trust, and collective efficacy with implications for the informal social control of crime. We employ the concept of ecological (“eco‐”) networks—networks linking households within neighborhoods through shared activity locations—to formalize the notion of overlapping routines. By using microsimulations of household travel patterns to construct census tract‐level eco‐networks for Columbus, OH, we examine the hypothesis that eco‐network intensity (the probability that households tied through one location in a neighborhood eco‐network will also be tied through another visited location) is negatively associated with tract‐level crime rates (N = 192). Fitted spatial autoregressive models offer evidence that neighborhoods with higher intensity eco‐networks exhibit lower levels of violent and property crime. In contrast, a higher prevalence of nonresident visitors to a given tract is positively associated with property crime. The results of these analyses hold the potential to enrich insight into the ecological processes that shape variation in neighborhood crime.     

Understanding Drivers of Crime in East Baltimore: Resident Perceptions of Why Crime Persists

Urban neighborhoods are frequently associated with high rates of crime, unemployment, poor educational systems, poor housing conditions, and health related problems. Theories of social disorganization, social isolation, and broken windows all explain how and why social problems develop and persist within urban settings. Drawing on these theories, this study examines how residents perceive local community problems in an East Baltimore neighborhood. Eight focus groups were conducted with participants who live and/or work in the area to identify common neighborhood issues. Problems commonly identified were: the presence of physical disorder, issues related to crime and law enforcement, lack of employment opportunities, and limited youth activities. Embedded under many of these themes was the recognition that the neighborhood lacks collective efficacy to fix community problems and maintain social control. Implications for improving neighborhood disadvantage will be discussed.     

DO NEIGHBORHOODS GENERATE FEAR OF CRIME? AN EMPIRICAL TEST USING THE BRITISH CRIME SURVEY*

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual‐level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between‐group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.     

EGOHOODS AS WAVES WASHING ACROSS THE CITY: A NEW MEASURE OF “NEIGHBORHOODS”

Defining “neighborhoods” is a bedeviling challenge faced by all studies of neighborhood effects and ecological models of social processes. Although scholars frequently lament the inadequacies of the various existing definitions of “neighborhood,” we argue that previous strategies relying on nonoverlapping boundaries such as block groups and tracts are fundamentally flawed. The approach taken here instead builds on insights of the mental mapping literature, the social networks literature, the daily activities pattern literature, and the travel to crime literature to propose a new definition of neighborhoods: egohoods. These egohoods are conceptualized as waves washing across the surface of cities, as opposed to independent units with nonoverlapping boundaries. This approach is illustrated using crime data from nine cities: Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Dallas, Los Angeles, Sacramento, St. Louis, and Tucson. The results show that measures aggregated to our egohoods explain more of the variation in crime across the social environment than do models with measures aggregated to block groups or tracts. The results also suggest that measuring inequality in egohoods provides dramatically stronger positive effects on crime rates than when using the nonoverlapping boundary approach, highlighting the important new insights that can be obtained by using our egohood approach.     

Policing the homeless

Research Summary Police officials across the United States are increasingly relying on place-based approaches for crime prevention. In this article, we examine the Safer Cities Initiative, a widely publicized place-based policing intervention implemented in Los Angeles's “Skid Row” that focused on crime and disorder associated with homeless encampments. Crime reduction was the goal. The police division in which the program was undertaken provides 8 years of time-series data serving as the observations for the treatment condition. Four adjacent police divisions in which the program was not undertaken provide 8 years of time-series data serving as the observations for the comparison condition. The data are analyzed using a generalized additive model. On balance, we find that this place-based intervention is associated with meaningful reductions in violent, property, and nuisance street crimes. There is no evidence of crime displacement. Policy Implications This study provides further evidence that geographically targeted police interventions can lead to significant crime prevention benefits, with no evidence that crime is simply displaced to other areas. Criminologists and the media have given the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) little credit for major reductions in crime that have occurred during the past 5 years following a number of major policy reforms. We suggest that researchers should look more closely at the targeted interventions the LAPD has undertaken for evidence-based examples of effective policing. Importantly, this work suggests that crime associated with homeless encampments can be meaningfully reduced with targeted police actions. However, law enforcement actions do not address the roots of homelessness nor most of its consequences. Getting tough on the homeless should not be confused with policies or programs that respond fundamentally to the social and personal problems that homelessness presents.     

A higher bar: Institutional impediments to hate crime prosecution

Why are hate crime cases so rarely prosecuted? Most states and the federal government have hate crime laws on their books, yet available data indicate few prosecutions in most jurisdictions. Drawing on case files and interviews with police and prosecutors in one jurisdiction, three institutional impediments to hate crime prosecution are identified: evidentiary inflation, by which law enforcement uses a higher burden of proof than what is required by statute; loose coupling between police departments and prosecutors' offices; and cultural distance between law enforcement and victims. Findings also reveal that advocacy groups and media can successfully increase the visibility of cases and draw the attention of prosecutors. The findings align with aspects of legal endogeneity theory and enhance our understanding of the role of organizations in constructing the meaning of law. The results also help explain why some laws are rarely enforced, even when they have support from key personnel in an organization.