Immigration and crime: a time-trend analysis of self-reported crime in Sweden, 1999–2017

ABSTRACT

This study investigates the direction and rate of change in self-reported crime over time, based on immigrant status and region of origin. The study is based on eight nationally representive school surveys conducted by the National Council for Crime Prevention between 1999 and 2017, with a sample of 50,657 adolescents. Results in this study showed a decreasing trend in self-reported offending among both first and second generation immigrant youth, and also among immigrant youths from different regions of origin. The results also show that offending has declined at a faster rate among first generation immigrants by comparison with native Swedes.     

Street Youth Crime: A Test of Control Balance Theory

Utilizing a sample of 400 homeless street youths, the paper explores the role control balance plays in the generation of crime. Using vignettes designed to represent violent crime, serious property crime, and minor property crime, the paper tests whether these youths sense of control over their poverty, shelter, hunger and other living conditions influences their participation in crime. Further, it examines how perceptions of risk and thrill, as well as deviant values, self‐control, deviant histories, and peer support impact on crime. Results indicate that both control deficits and control surpluses were related to assault and serious theft but not minor theft. Perceptions of thrill, deviant peers, deviant histories, and deviant values predicted violent and property crime, and perceptions of risk were related to the property offenses. Criminal peers also conditioned the impact of control surpluses and deficits on property offenses. Results are discussed in terms of future research and policy.     

DOES GUN PREVALENCE AFFECT TEEN GUN CARRYING AFTER ALL?*

Previous research suggests that American adolescents usually have ready access to guns, and that the extent of misuse of guns by adolescents is not much affected by local gun prevalence or regulation. This “futility” claim is based on one interpretation of survey data from several cities, but has not been tested directly. Here we do so using microdata from a nationally representative survey, the 1995 National Survey of Adolescent Males. Using the restricted geo‐coded version of these data, and conditioning on an extensive set of covariates, we find (among other results) that the likelihood of gun carrying increases markedly with the prevalence of gun ownership in the given community. We also analyze the propensity to carry other types of weapons, finding that it is unrelated to the local prevalence of gun ownership. The prevalence of youths carrying both guns and other weapons is positively related to the local rate of youth violence (as measured by the robbery rate), confirmatory evidence that weapons carrying by youths is motivated in part by self‐protection.     

DIFFERENTIAL COERCION,STREET YOUTH,AND VIOLENT CRIME*

Using a sample of 300 homeless street youths, this study examines differential coercion theory and the role that coercion and the socialpsychological deficits of anger, low self‐control, coercive modeling, coercive ideation, and control imbalances play in the generation of violent crime. Results from cross‐sectional and prospective offending models that examine the individual mediators reveal that coercion has a direct relationship with violent offending as well as a relationship that is mediated by low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation. Although control imbalances have a direct relationship with crime, they do not mediate the relationship between coercion and crime. In the cross‐sectional model that contains all the mediators, coercion, low self‐control, anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation are associated with crime. In the prospective model that contains all the mediators, only anger, coercive modeling, and coercive ideation remain associated with crime. Results are discussed regarding future theory development and policy implications.     

Street Youths and the Proximate and Contingent Causes of Instrumental Crime: Untangling Anomie Theory

Utilizing a sample of 300 homeless street youths, the research examines the individual‐level sub‐model of Baumer’s interpretation of Merton’s anomie theory. The paper explores the role the interaction between monetary goals and weak commitment to legitimate means plays in the generation of instrumental crime and the manner in which this interaction is itself moderated by blocked opportunities, monetary dissatisfaction, social modeling, cultural support, and the perceived risk of punishment. The findings reveal that a weak commitment to legitimate means, but not monetary goals, has a lower order impact on the willingness to commit instrumental crime. These two variables, however, do not interact to predict intentions to offend. Instead the findings reveal that blocked opportunities and higher levels of monetary dissatisfaction moderate the relationship between the monetary goals and weak commitment to legitimate means interaction and the willingness to offend. Findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered.     

Substance abuse and its risks leading to a crime： An empirical research based on investigations in university students in Istanbul

The main aim of this paper is to reveal the relationships between substance abuse and criminal conducts through examining the current situation of substance abuse among youth, their knowledge level of substance and their experiences involving in crimes. Data were collected from 312 university students in Istanbul by questionnaires which consist of three parts, 35 questions concerning alcohol use, drug use, cigarette use, and crime-involving experiences under the influence of alcohol or other substances. Results indicate that the university students use cigarette and alcohol mostly. They do not consider the risk of being a victim or an offender in a crime when they are under the influence of alcohol. In fact, the actual proportion of young people who indicated that they had ever been involved in a crime, while they were drunk, is quite small.     

WE NEVER CALL THE COPS AND HERE IS WHY: A QUALITATIVE EXAMINATION OF LEGAL CYNICISM IN THREE PHILADELPHIA NEIGHBORHOODS*

This article presents data from the completed first wave of a multiwave comparative study of crime, danger, and informal social control that focuses on youth living in three high‐crime neighborhoods in Philadelphia, PA (N= 147). The study is a purposive sample of delinquent and nondelinquent young men and women in one predominantly African‐American, one predominantly Latino, and one predominantly white neighborhood, and researchers have completed in‐depth interviews and self‐reports with each subject. This article focuses on the narratives that youth living in high‐crime neighborhoods build around their contact with police and the strategies the young people propose for crime reduction in their communities. The data illustrate that most youth in each neighborhood are negatively disposed toward police and that this is grounded in the lived experience of negative encounters with law enforcement. However, when youth expounded on what they thought would reduce crime, they overwhelmingly chose increased and tougher law enforcement. We analyze these findings to determine whether support exists for a subcultural approach or a cultural attenuation/procedural justice argument, and we explore the implications of our findings for community‐based crime control.     

Gender expectations and their impact on black female offenders and victims

The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between failure to register (FTR) as a sex offender and subsequent recidivism (N = 2,970). No significant differences were found between the sexual recidivism rates of those who failed to register and compliant registrants (11% vs. 9%, respectively). There was no significant difference in the proportion of sexual recidivists and nonrecidivists with registration violations (12% vs. 10%, respectively). FTR did not predict sexual recidivism, and survival analyses revealed no significant difference in time to recidivism when comparing those who failed to register (2.9 years) with compliant registrants (2.8 years). Results fail to support the supposition that sexual offenders who fail to register are more sexually dangerous than those who comply with registration requirements. The punitive emphasis on registration enforcement may not be justified and might divert limited resources away from strategies that would better facilitate public protection from sexual violence.     

Some explanations of crime among four ethnic groups in the Netherlands

Since 1950 there has been large-scale immigration to Western Europe, mainly from Muslim countries. This paper focuses on the degree of involvement in crime of ethnic minority boys as compared to indigenous boys and on the possible causes of these crime involvements. A random sample from three ethnic minority boys (Moroccans, Turks, Surinamese) was taken. A control group consisted of indigenous boys with a comparable socioeconomic background as the minority respondents. Data were gathered about self-report and recorded delinquency, family and school life, leisure time, traditionalism, migration problems, and socioeconomic status. It appears that the arrest rates among the minority youths are substantially higher than among the comparable Dutch boys. A number of explanations are considered: strain, lack of social control, cultural dissonance, and migration problems. Results show that only social control factors explain criminality within the groups, indicating that the causes of criminality among ethnic minority boys may essentially be the same as those among the indigenous boys.     

The Social Construction of Illegality and Criminality

In this article illegal immigrants, a relatively new group of immigrants living at the margins of society, are discussed. The question of the significance of crime for groups that are officially excluded from the formal labour market and public provisions, is presented within the framework of the Unknown City research project, conducted in the four largest Dutch cities (interviews with illegal immigrants; an ethnographic study to determine the extent of support by various ethnic communities; and an examination of the ways in which the restrictive policies towards illegal immigrants were implemented by the police, the Aliens Departments, and by professionals within public or semi-public institutions in the fields of education, healthcare and housing). Both the relatively limited involvement in crime in general and the differences between groups can be explained by the embeddedness of illegal immigrants in the labour sphere and the support by ethnic communities. Attention is paid to the social and legal construction of the illegal immigrant through new legislation and to the observation that illegality is increasingly linked to crime. The majority of illegal immigrants are not criminally active. One exception is the category that is active in the lower levels of the hard drug trade. The authors' analysis suggests that the perception of the criminal illegal immigrant first and foremost reflects the division between wanted and unwanted immigrants, which is the result of the shift towards a restrictive policy.     

刑法因果关系问题再研究

从胡某案件人手,对国内外单独犯因果关系的学说进行了评述,并对共同犯罪因果关系的学说进行了认真的研究,肯定了毕克迈耶与牧野英一的共同犯罪因果关系学说的现代价值,以此为借鉴分析胡某案件中涉及的共同犯罪的因果关系问题,提出考察本案因果关系应遵循的整体性原则,即共犯行为间有引起与被引起的关系,它们互为条件、互相配合、纵横交错,具有单个犯罪所不具有的特殊性;各共犯的行为与犯罪结果之间无论是直接的因果关系还是间接的因果关系,都是一种不容否认的客观存在;共犯的因果关系还具有双重性的特征,即大因果关系与小因果关系.由此得出胡某与张某、江某均应以故意伤害罪论处的结论.