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.     

The contemporary transformation of american youth: An analysis of change in the prevalence of delinquency, 1991–2015

Youth involvement in crime has declined substantially over the past few decades, yet the reasons for this trend remain unclear. We advance the literature by examining the role of several potentially important shifts in individual attitudes and behaviors that may help to account for the observed temporal variation in youth delinquency. Our multilevel analysis of repeated cross‐sectional data from eighth and tenth grade students in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study indicates that changes in youth offending prevalence were not associated with changes in youth attachment and commitment to school, community involvement, or parental supervision after school. In contrast, the study provides suggestive evidence that the significant reduction in youth offending prevalence observed since the early 1990s was significantly associated with a decrease in unstructured socializing and alcohol consumption and, to a lesser extent, with a decrease in youth preferences for risky activities. Implications for existing theoretical explanations and future research on youth crime trends are discussed.     

The interaction of age with the correlates and causes of crime

We use data from a survey covering ages 15–94 to test the Hirschi/Gottfredson hypothesis that the correlates and causes of crime do not interact with age. These data reveal some nonchance interaction between age and demographic and theoretical predictors of criminal behavior that is localized in specific age categories and around particular variables and/or offenses. Overall, however, such interaction does not appear to be substantial, nor does it seem to have important consequences for generalizing from age restricted samples, particularly where generalization is of the most common type-from youth samples to adults. Therefore, despite some results contrary to a strict assertion that the causes and correlates of crime are the same for all ages, our findings support the thrust of the Hirschi/Gottfredson interaction hypothesis.     

未成年人犯罪与家庭责任

近年来,未成年人犯罪人数呈上升趋势,预防和减少未成年人犯罪,是当今世界各国十分重视的一个社会问题。各种家庭问题是形成青少年高犯罪倾向的重要根源。如何认定和准确地把握家庭责任的性质、特征,以及采取哪些相应的对策,则成为防止未成年犯罪的关键所在。     

PARENTAL INVOLVEMENT IN THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF YOUTH THEFT,MARIJUANA USE,DEPRESSION, AND POOR ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE*

Explanations for the fact that crime tends to run in families have focused on the deprived social backgrounds of criminal parents, methods of child‐rearing, modeling processes, and genetic mechanisms. However, parental involvement in the criminal justice system itself also might contribute to the intergenerational transmission of crime and have other adverse effects on children's well‐being. We investigated the development of youth problem behavior in relation to parental arrest, conviction, and incarceration in the youngest and oldest samples of the Pittsburgh Youth Study, a longitudinal survey of 1,009 inner‐city boys. Parental arrest and conviction without incarceration did not predict the development of youth problem behavior. Parental incarceration was not associated with increases in marijuana use, depression, or poor academic performance. However, boys experiencing parental incarceration showed greater increases in theft compared with a control group matched on propensity scores. The association between parental incarceration and youth theft was stronger for White youth than for Black youth. Parenting and peer relations after parental incarceration explained about half of its effects on youth theft. Because the effects of parental incarceration were specific to youth theft, labeling and stigma processes might be particularly important for understanding the consequences of parental incarceration for children.     

New Evidence on the Monetary Value of Saving a High Risk Youth

There is growing interest in crime prevention through early youth interventions; yet, the standard United States response to the crime problem, particularly among juveniles, has been to increase the use and resource allocation allotted toward punishment and incapacitation and away from prevention and treatment. At the same time, longitudinal studies of delinquency and crime have repeatedly documented a strong link between past and future behavior and have identified a small subset of offenders who commit a large share of criminal offenses. These findings suggest that if these offenders can be identified early and correctly and provided with prevention and treatment resources early in the life course, their criminal activity may be curtailed. While researchers have studied these offenders in great detail, little attention has been paid to the costs they exert on society. This paper provides estimates of the cost of crime imposed on society by high risk youth. Our approach follows and builds upon the early framework and basic methodology developed by Cohen (J Quant Criminol 14: 5–33, 1998), by using new estimates of the costs of individual crimes, ones that are more comprehensive and that significantly increased the monetary cost per crime. We also use new estimates on the underlying offending rate for high risk juvenile offenders. We estimate the present value of saving a 14-year-old high risk juvenile from a life of crime to range from $2.6 to $5.3 million. Similarly, saving a high risk youth at birth would save society between $2.6 and $4.4 million.

Age and crime in a Stockholm cohort

This study reports some findings on the age-crime relationship from a study of a 1953 Stockholm cohort (Project Metropolitan) through youth and young adulthood. The study includes 15,117 males and females. Basic data about crime in the cohort are presented along with more detailed data about the age-crime relationship. Special emphasis is given to sex and social class differences. The findings are discussed in the context of the recent debate on the value of longitudinal studies of crime as regards the study of the age-crime relationship. The results show that overall there are many general similarities with the findings from U.S. and British research on age, crime, and criminal careers.Project Metropolitan operates on grants from the Commission for Social Research and the Swedish Council for Planning and Coordination of Research. Until 1985 the project was supported by the Bank of Sweden Tercentenary Foundation. Project Metropolitan is directed by Professor Carl-Gunnar Janson, Department of Sociology, University of Stockholm.     

Swedish quantitative criminology in the 1990s: A brief overview

Quantitative criminology research published in Sweden in the 1990s is reviewed and put in the context of major Swedish traditions in quantitative criminological research. Sweden has a strong tradition in sophisticated longitudinal and ecological research which continues into the 1990s. Other traditionally prominent areas of Swedish quantitative research include studies of crime trends, violence, and youth criminality. Traditionally Swedish quantitative criminology has been dominated by studies using official statistics and criminal records as data. In the 1990s there has been a significant upswing in survey studies, motivated partly by an increased interest in questions of etiology and crime prevention. More fundamental research on the causes of crime, including new longitudinal studies, and more evaluations of crime prevention initiatives are needed.     

Youth hate crime offending: the role of strain,social control and self-control theories

Much of the existing research on hate crime focuses on the perspective of victims, while relatively little is known of the offenders. This study examines the prevalence of hate-motivated offending in the form of assaults and bullying, and variables that may explain some of the influences for such behaviour. It compares hate-motivated offenders to both non-offenders and offenders committing non-hate-motivated acts. Our data are based on a nationally representative youth survey collected in 2012 (n = 4,855) from Finnish students attending ninth grade (ages 15–16). It relies on three central theories in criminology: strain, social control and self-control theories. Frequent parental fighting, low parental supervision, low social control and male gender were significant factors in explaining hate crime offending. Our results suggest that the three criminological theories are relevant in the analysis of hate crime offending among Finnish youth.     

Violent Crime in the United States of America: A Time-Series Analysis Between 1960–2000

This paper empirically assesses the effects of socio-economic and demographic variables on violent crime in the United States. Using national-level time-series data over the period 1960–2000, an unrestricted vector autoregressive (VAR) model was estimated for overall violent crime, murder, rape and assault. The results indicate that there is no long-run relationship among the examined variables, but significant short-run relationships hold. Imprisonment growth, income inequality, alcohol consumption, and racial composition of the male youth population are shown to influence the short-run behaviour of violent crime.     

Protective processes: the function of young people's implicit theories of crime in offending behaviour

Abstract

Despite development in high-risk environments, many youths are resilient and do not engage in antisocial behaviour and crime. Research on human traits such as intelligence and morality, suggest that the implicit theories (ITs) people have about the controllability of their behaviour, as either fixed (entity beliefs) or malleable (incremental beliefs) may play a part in successful behavioural outcomes. Using this as a framework, the function of ITs about crime in successful adolescent development was investigated among 422 ‘at-risk’ youths. Incremental ITs of criminality were found to significantly predict less self-reported involvement in youth offending, controlling for academic attainment. Entity ITs, conversely, were associated with an increased rate of participation in deviant behaviour. Further analysis revealed that incremental ITs of criminality moderated the negative effects of associating with delinquent peers on adolescent behaviour. The results demonstrate the direct and indirect protective function of incremental ITs of criminality for youths at risk and highlight the value of investigating further the protective processes that are involved in preventing youth crime.     

The influence of police interventions and alternative income sources on the dynamic process of choosing crime as a career

This paper demonstrates how a rational process of choice may be influenced by both deterrence forces and economic opportunities. This choice is modeled by a dynamic (Markov) process which captures self-sorting by youth among the categories of innocents, desisters, and persisters. in crime. A key to the results is the introduction of the perceived probability of punishment and its influence on the sorting process. The analysis shows how this force and the availability, or lack of, economic opportunities or income sources modify transition probabilities. The long-run consequences will be a larger subpopulation of individuals who have experimented with crime but subsequently revert to crime-free behavior and a smaller subpopulation of individuals who commit a greater share of crime. Empirical evidence is based on data from the New Youth Cohort of the National Longitudinal Surveys.     

Crime is a Social Problem

This article seeks to place the study of crime and criminals in the social policy context. Criminal careers research is critically evaluated and modern social trends are outlined as a background to an exploration of the interaction between criminological research findings and social policies for youth in trouble. A contrast is drawn between individualised explanations of criminal behaviour and approaches which seek to place crime in its situational and social context.     

Strain,Crime, and Contingencies

Hypotheses from General Strain theory are addressed using data from a random sample of adults in Raleigh, NC. Analyses examine three issues: (1) whether strain predicts self‐projected criminal behavior; controlling for past self‐reported crime; (2) whether negative emotions mediate the relationship between strain and projected crime; and (3) whether social support and criminal peers serve as contingencies or mediators for strain in predicting criminality. Results are generally consistent with previous studies focusing on youth. Three of four measures of strain are found to predict the crime measures. However, that relationship is not mediated by negative emotion and the measures of social support and criminal peers do not act as contingencies or mediators. The results suggest that strain may not operate through negative emotions and that theoretical refinement is needed to identify which potential contingencies are likely to be operating under various circumstances.     

NEIGHBORHOOD STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS,INDIVIDUAL-LEVEL ATTITUDES,AND YOUTHS' CRIME REPORTING INTENTIONS*

Although the “stop snitching” phenomenon has brought recent attention to crime reporting, researchers have recognized for a long time the importance of this issue. Early studies focused on individual-level factors related to reporting, but recently, researchers have begun to examine neighborhood-level predictors. Most of these studies, however, omit key individual-level predictors of reporting and provide relatively little insight into the individual-level processes through which neighborhood context might affect reporting. This study uses survey data from a multisite, school-based study to examine whether neighborhood structural characteristics and individual-level attitudes and experiences are related to youths’ intentions to report crime. In addition, we assess whether neighborhood characteristics influence reporting via their effect on individual-level attitudes and experiences. We find that neighborhood poverty has an inverse relationship with crime reporting intentions and that numerous individual-level measures are associated with reporting, including attitudes toward the police, delinquency, and perceptions of the community. Importantly, the effects of neighborhood characteristics are reduced when youths’ attitudes and experiences are included in the model. Taken together, our findings suggest that neighborhood context might affect reporting by shaping the attitudes and experiences of youth.     

An Examination of the Relationship Between Media Exposure and Fear of Victimization: Implications of the Superpredator Narrative on Juvenile Justice Policies

The media allow crime to infiltrate the public’s consciousness in every conceivable way, thereby playing a major role in shaping the public’s opinion and attitude toward crime and crime issues (Barak, 1995; Fields & Jerin, 1996; Kappeler & Potter, 2005). Reporters constantly talk about crime, and crime related stories dominate the headlines of local and national newspaper outlets (Dowler, 2003; Pizarro et al, 2007). Some of the most highly rated television programs are based on crime plots and people across social, political, and racial demographics are constantly engaged in crime dialogue generated from local or national news stories. When the focus of these mediums is on youth they become even more profound and contentious. The images portrayed conjure up stereotypes that lead to fear and inflammatory remarks that become entrenched into the national lexicon. The current study uses data from the National Opinion Survey of Crime and Justice to test the relationship between crime-related media viewership and fear of victimization within a nationally representative adult sample. Approximately 42.67% of respondents reported regularly watching crime shows and about the same proportion (42.83%) believed their local media paid too much attention to violent crime. In addition to regular crime-show viewership, confidence in the police, gender, and recent contact with the police were associated with fear of victimization. This article adds to an existing body of research through a largely unexplored area in the administration of justice. It does so within the context of the U.S. juvenile justice system.     

Reconsidering the unemployment and crime relationship: Variation by age group and historical period

Although considerable research has examined the direct effects of age and economic conditions on crime, relatively little work has investigated the joint influence that age and unemployment may have on rates of criminal behavior. This study extends prior research on the unemployment-crime relationship by testing simultaneously for (1) variation in the unemployment-crime relationship by age group and (2) variation in the unemployment-crime relationship over time. Age-specific arrest and unemployment time-series data for the United States from 1958 to 1995 are used to test these hypotheses. The two main findings indicate that (1) unemployment has a greater motivational effect on property crime among youth and young adults and (2) the unemployment-crime relationship varies over time, but in a way that appears to be more random than systematic. The implications for future research are discussed.     

以罪名为讨论平台的反思与纠正

我国刑法学界存在以罪名作为问题讨论平台的现象,但是,由最高司法机关确定的罪名与刑法规定的犯罪构成之间大多并非一一对应的关系,“多罪一名”是我国罪名体系的显著特征,以罪名作为问题讨论平台会带来诸多理论上难以妥善处理的问题。在刑法学研究中,应当严格区分罪名和犯罪这两个概念。刑法学的研究对象是犯罪,讨论刑法问题的基本平台只能是犯罪构成而不是罪名,分析刑法问题的基本单元是“一个犯罪构成”而不是“一个罪名”。罪数中的“罪”是指犯罪构成而不是罪名,具体的事实认识错误是指“同一犯罪构成”内的事实认识错误而非“同一罪名”内的事实认识错误,罪过是犯罪构成的罪过而非罪名的罪过。     

身份犯类型的学理探讨

身份犯是刑法中明文规定的由具有特定身份的犯罪主体进行的一类犯罪。根据主体身份对共同犯罪的刑事责任的影响 ,可以将身份犯分为纯正身份犯与不纯正身份犯 ;根据主体身份的形成原因 ,可以将身份犯分为自然身份犯与法定身份犯 ;根据主体身份的确定程度 ,可以将身份犯分为定式身份犯与不定式身份犯 ;根据刑法中规定的身份犯的犯罪构成要件的内容是否要求具有特定身份之主体去亲自实施 ,可以将身份犯划分为排他性身份犯和非排他性身份犯。     

Youth Crime in Canada: Observations for Cross-Cultural Analysis

Despite its proximity to the United States, Canada provides a unique context within which youth crime can be examined and utilized for comparative analyses. Canada's demographics, cultural mosaic, and the legislative and political bases of criminal justice are quite distinct from those of the United States. While Canadian youth generally experience lower rates of crime than their U.S. counterparts, there are areas where such rates are comparable and require close examination. Among the emerging concerns in youth crime are crime in urban areas, ethnic youth gangs, and the high rates of involvement of aboriginal youth in crime in many areas of the country. The notions of vulnerable youths and viable communities are offered as two useful concepts for the study of youth crime on a national and cross-national basis. High on the research agenda are studies of youth crime in the urban/rural/remote areas of the country, the impact of immigration policy on the emergence of specific types of youth crime, and longitudinal studies of male and female youth crime.