Cocooned from Crime: The Relationship Between Video Games and Crime

The majority of research on the relationship between video game playing behavior and crime has been conducted by psychologists, has focused only on violent videogames, and suffers from two major shortcomings. First, psychologists have adopted correlational or experimental methodologies that do not in fact assess the empirical relationship between video game playing behavior and crime. Instead, they examine the relationship between video game playing behavior and aggression, and then infer research findings have social implications related to crime. Second, when making such inferences, these studies presume that meso and macro level phenomena are nothing more than the aggregated consequences of micro level events. Recent studies, however, have raised questions surrounding these two components of psychological research, as they have identified negative relationships between video game playing behavior and crime at county and national levels. In this study, we propose that these seemingly contradictory results can be explained using routine activities theory (Cohen and Felson 1979). We contend that video game playing behavior, particularly insofar as it occurs within the home, alters the routine activities of individuals in such a way as to decrease the number of criminal opportunities present within a society. We provide an initial test of this hypothesis using UCR, CPS, and Census data. As predicted by routine activities theory, we find that rates of video game playing behavior in the home are negatively associated with both violent and property crime.     

金融犯罪与非罪的认定标准问题

金融犯罪属于新兴形态的经济犯罪,近些年来,随着金融领域的开拓、金融业务的发展而呈现出一系列新的特点和发展态势。因此,随之而来的首要问题便是涉及此类犯罪定罪根据问题。根据罪刑法定原则,认定一种行为是否构成金融犯罪,当以刑法分则及有关刑事法律所规定的该种犯罪的构成要件为依据,其中金融不法行为的社会危害性及其程度、金融刑事违法性等乃认定此类犯罪的实质、法律标准,这对于区分金融犯罪与非罪具有特别重要意义;同时,也只有注重两者紧密结合,正确处理彼此相互关系,才能做到准确把握金融犯罪与非罪的界限。     

物证与犯罪现场重建

物证和犯罪现场重建结论,在刑事侦查活动中是两类不同的事物,但却是相互联系、相互作用的,它们都可以作为判定案情的依据。物证是犯罪现场重建的基础,犯罪现场重建使物证情景、情节化;物证是重建犯罪过程的“关节”;犯罪现场重建以犯罪分子的动态行为为链条,使静态的分散的间接物证成为有机的证据锁链。     

Crime,punishment and human nature

In Thinking About Crime James Q. Wilson brings a new dimension to crime policy research by explicating the failure of criminologists to adequately consider the philosophical perspectives on man and society which underlie alternate policy options. As a result, they rarely appreciate the inherent limits on government efforts to deal with crime. Wilson's consideration of these limitations, together with a critique of causal analysis in criminological thinking, lead him to propose an alternate conceptual framework, policy analysis. Our inspection of Wilson's own thinking reveals, however, that policy analysis is no less problematic and shortsighted than causal analysis, a result we attribute to serious flaws in his critique of criminological thinking and to the incorporation of his own biases about human nature into his conceptual framework. We seek in the concluding section to remove this bias and to demonstrate how policy analysis may be expanded into a more flexible, multi-dimensional framework, one which accounts for different assumptions about human nature and different policy goals.     

A Crime Against Humanity

The German Red-Green coalition has declared unlimited solidarity with the US government in its response to the attack on the World Trade Center in New York City. Yet, very few questions have been raised by the mainstream media, and any 'inopportune' comments that have worked their way into the press, questioning the legitimacy of the response, have been declared scandalous. This article argues that the time may have come to deal with long-term developments and potential consequences of today's politics and policies and perhaps it may even be possible for us to begin to understand what is going on--a possibility that should not be ignored out of an archaic thirst for revenge.