The Seriousness of Crime Revisited: Have Attitudes Toward White-Collar Crime Changed?

Social commentators have often observed that the public is indifferent to white-collar criminality. However, the growing attention that white-collar crime has received in recent years raises the possibility of changes in the public's perceptions of such violations. By replicating Rossi et al.'s survey in 1972 of the seriousness of 140 offenses, the present research presents data indicating that white-collar crime has increased in seriousness more than any other offense category, but that it is still viewed as less serious than most other forms of illegality. When different types of white-collar crime were analyzed, we found considerable variation in ratings, with high a degree of seriousness attributed to offenses involving physical harm. Further, while all categories of white-collar criminality increased in seriousness, attitudinal changes have been particularly apparent toward two types, Violent and Corporate Price-Fixing.     

THE IMPACT OF FAMILY STRUCTURE AND QUALITY ON DELINQUENCY: A COMPARATIVE ASSESSMENT OF STRUCTURAL AND FUNCTIONAL FACTORS*

Despite the plethora of studies of broken homes, multivariate studies comparing the effects of the broken home and other theoretically relevant measures of the quality of family life are rare. This study examines the family structure versus family function issue by testing the comparative effects on self-reported delinquency of family structure and jive measures of family function. Five types of delinquency are considered. The data were obtained from a 1980 survey of 152 high school students in a small midwestern town. Item analysis and data reduction techniques were employed to construct six family quality indices and jive delinquency indices. Two types of family structure were examined: presence of both biological parents in the home v. other and single- v. two-parent homes. Multivariate analyses controlled for the effects of age and gender. Bivariate tests of the relationships between broken homes and delinquency were not significant, except for a moderate relationship between broken homes and status offenses. In addition, a bivariate relation between single-parent homes and delinquency was observed for status offenses only. Other forms of family dysfunction all were significantly related to overall delinquency and to status offenses. Moreover, several measures of family quality evidenced significant bivariate relationships to property offenses. violent offenses, and drug offenses. The importance of the broken home was further diminished when the direct effects of broken homes and home quality were examined in multivariate tests. Regression equations showed home quality and gender, rather than family structure, to be the more important determinants of delinquency. The family structure coefficient was significant in only 1 of 10 tests, a regression of broken home and home quality on status offenses. Efforts to expand the analysis to identify specific areas of family dysfunction were unenlightening.     

English Prosecutions: Twenty Years of Changing Institutions and Values

Twenty years ago England had a prosecutorial system founded upon traditional values. In 1986, a Crown Prosecution Service founded upon the values of modern rationalized bureaucracy will be introduced. In 1966, English prosecutions were overwhelmingly police conducted, often without legal assistance. By the mid-seventies, a majority of police forces had created ad hoc, non-statutory prosecuting solicitors departments. In 1986, a statutory professional prosecuting national bureaucratic service independent of the police will replace the traditional prosecutorial structures. This twenty-year change provides an excellent example of a Weberian movement from traditional to bureaucratic institutions and has enormous implications for further change in remaining traditionally based English criminal justice institutions.     

CONSENSUS IN CRIME SERIOUSNESS: EMPIRICAL REALITY OR METHODOLOGICAL ARTIFACT?*

Miethe (1982) has recently argued that the consistent findings of wide-spread consensus in the rankings of the seriousness of crimes may be more a rejection of the methodological approaches used by past researchers than of actual public sentiments. Building on Miethe's insights, this paper examines the extent to which the nature of the techniques employed to analyze data influences seriousness evaluations. The results indicate that consensus is affected by such factors as the rating task given to the subjects, how consensus is measured, and the type of offense under investigation. In turn these methodological considerations caution against using existing research as the bask either for the verification of consensus theories of justice or for the formulation of sanctioning policy.     

On religion and public policy: Does Catholicism make a difference?

Abstract. This paper suggests that differences in religious adherence and/or in degrees of secularization between advanced nations may be as relevant to understanding cross-national variance in a wide range of public policy outcomes as the impact of socio-economic and political factors. The prima facie evidence for such a thesis is demonstrated in areas as diverse as welfare expenditure, family policy and labour market policy outcomes, and is shown to have a particular salience wherever gender-related outcomes are at issue. On the basis of this evidence, it is suggested that, in policy outcome terms at least, it is possible to identify a distinctive Catholic family of nations consisting of a grouping of core Western European and Southern European countries.     

REVISITING THE CRIMINOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES OF EXPOSURE TO FETAL TESTOSTERONE: A META‐ANALYSIS OF THE 2D:4D DIGIT RATIO*

As criminology has become more interdisciplinary in recent years, biosocial criminology has earned a place at the table. Although this perspective comes in many forms, one important proposition has gained increasing attention: that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio—a purported physical biomarker for exposure to fetal testosterone—is related to criminal, aggressive, and risky/impulsive behavior. Strong claims in the literature have been made for this link even though the findings seem to be inconsistent. To establish the empirical status of this relationship, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 660 effect size estimates drawn from 47 studies (14,244 individual cases) indicate a small overall effect size (mean r = .047). Moderator analyses indicate that this effect is rather “general” across methodological specifications—findings that are at odds with theoretical propositions that specify the importance of exposure to fetal testosterone in predicting criminal and analogous behavior later in life. We conclude with a call for exercising caution over embracing the findings from one or two studies and instead highlight the importance of systematically organizing the full body of literature on a topic before making decisions about what does, and what does not, predict criminal and analogous behavior.