Police Response to Residential Burglaries

Residential burglaries are important disruptions of the social order and may require special work on the part of the responding law enforcement officer. This study suggests that officers in some departments use crime scene processing as a form of remedial work or negative rite after especially serious breaches of the home as a private place and territory of the self. Controlling for the dollar value of the property loss, presence of suspect leads, and victim's race and insurance coverage, we found that officers in a southern sheriff's department were we likely to call in an evidence technician to dust for prints when victims lost objects typically regarded as markers of the self and when entry involved the use of force.     

FAMILY MATTERS: EFFECTS OF FAMILY MEMBERS’ RESIDENTIAL AREAS ON CRIME LOCATION CHOICE*

According to crime pattern theory, offenders are likely to select crime locations within their awareness space. Previous studies have shown that offenders often commit crimes within their current and former residential areas and in areas they previously targeted. However, offenders’ awareness spaces obviously consist of more locations that potentially influence their crime location choices. This study examines the importance of the residential areas of offenders’ family members. Most offenders visit their families at least occasionally and consequently get familiar with the areas in which their families live. It is hypothesized that family members’ residential areas are at increased risk of being targeted. Unique data were used to reconstruct residential histories of the parents, siblings, and children of 7,910 offenders who committed 19,420 offenses. The results of discrete spatial choice models showed that residential areas of family members are indeed at increased risk of being targeted. Current familial residential areas had stronger and more consistent effects than had former familial residential areas. Effects were strongest for the residential areas of offenders’ children compared with those of their parents and siblings. The residential areas of male and female family members affected the crime location choices of male and female offenders equally.     

Beyond sticks and stones: Human capital enhancement efforts in response to violent crime in Latin America

Violent crime has been commonplace in Latin America over the past decades. While existing research has made progress in explaining the rationale and outcomes of government coercive strategies against crime, it has overlooked the non‐coercive strategies implemented to improve public security. It is argued in this article that political authorities make human capital enhancement efforts to shape actors’ incentives about criminal activity and mitigate crime. Accordingly, it is hypothesised that violent crime increases human capital enhancement efforts, and that the effect of violent crime on human capital enhancement efforts is larger when left‐oriented governments are in power because they stress actors’ motivations over windows of opportunities as the main drivers of crime. Support for these hypotheses is found in a sample of Latin American democracies in the period 1990–2007.     

Trust in Authorities and Power to Enforce Tax Compliance: An Empirical Analysis of the “Slippery Slope Framework”

Tax payments are enhanced by taxpayers' trust in authorities or by authorities' power leading to voluntary or enforced tax compliance, respectively. A laboratory experiment and an online experiment examined these assumptions, manipulating trust in and power of authorities. In Experiment 1, participants paid taxes in twenty periods. Results showed that trust and power positively influence tax payments. Trust increases and power decreases voluntary compliance, whereas power increases and trust decreases enforced compliance. Experiment 2 analyzed the impact of trust and power with self‐employed taxpayers' intentions to pay taxes. The overall pattern of the findings of Experiment 1 were replicated and expanded with strategic behavior; strategic behavior was higher in the case of low trust and high power when compared to that of high trust and high power.     

Flashpoint: An Innovative Media Literacy Intervention For High‐Risk Adolescents

This paper describes the development and formative evaluation of a media literacy, media based intervention for high‐risk adolescents. The program described, Flashpoint, was developed to (1) moderate the influence of media presentations of violence, substance abuse and prejudice on adolescents; and t (2) teach participants cognitive skills which would enable them to resist impulses to engage in behavior involving violence, substance abuse or prejudice. The evaluation described studied the pilot testing of the program with three groups of adolescents (N=33) involved in the juvenile justice system: adolescents in a diversion program (first time, nonviolent offenders); adolescents on probation; and adolescents in residential custody of the Department of Youth Services. Qualitative findings are reviewed in detail.     

TACKLING HEALTH INEQUALITIES IN POST‐DEVOLUTION BRITAIN: DO TARGETS MATTER?

Since devolution in 1998, many aspects of public policy in Great Britain have diverged between England, Scotland and Wales, including how targets and performance assessment are used in the National Health Service and local government. Health inequality is an example where all three countries have recognized a need to act but approaches to performance assessment differ. Based on interviews with senior managers, the complexity of health inequality as an object of local intervention is explored and compared. Despite contrasting approaches to targets, local discourses in all three countries had significant similarities. Health inequality had to compete against a preoccupation with improving access to acute services generally and balancing budgets over the short term. There was a bias in the interventions described towards targeting health behaviours, but with limited use of evidence about efficacy, and indications that measuring progress with reducing health inequalities was starting to lead to an emphasis on ‘quick wins' from pharmacological interventions.     

THE ROLE OF ATTENUATED CULTURE IN SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY*

Current criminological research rooted in social disorganization theory has primarily focused on structural disorganization and has largely ignored the role of cultural disorganization. This paper develops the theoretical role of cultural disorganization in the contemporary social disorganization model, integrating aspects of both the systemic model and a cultural attenuation model. This model is empirically examined using structural equation modeling. Survey data from residents in 66 neighborhoods in a Southern state provide the primary data. In part, the findings show that concentrated disadvantage and the level of social ties affect cultural strength, which in turn significantly affects informal social control. These findings demonstrate the relevance of weakened culture in explaining informal social control and call for further theoretical expansion of social disorganization models to include cultural disorganization.     

DIRECTLY INTERVENE OR CALL THE AUTHORITIES? A STUDY OF FORMS OF NEIGHBORHOOD SOCIAL CONTROL WITHIN A SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION FRAMEWORK*

Informal social control is a central concept in the contemporary social disorganization literature, and much attention has been directed at examining community characteristics related to variation in the quantity of informal social control across communities. However, considerably less attention has been paid to variation in forms of informal social control. This study examines the extent to which neighborhood characteristics are related to residents’likelihood of using two different forms of informal social control: direct informal social control (i.e., through direct intervention) and indirect informal social control (i.e., through mobilizing formal authorities). Data for this study are based on surveys of residents in 66 neighborhoods. The analysis uses hierarchical modeling to examine whether neighborhood characteristics central to contemporary social disorganization theory have similar effects on these two forms of neighborhood social control. Findings indicate that social ties increase the likelihood of direct informal social control but not indirect informal social control, whereas social cohesion and trust decreases indirect informal social control but does not have a significant effect on direct informal social control. Faith in the police is not found to affect either form of informal social control. These findings are discussed in terms of current issues in contemporary social disorganization theory.