SEX AND DELINQUENCY: A Partial Test of the Masculinity Hypothesis

With increasing frequency, commentators assert that attitudes associated with occupying the male status or “masculinity” contribute to criminal/delinquent involvement. Despite the ubiquity with which this “masculinity hypothesis” appears, it has received few empirical assessments, and those that do exist typically are flawed by what amounts to the ecological fallacy. Using individual level data, this research attempted to test the masculinity proposition. In general, our data lent some support to the hypothesis, indicating that independent of gender, having masculine attributes positively affected the commission of different types of delinquent offenses.     

FEAR OF CRIME IN RESIDENTIAL COMMUNITIES

Three variables were hypothesized to cause a fear of crime and a potential change in behavior. These were: (1) crimes against a person rather than crimes against property; (2) a crime committed in an area frequented rather than a crime occurring in an area one never entered; (3) a recurring crime rather than a crime that occurred once. Two different samples of female subjects (n = 249) were approached at their residences and were asked to read one of a number of fictitious crime stories that the news media supposedly had not reported and to complete two scales measuring: (1) an emotional response to crime and (2) a potential behavioral response to crime. The results indicate that a physical assault produces both more fear and more potential behavioral change than a burglary. A crime that occurs eight times causes people to consider taking precautions in comparison to a crime that occurs once. There is some evidence that a crime in an area one frequents causes more fear than a crime occurring in an area one never enters.     

Means Discrimination: An Investigation into the Ideology of Constitutional Equality

Constitutional "equal protection" has a technical meaning that orients legal thinking. Its roots are in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and the relationship between separation of the races in schools, theaters, and other public places and the guarantee of material or physical equality. Brown v. The Board of Education (1954), in eliminating separation from constitutional protection also eliminated the constitutional promise of material equality.
The approach to this ideology turns away from outcomes in order to get to the meanings, standards and conceptual parameters that influence the application of constitutional discourse to discrimination against those with inadequate means.     

The Hunting of the Snark: Reflections on a Half Century of Crime

John Croft is a former head of the UK's Home Office Research and Planning Unit, so is able to draw on extensive experience to offer this reflective examination of half a century of involvement in the criminal justice system. He surveys the shifting patterns of research, popular attitudes and social emphasis, relates them to the changing political context, and asks a number of telling questions — including 'What works?' The author concludes that not much does work, and that government has had little influence on fluctuations in the crime rate since the Second World War. He recommends periodic reviews of research across the whole criminal justice system, perhaps on a ten‐year cycle; more comparative research, which would help to illuminate problems and perhaps suggest solutions; a closer look at the interaction between social and criminal policies; and a re‐examination of risk assessment, particularly in its implications for penology.