PATTERNS OF LEGAL FIREARMS OWNERSHIP: A Cultural and Situational Analysis of Illinois Counties

Using county level data for the state of Illinois, we constructed a path analytic model predicting legal gun ownership for men. women, and minors. We consider the interplay between situational and cultural variables in determining legal ownership. Two patterns of firearms ownership are identified: (1) gun ownership among women as a response to high rales of violent crime and (2) a sporting culture. Neither pattern has strong relations to urban-rural differences amoung counties. Legal gun ownership is not necessarily related to a violent subculture. Ownership may be part of, a response to, or totally unrelated to a subculture of violence.     

INTERPREIING OFFICIAL RECORDS AS INDICATORS OF RECIDIVISM IN EVALUATING DELINQUENCY PREVENTION PROGRAMS

Evaluations of crime reduction and prevention programs often use information from official law enforcement or judicial records as ostensibly “objective” indicators of criminal or delinquent activity. However. we of data from official police and court records in assessing the effectiveness of a delinquency prevention program in King County. Washington, yielded divergent conclusions regarding program “success,” depending upon choices in interpretation of records used and the data presentation format adopted. these choices also determined which socio demographic and service-related variables appeared to be related to delinquency. The article calls into question the reliability and validity of official record data as indicators of recidivism, calls for rethinking the selection and use of indicators of program effect in evaluation studies, and calls for further research to explore the possible existence of consistent relationships among available delinquency measures.     

LIFE-COURSE TRAJECTORIES OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF OFFENDERS*

The point of departure for this paper is Nagin and Land (1993), who identified four distinctive offending trajectories in a sample of 403 British males—a group without any convictions, “adolescence-limiteds,”“high-level chronics,” and “low-level chronics.” We build upon that study with a detailed analysis of the distinguishing individual characteristics, behaviors, and social circumstances from ages 10 through 32 of these four groups. The most salient findings concern the adolescence-limiteds. By age 32 the work records of the adolescence-limiteds were indistinguishable from the never-convicted and substantially better than those of the chronic offenders. The adolescence-limiteds also seem to have established better relationships with their spouses than the chronics. The seeming reformation of the adolescence-limiteds, however, was less than complete. They continued to drink heavily and use drugs, get into fights, and commit criminal acts (according to self-reports).     

GANGS,DRUGS, AND DELINQUENCY IN A SURVEY OF URBAN YOUTH*

Youth delinquent gangs have been given considerable academic and media attention during the past decade. Much of the attention has focused on the violence and drug dealing in which gang members are assumed to be involved. Recent knowledge about gangs has relied primarily on data obtained from police gang units and from observational or case studies. Very little information has been derived from surveys or interviews with a more general sample of youths. In this paper, data from the Denver Youth Survey, a longitudinal study of families, are used to examine: (1) the prevalence and demographic composition of gangs: (2) the degree to which gang members are involved in illegal activities: and (3) the temporal relationship between criminal offending and gang membership.