Regulatory and Administrative Agency Behavior: Accommodation,Amplification, and Assimilation*

Much scholarly analysis of regulatory and administrative behavior focuses on officials' reactions to external influences. Commonly discussed is officials' accommodation of external interests or pressures (such as those of interest groups). But case studies show two additional types of behavior: amplification, in which officials enlarge the effects of external influences by anticipating the potential likely consequences of certain kinds of agency actions based upon their understandings of how situations have been responded to or may be responded to by others in the future; and assimilation, where officials define a situation as problematic and coordinate with or take into account various elements of their environment in attending to the perceived problem. Focusing on all three patterns of behavior and the context within which they emerge yields a fuller analysis of the significance of external factors for the exercise of discretion.     

THE LINK BETWEEN OFFENDING AND VICTIMIZATION AMONG ADOLESCENTS*

Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey suggests that adolescent involvement in delinquent lifestyles strongly increases the risk of both personal and property victimization. Further, the analysis reveals that a significant proportion of the risk of victimization incurred by different demographic subgroups—especially males—results from greater involvement in lifestyles characterized by delinquency. The authors conclude that victimization patterns among youths cannot be understood apart from criminal and deviant activities.     

Violence in and around Entertainment Districts: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Impact of Late‐Night Lockout Legislation

Violence in entertainment districts is a major problem across urban landscapes throughout the world. Research shows that licensed premises are the third most common location for homicides and serious assaults, accounting for one in ten fatal and nonfatal assaults. One class of interventions that aims to reduce violence in entertainment districts involves the use of civil remedies: a group of strategies that use civil or regulatory measures as legal “levers” to reduce problem behavior. One specific civil remedy used to reduce problematic behavior in entertainment districts involves manipulation of licensed premise trading hours. This article uses generalized linear models to analyze the impact of lockout legislation on recorded violent offences in two entertainment districts in the Australian state of Queensland. Our research shows that 3 a.m. lockout legislation led to a direct and significant reduction in the number of violent incidents inside licensed premises. Indeed, the lockouts cut the level of violent crime inside licensed premises by half. Despite these impressive results for the control of violence inside licensed premises, we found no evidence that the lockout had any impact on violence on streets and footpaths outside licensed premises that were the site for more than 80 percent of entertainment district violence. Overall, however, our analysis suggests that lockouts are an important mechanism that helps to control the level of violence inside licensed premises but that finely grained contextual responses to alcohol‐related problems are needed rather than one‐size‐fits‐all solutions.