Victimization surveys and the accuracy and reliability of official crime data in developing countriesPublications received

The accuracy and reliability of official crime data are always suspect because knowledge of crime depends on the independent decision made by each victim of whether or not to report her/his experiences to the police. Victimization surveys allow estimates of degrees of inaccuracy, but such research is rarely done in developing countries. The little research done on victimization and the police in developing countries shows that levels of nonreporting, reasons for nonreporting, and relations between the public and the police to whom one would report are vastly different among developing countries and between developing and developed countries. One cannot assume, therefore, that the impact of victim behavior on the accuracy and reliability of official data will be similar across countries.     

Law enforcement and political change in post-civil war Nigeria

The impact of law enforcement on political change may be observed in three sets of attitudes by groups and individuals: national consciousness, that is the acceptance of the nation as a meaningful identity symbol; class consciousness, that is identification with a class against other classes; and legitimacy, that is the acceptance of the state as a rightful source of commands. A discussion of general theories of law enforcement and their impact on these attitudes, and of politics and the police in post-civil war Nigeria leads to the conclusion that the police, by the manner in which they enforce the laws, do have an effect on legitimacy orientations, though a weak one. Law enforcement agencies do not contribute significantly to the creation of social and political changes but reflect changes that arise and are fought out in other spheres of societal life.     

“A general theory of crime” and patterns of crime in Nigeria: An exploration of methodological assumptions

The general theory of crime proposed by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) claims to be valid across time and space. That claim is assessed through an analysis of three categories of Nigerian crime — normal, political-economic, and riotous. Logical, empirical, and theoretical shortcomings in the theory are identified and discussed. Factually, many individuals who act imprudently (and criminally) in Nigeria do not seem to fit the low self-control characterization required under the theory. Logically and theoretically, unacknowledged value assumptions built into the theory undermine its claim to universality.     

Criminal justice: Portrait of a discipline in process

Criminal justice is an academic discipline in practice but not yet in theory. An analysis of intellectual resources used in recent criminal justice books shows that theory development is still tied to established disciplines, does not accurately reflect and incorporate the multiple intellectual traditions from which the discipline of criminal justice arose, and has failed to achieve a genuine multidisciplinary and multitheoretical stance or project. Some reasons for this state of affairs and some suggestions for training and practice in the new discipline of criminal justice are advanced.     

Explaining crime in developing countries: The need for a case study approach

The relationship between crime and development typically has been investigated within the theoretical umbrella of three dominant frameworks (modernization, underdevelopment, routine activities) and by the analysis of cross-national, statistical correlations between developed and developed countries. We outline the empirical, methodological, conceptual and theoretical weaknesses of these studies. The categories developed and developing are invalid when studying crime and change and the defects of existing approaches can only be overcome by a case study approach to the relationships of patterns of crime in different countries.