The historical variability of the age-crime relationship

Methodological problems arising in fitting nonlinear regressions to a dataset are identified in context of research on the age-crime relationship. A modified chisquare distribution is fit to the age distribution of the seven Index crimes for the years 1952, 1957, 1962, 1967, 1972, 1977, 1982, and 1988 to assess the historical invariance of the distribution. Problematic features of Britt's (J. Quant. Criminol. 8, 175–187, 1992) analysis of the same data are highlighted.Britt states no rationale for the choice of these two functions, but his statement that his findings provide support for Greenberg's (1991) use of the Poisson gamma density to model individual offending patterns and questions Rowe and co-workers' (1990) use of the lognormal density as an appropriate model of individual violent offending suggests that this earlier work motivated his choice. Actually, this earlier work is not relevant to Britt's project. Greenberg (1991) and Roweet al. (1990) were concerned with the distribution of criminal propensities across individuals of a given age, not with the distribution of prevalence or participation rates across the ages, and changes therein over time.     

A large study evaluation of evidence types containing offender fingerprints from recorded crimes in North Macedonia from 2005 to 2015

The Forensic Institute of the Republic of North Macedonia data set of 1,982 offender fingerprint identifications contributing to a conviction for crimes against property, was evaluated and analysed using contingency table statistical analysis techniques, chi-square test, fisher’s exact test and post hoc analysis. The data set was based on the forensic and court information available from 2005 to 2015 and pertained to the location, property type and evidence type. Interpretation of the data identified glass components, doors, windows, points of entry, cardboard and other packaging to be the most likely areas for locating offender fingerprints in non-residential and residential properties. In vehicle-based crimes, the front area (both left- and right-hand side) was the most likely to yield offender fingerprints.This study reinforced the types of evidential items at property based crime scenes yielding offender fingerprints. In addition, the study seeks to provide recommendations for future data collection to enhance the data analysis and interpretation.