Objectives A critical unknown in any jurisdiction is the scope of crime that is not brought to the attention of police. This study provides a unique comparison of Chicago crime rates using both police and victimization survey data. Levels of crime reporting and the reasons victims provide for or against reporting crime to the police are examined. Patterns are compared to those found for other large

Objectives: The current study examines the relationship between immigration, school punishment, and place in schools near the U.S.-Mexico border using a racial threat framework. Given the consequences of the immigration-crime link and the growing perception of the U.S.-Mexico border as a crime-ridden place, this study explores how immigration within certain places may differentially impact outcomes

Objectives: Individual- and school-level factors associated with youth being stopped, searched, or arrested in school are identified. Correlates of community-based contact are also examined. Methods: Longitudinal student surveys and corresponding school-level data come from 21 middle and high schools in 6 districts in St. Louis County, Missouri. Multilevel multinomial logistic regression was used to

Objectives Test the role of individual and crime characteristics on public opinions of white-collar crime seriousness and support for crime reduction policy; consider the relationship between perceptions of crime seriousness and support for public policies to reduce white-collar crime. Methods Data from a nationally-representative survey. Respondents (n = 2,050) rated ten white-collar crimes, relative

Objectives Longitudinal studies of the relationship between neighborhood change and changes in crime typically focus exclusively on the net level of change in key socio-demographic characteristics. Methods We instead propose a demographic accounting strategy that captures the composition of neighborhood change: our measures capture which types of people are more likely to leave, stay, or enter the

Objectives: This study isolates the effects of mental health, substance use, and co-occurring disorders on three distinct dispositional outcomes: incarceration (i.e., jail/detention), non-incarcerative residential placement (i.e., treatment facility), and community sanctions (i.e., fines/restitution or probation). Methods: Using a sample of juvenile offenders from the Pathways to Desistance study (N = 617)

Objectives: The current study aims to generate insights from sexual offenders on noncompleted sexual offences, that is, on offences that were stopped or discouraged. Methods: Using a sample of sexual offenders who initiated a sexual offence but were stopped or discouraged in action, which we refer to as noncompleted offences, we first examine which and how situational factors and internal states may

Objectives This study aims to parse out the effects of childhood head injury (HI) as an acquired neuropsychological deficit that impacts adolescent delinquent behavior, while accounting for other early-life risk factors and potential temporal ordering. Methods Nationally representative prospective data from the UK Millennium Cohort Study (MCS; N = 13,287) and a series of logistic and binomial regressions

Purpose Drawing on concepts from strain, feminist, and life-course perspectives, we investigate the proximal effects of strain on violence and serious drug use along with the distal “carryover” effects of childhood abuse among women. Methods Using 36 months of retrospective data collected from 778 incarcerated women, we estimate monthly within-person effects of four types of strain experienced in adulthood

Objectives Placing low-risk individuals into residential community-based correctional programs often results in minimal or iatrogenic impacts upon recidivism. Contamination through exposure to higher-risk program participants is a mechanism that has been used to explain these effects. This study empirically explores this phenomenon. Methods A series of survival models examine data from low-risk paroled

Objectives Examine the spatial relationship between firearm dealers and shootings in Atlanta. Methods We combine data from the Atlanta Police Department (APD), the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF), and the American Community Survey (ACS) to conduct a street network analysis from 2016 through 2018. We employ the Network Cross K Function to assess whether firearm dealers attract

Objectives Using the cumulative disadvantage theoretical framework, the current study explores whether school suspension and expulsion provide an indirect path through which race and ethnicity affect the likelihood of experiencing arrest, any incarceration, and long-term incarceration in adulthood. Methods To address these issues, we use data from Waves I, II, and IV of the Add Health survey (N = 14

Objectives We assess the proposed mechanisms outlined in Agnew’s General Theory of Crime and Delinquency about gender differences in crime and deviance (gender differences are due to differences between males and females in their standing on the life domains or differences in the effect of the life domains on the phenomenon among males and females) in accounting for sex differences in intimate partner

Objectives To investigate how peer dynamics, specifically interpersonal conversations between a potential offender and a peer, contemporaneous with a crime opportunity, influence perceptions of sanction certainty and social costs. Methods Data are analyzed from randomized experiments and hypothetical vignettes embedded within a nationwide, online survey (n = 1,275). Vignettes were presented for three

Objectives: Test the diffusion of responsibility hypothesis by examining associations between the presence, number, and role of co-offenders and adolescents’ perceived responsibility for criminal behavior. Methods: The study uses data from the Crossroads Study, a longitudinal study of 1,216 male adolescents who were arrested for the first time. A series of generalized ordered logistic regressions assess

Objectives: This study examines the association between a country's gun availability and firearm-related terrorism. Methods: Employing data from 140 countries, we assess the possible relationship between a country's rate of suicide by firearm and their count of terrorist attacks involving a firearm through a series of structural equation models. Results: Collectively, we find that there is a positive

Objectives: We examine the impacts of adolescent arrest on friendship networks. In particular, we extend labeling theory by testing hypotheses for three potential mechanisms of interpersonal exclusion related to the stigma of arrest: rejection, withdrawal, and homophily. Method: We use longitudinal data on 48 peer networks from PROSPER, a study of rural youth followed through middle and high school

Objectives: Building on the ecological model, multicontextual opportunity theory, and southern criminology, the study developed individual- and country-level indicators of opportunity to understand the experience of intimate partner violence (IPV) among married women in the Global South. Opportunity-related indicators considered the impact of globalization and variability across nations categorized

Objectives: Disqualifying conviction lists (DCLs) bar applicants with certain convictions within specified timeframes from employment. Using proposed federal legislative changes in the aviation sector as a case study, we examine whether convictions under the existing policy are associated with subsequent arrest. Then we consider the implications of proposed expansions—arrests instead of convictions

Objectives: An initial investigation by the Department of Justice (DOJ) found that the Newark Police Department (NPD) had engaged in a “pattern or practice” of constitutional violations with regard to stop and arrest practices, prompting the city to enter a consent decree. Methods: This study draws on official event-level data on FIs recorded by NPD officers (N = 50,322) and uses random effects panel

Objectives: This study seeks to understand how national origin and legal migration status of noncitizen defendants in federal criminal courts shape incarceration and sentence length decisions. Method: The authors use annual United States Sentencing Commission (USSC) Monitoring of Federal Criminal Sentences (MFCS) datasets (2011–2016) to examine the impact of defendant’s (1) national origin and (2)

Objectives: This study examines whether police behavior that signals higher quality of treatment or decision-making leads to higher perceived procedural justice. Methods: Analyses are based on data collected during police traffic controls of moped drivers in two Dutch cities over a period of six months. Police behavior was measured through systematic social observation (SSO), and data on perceived

Objectives: Drawing on the life course and social stress perspectives, this paper examines age variation in the mental health consequences of justice system involvement by assessing arrest, conviction, or incarceration as possible age-graded stressors that amplify harm at younger ages of involvement. Methods: Individual fixed effect regression models utilizing National Longitudinal Survey of Youth

Objective: Examine the place-based correlates of robbery activity displaced by a foot-patrol intervention in Newark, NJ. We use constructs from Crime Pattern and Social Disorganization theories to test hypotheses concerned with associations between the structure of the environment and the displacement of crime. Method: Robbery incidents were spatially joined to street segments to study micro-level

Objectives: Explanations of community violence traditionally reflect a social disorganization perspective, suggesting that neighborhood characteristics affect crime via the intervening mechanism of informal social control. Drawing on Agnew’s Macro Strain Theory [MST], we argue that neighborhood characteristics 1) also affect macro-level crime for reasons related to aggregated strain and 2) condition

Objectives: To invoke behavioral economics theories of ambiguity in the context of offender decision-making, and to test the impact of ambiguity in punishment certainty on offender decisions. Methods: We leverage a quasi-experimental condition among a sample of drunk driving arrestees that are tested for alcohol use and subject to mandatory brief incarceration for a violation. The treatment condition

Objective: (1) Examine associations of foster care exit type (e.g., reunification with birth family, adoption, guardianship/permanent relative placement, or emancipation from care) with risk of entry into state prison; (2) Examine racial disparities in those associations. Method: With data on over 10,000 Wisconsin youth who entered foster care in mid- to late-childhood, we present imprisonment rates

Objective: The purposes of this study are twofold. First, we explore how the accumulation, timing, and duration of ACEs influences youth delinquency. Second, because few studies to date have examined how the effect of ACEs may vary among different groups, we explore how these patterns may vary by gender. Methods: Analyses were based on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study (FFCW)

Objectives: Treatment by law enforcement officers, as representatives of the state that interact with individual citizens, may signal to individuals their political and social inclusion within society. Hispanics, as the largest minority group in the country that oftentimes must navigate two cultural identities, may be especially sensitive to the treatment of police. We test the group engagement model’s

Objectives: We extend prior research by considering how low self-control and peer delinquency may work together in a mediating process whereby low self-control increases association with delinquent peers, which in turn increases criminal offending. Further, we draw on gender crime research to suggest that the indirect effect of self-control on offending will be greater for boys than girls. Methods:

Objectives: Explore how judges and attorneys define, acquire, interpret (i.e., determine the accuracy and relevancy), and use research in their decision-making in delinquency cases. Methods: We conducted semi-structured interviews with 30 judges, 15 prosecutors, and 13 defense attorneys. We used stratified purposeful sampling, stratifying participants by region of the U.S. and urbanicity. Results:

Objectives: The processes driving gang entry and disengagement are central to classic and contemporary criminological research on gang involvement. Yet, the role of delinquent peer friendship networks in contouring gang membership has driven much of criminological research, with little empirical research devoted to understanding sibling influences on the gang career. Method: The study uses the National

Objectives: Evaluate the relationship between the opioid epidemic and homicide rates in the United States. Methods: A county-level cross-sectional analysis covering the period 1999 to 2015. The race-specific homicide rate and the race-specific opioid-related overdose death rate are regressed on demographic, social, and economic covariates. Results: The race-specific opioid-related overdose death rate

Objectives: In his 2014 Sutherland address to the American Society of Criminology, David Weisburd demonstrated that the share of crime that is accounted for by the most crime-ridden street segments is notably high and strikingly similar across cities, an empirical regularity referred to as the “law of crime concentration.” In the large literature that has since proliferated, there remains considerable

Objectives: Compared to homicide-only, homicide-suicide is understudied in the criminological literature. This study investigates the victim-offender relationship—one of the most well-established correlates of homicide-suicide—from a new angle. In addition to examining the familiarity/closeness of the victim-offender relationship, this study investigates whether the racial composition (interracial

Objectives: We identify the distinction between patience and self-control to improve specification of time preferences in offender decision-making. Methods: Data were drawn from in-depth qualitative interviews with 35 active auto thieves with high criminal propensity and focus on target selection. Results: Patience oscillates upward and downward, showing state instability among those with low trait

Objectives: Criminologists have long viewed morality as a critical element in offending. However, two factors limit the theoretical impact of prior work. First, no overarching framework for describing the nature and role of morality has been developed. Second, morality has been measured in a narrow manner as the extent to which individuals disapprove of particular acts of offending. To address these

Objectives: This study examines the influence of online peers who are not regularly seen in person by considering if online, pro-delinquent support is associated with self-reported delinquency independently of delinquent peers. Methods: Data come from a longitudinal, panel survey of two cohorts of middle and high school students located within six school districts (N = 1,177). Analyses first examine

Objectives: The recurring mass murder of students in schools has sparked an intense debate about how best to increase school safety. Because public opinion weighs heavily in this debate, we examine public views on how best to prevent school shootings. We theorize that three moral-altruistic factors are likely to be broadly relevant to public opinion on school safety policies: moral intuitions about

Objectives: Reentry experiences for the 600,000 people released annually from federal and state prisons differ vastly. We contend that gangs, which rose to prominence alongside mass incarceration, are an overlooked source of variation in reentry experiences. Drawing on precepts from the street gang literature, we test whether patterns of recidivism differ by official and survey measures of current

Objectives: This study examines gang group processes on the digital street to understand if gang processes in the online environment mimic those on geographic street corners. Specifically, this paper examines what conditions influence whether gangs interact negatively or positively in online spaces and how online interactions relate to geographic proximity of gangs. Methods: This study uses digital

Objectives: Prior research has documented that residential mobility has the potential to trigger both criminal persistence and desistance, with frequent moving often predicting persistence and long-distance moving predicting desistance. However, less work has considered this possibility during the transition to adulthood. To address this shortcoming, we assessed the effects of different residential

Objectives: To determine whether criminogenic “edges,” as defined by crime pattern theory, exist at points of sharp contrast of socioeconomic status (SES). Methods: The study uses a quasi-experimental design with pattern matching logic. A series of negative binomial regression models separately examine five different crimes with an economic incentive as dependent variables, and five crimes without

Objectives: This article tests two theoretical ideas: (1) that social concerns about particular “dangerous classes” of offenders shift over time to influence court sanctioning practices and (2) that, since the 1990s, sex offenders in particular came to be viewed by courts as one such “dangerous class.” Methods: We examine sanctioning trends in Florida and compare punishment of sex offenders in earlier

Objectives: We investigate path dependence and barriers to the acceptance and implementation of reform-minded prosecution, which focuses on reducing unnecessary incarceration, promoting fairness, engaging with the community, and improving accountability in the criminal justice system. Method: Using semistructured interviews with 47 prosecutors in two Florida jurisdictions, both with newly elected state

Objectives: This study explores the nexus between low self-control and legal cynicism among a recent sample of at-risk youth while accounting for various features of direct and vicarious police stops. Methods: Analyses are based on data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, which employs a national sample of urban-born, at-risk youth. Results: A uniquely potent association between low

Objectives: To assess whether the relationship between legitimacy and police empowerment is sensitive to the operationalization of legitimacy, and whether the effects of legitimacy and its components on empowerment are invariant. Empowerment is examined in the context of police militarization—public support for the discretionary use of surplus military equipment by law enforcement. Method: Using a

Objectives: This study evaluates the relationship between employment and crime through a holistic evaluation of both treatment and treatment effect heterogeneity. Methods: This study implements a perceptual measure of job quality (job satisfaction) and hybrid fixed effects models among a sample of high-risk adults. Analyses also consider the robustness of findings across alternative operationalizations

Objectives: There is a growing body of macro-level studies examining hate crime. These studies however largely focus on ethnoracial hate crime, leading to a relative dearth of research investigating the etiology of anti-Jewish hate crime. The current study seeks to fill this gap by conducting a community-level analysis of anti-Jewish hate crime in New York City. Methods: Using data from the New York

Objectives: We provide new insights about the role of gender, race, and place in perceived risk and fear of crime and discuss the possible boundaries of the shadow of sexual assault thesis, which attributes women’s higher levels of fear to their underlying fear of rape across a variety of ecological contexts. Method: Analyses are based on data from in-depth qualitative interviews with 34 undergraduates

Objectives: Examine the relationships among structural disadvantage, friendship network age composition, and violent offending by investigating the contextual and individual etiology of affiliating with older friends and exploring the mechanisms that link friendship network age composition to violent offending. Method: Hierarchical linear models analyze 8,481 respondents distributed across 1,485 census

Objective: Examine the degree to which adult male social ties with neighborhood youth, or intergenerational ties, increase the perceived willingness of residents to engage in the informal social control of children. Method: Survey data from approximately 2,200 residents in 64 neighborhoods along with neighborhood census variables are used to examine the effects of male intergenerational social ties

Objectives: This article examines the influence of social context on punishment decisions. To this end, we present a theoretical framework to identify outcomes that can occur when police and probation officers work in schools. Method: The proposed framework draws on organizational theory as well as scholarship on school discipline and punishment and the effects of placing officers in schools. It also

Objectives: This study tests whether mafias, as archetypical criminal organizations that exert control over local communities, protect their territories against ordinary criminality. Our hypothesis is that mafias have both the incentives and the capacities to supply security governance to specific territories. This is a distinctive feature of mafias that deserves to be considered. Method: To understand

Objectives: Growing evidence indicates that criminologists should incorporate emotional states, such as fear, into standard deterrence frameworks. Within the fear of crime literature, there is empirical support for the “sensitivity to risk” model, which posits perceived victimization control and severity drive certainty perceptions, and these cognitions, in turn, drive fear of crime. We apply this

Objectives: To assess the impact of positive credentials on perceptions of individuals with criminal records and whether the effects of credentials differ by the type of conviction or the criminal record holder’s race. Methods: We present fictional job applicant details to a nationwide survey of American adults (n = 5,822) using a factorial design. We manipulate whether the job applicant is Black or

Objectives: To determine whether different conceptions (Populist, Patrician) and operationalizations of “white-collar crime” produce different substantive conclusions, using the applied case of sentencing in federal criminal court. Method: Federal Justice Statistics Program data are used to identify white-collar and comparable crimes referred for prosecution in 2009 to 2011 that were also sentenced

Objectives: Research on criminal continuity and change has traditionally focused on elements of the adult life course (e.g., marriage and employment); however, recent social and economic changes suggest the need to consider a broader range of factors. In addition, researchers have increasingly recognized the importance of identity changes in the desistance process. Methods: Using five waves of structured

Objectives: We argue that the reasons court actors conform to or depart from sentencing guideline recommendations likely vary depending on whether the decision involves an alternative sanction or incarceration and that these reasons may have consequences for ethnoracial disparities in the sentencing of defendants and how these disparities are understood. Method: We use recent (2012–2016) Pennsylvania

Objectives: Democratic policing involves an ongoing dialogue between officers and citizens about what it means to wield legitimate authority. Most of the criminological literature on police legitimacy has focused on citizens’ perceptions of this dialogue—that is, audience legitimacy. Consequently, we know little about how officers perceive their legitimacy in the eyes of the public and the antecedents