Digital Commons Network^™

Is Emerging Adulthood Influencing Moffitt’S Developmental Taxonomy? Adding The “Prolonged” Adolescent Offender, Christopher Salvatore, Travis A. Taniguchi, Wayne Welsh

Christopher Salvatore

The study of offender trajectories has been a prolific area of criminological research. However, few studies have incorporated the influence of emerging adulthood, a recently identified stage of the life course, on offending trajectories. The present study addressed this shortcoming by introducing the "prolonged adolescent" offender, a low-level offender between the ages of 18 and 25 that has failed to successfully transition into adult social roles. A theoretical background based on prior research in life-course criminology and emerging adulthood is presented. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health analyses examined the relationship between indicators of traditional turning …

De-Policing, Stephen Rushin, Griffin Sims Edwards

Stephen Rushin

Critics have long claimed that when the law regulates police behavior it inadvertently reduces officer aggressiveness, thereby increasing crime. This hypothesis has taken on new significance in recent years as prominent politicians and law enforcement leaders have argued that increased oversight of police officers in the wake of the events in Ferguson, Missouri has led to an increase in national crime rates. Using a panel of American law enforcement agencies and difference-in-difference regression analyses, this Article tests whether the introduction of public scrutiny or external regulation is associated with changes in crime rates. To do this, this Article relies on …

Law, Responsibility, And The Brain, Owen D. Jones, Hakwan C. Lau, Dean Mobbs, Christopher D. Frith

Owen Jones

This article addresses new developments in neuroscience, and their implications for law. It explores, for example, the relationships between brain injury and violence, as well as the connections between mental disorders and criminal behaviors. It discusses a variety of issues surrounding brain fingerprinting, the use of brain scans for lie detection, and concerns about free will. It considers the possible uses for, and legal implications of, brain-imaging technology. And it also identifies six essential limits on the use of brain imaging in courtroom procedures.

Behavioral Genetics And Crime, In Context, Owen D. Jones

Owen Jones

This Article provides an introduction to some of the key issues at the intersection of behavioral genetics and crime.

It provides, among other things, an overview of the emerging points of consensus, scientifically, on what behavioral genetics can and cannot tell us about criminal behavior. It also discusses a variety of important implications (as well as complexities) of attempting to use insights of behavioral genetics in legal contexts.

The Influence Of Religion On The Criminal Behavior Of Emerging Adults, Christopher Salvatore, Gabriel Rubin

Gabriel Rubin

Recent generations of young adults are experiencing a new life course stage: emerging adulthood. During this ‘new’ stage of the life course, traditional social bonds and turning points may not be present, may be delayed, or may not operate in the same manner as they have for prior generations. One such bond, religion, is examined here. Focusing on the United States, emerging adulthood is investigated as a distinct stage of the life course. The criminality of emerging adults is presented, a theoretical examination of the relationship between religion and crime is provided, the role of religion in emerging adults’ lives …

Citizenship And Severity: Recent Immigration Reforms And The New Penology, Teresa A. Miller

Teresa A. Miller

Over the past twenty years, scholars of criminal law, criminology and criminal punishment have documented a transformation in the practices, objectives, and institutional arrangements underlying a range of criminal justice system functions that are at the heart of penal modernism. In contrast to the preceding eighty years of criminal justice practices that were progressively more modern in their belief in the rationality of the criminal offender and their concern for enhancing civilization through rehabilitative responses to criminality, these scholars note that since the mid-198''0s the relatively settled assumptions about the framework that shaped criminal justice and penal practices for nearly …

A New Look At Neo-Liberal Economic Policies And The Criminalization Of Undocumented Migration, Teresa A. Miller

Teresa A. Miller

This paper situates the current “crisis” surrounding the arrival and continued presence of undocumented immigrants in the United States within penological trends that have taken root in American law over the past thirty years. It positions the shift from more benevolent to the increasingly harsh legal treatment of undocumented immigrants as the continuation of a succession of legal reforms criminalizing immigrants, and governing immigration through crime. By charting the increasing salience of crime in public perceptions of undocumented immigrants, and comparing the immediately preceding criminal stigmatization of so-called “criminal aliens”, this paper exposes current severity toward undocumented immigrants as consistent …

Reconsidering Incarceration: New Directions For Reducing Crime, Don Stemen

Don Stemen

Little empirical study had been done to confirm or refute the effectiveness of incarceration in reducing crime rates when America began its historic reliance on prisons in the 1970s. Today, conversely, policymakers are faced with a large, complex, and sometimes contradictory body of research. This paper seeks to help officials make sense of this information and offers an up-to-date understanding of what works best. It also examines research on several of the other factors that might be developed as part of an expanded notion of public safety. Informed by this more inclusive understanding of current research, it suggests that effective …

Lgbt Identity And Crime, Jordan Woods

Jordan Blair Woods

Law Enforcement And Criminal Law Decisions, Erwin Chemerinsky

Erwin Chemerinsky

No abstract provided.

Immigration, Employment Opportunities, And Criminal Behavior, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens, Sarah Bohn

Matthew Freedman

Immigration, Employment Opportunities, And Criminal Behavior [Online Appendix], Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens, Sarah Bohn

Matthew Freedman

Police Integrity Lost Podcast Episode 28: Police Shootings: Are Officers Ever Convicted?, Philip M. Stinson

Philip M Stinson

This episode of the Police Integrity Lost podcast features an interview of Bowling Green State University professor Phil Stinson that aired live January 24, 2016, on the Nick Taliaferro Show on WURD 900AM Radio in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The Criminalisation Of The Illicit Trade In Cultural Property, Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak

This chapter considers the criminalisation of illicit traffic of cultural objects in international law and its impact for domestic law. The regulation of the trade in cultural objects has long been resisted in so-called market States, which host major auction houses and art and antiquities dealers. The lobbying was particularly directed against the enforcement of foreign public laws covering export controls in domestic courts. However, the Security Council’s adoption of resolutions that condemned the pillage of Iraqi and Syrian cultural sites has transformed this debate. These resolutions enunciate an obligation to prosecute in domestic courts which is covers all UN …

Crime, Institutions And Sector-Specific Fdi In Latin America, Luisa Blanco, Isabel Ruiz, W. Charles Sawyer, Rossitza Wooster

Luisa Blanco

In this article, we explore how crime and institutions affect the flow of capital in the form of foreign direct investment (FDI) to Latin American and Caribbean countries in the primary, secondary and tertiary sectors during the 1996-2010 period. We use three different variables related to violent crime: homicides, crime victimization, and an index of organized crime. We find that there is a correlation between the institutional and crime variables, where the significance of institutional variables tends to disappear when the crime variables are added to the model. We find that higher crime victimization and organized crime are associated with …

The Criminal Justice Response To Policy Interventions: Evidence From Immigration Reform, Sarah Bohn, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens

Matthew Freedman

Interracial Violence, Minority Threat And Police Use Of Lethal Force: A Panel Analysis Of U.S. Cities From 1980 To 2000., Stephanie L. Kent, David Jacobs

Stephanie Kent

In sum, the evidence suggests that unnecessary police killings decrease after departments institute increased restrictions yet the likelihood of increases in restrictions is based on demands from the most politically powerful segments of society. In order to test whether changes in police killings are determined in part through the differences in 2 political power based on the superimposition of race and class, political explanations at the city level should be considered. A review of previous studies suggests that there are two broad city level explanations that influence the likelihood that police will use deadly force against citizens: the political or …

Co-Occurring Substance Use Disorder And Mental Illness In Criminal Offenders, Jayme M. Reisler

Jayme M Reisler

The high rate of comorbid substance use disorder and other mental illness (“dual diagnosis”) poses an enormous obstacle to public policy and sentencing in criminal cases. It is estimated that almost half of all Federal, State, and jail inmates suffer from dual diagnosis – a significantly higher prevalence than in the general population. Yet such inmates lack access to proper and effective treatments for their conditions. Several etiological theories have been put forth to explain the occurrence of dual diagnosis in general. However, virtually no studies have explored possible etiological reasons for the higher prevalence of dual diagnosis specifically in …

Crime And Punishment, A Global Concern: Who Does It Best And Does Isolation Really Work?, Melanie M. Reid

Melanie M. Reid

Developmental Victimology: Estimating Group Victimization Trajectories In The Age-Victimization Curve, Whitney Decamp, Heather Zaykowski

Whitney DeCamp

Why So Many Questions? Measurement Issues And The Attitudinal Self-Control Scale, Whitney Decamp

Whitney DeCamp

Crime News: Does Quantity Matter?, Rocky Dailey

Rocky Dailey

Relationship Between Race And Ethnicity And Forensic Clinical Triage Dispositions, Debra Pinals, Ira Packer, William Fisher, Kristen Roy-Bujnowski

Ira K Packer

OBJECTIVE: Racial and ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system have been widely reported, as have racial and ethnic disparities in diagnoses and certain aspects of clinical management. This study examined the association between race and ethnicity and dispositions for pretrial defendants who were referred for forensic mental health evaluations. METHODS: Available data were reviewed for all defendants in Massachusetts who were referred to a Massachusetts court clinic from 1994 to 2001 for a screening evaluation of their competence to stand trial, their criminal responsibility, or both. Logistic regression models were developed to assess the relationship between defendants' race and …

Graffiti Offenders' Patterns Of Desistance From, And Persistence In, Crime: New Insights Into Reducing Recidivist Offending, Myra Taylor, Umneea Khan

Myra F Taylor

While graffiti is a gateway crime towards more serious criminal offending, little is known about graffitists' patterns of desistance from, and persistence in, crime. This paper addresses this knowledge shortfall through an examination of the Western Australian Police Information Management System (IMS) database for three age-groups (i.e. preteens, adolescents, adults) and three categories of graffiti offenders (Early Desisters, Limited Persisters, Chronic Persisters). Descriptive and chi-squared statistics reveal that: i) nearly three-quarters of all of the 667 preteen, adolescent and adult graffiti offenders desisted from further offending after their first or second contact with police; ii) the mainly adolescent cohort of …

Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens

Matthew Freedman

We exploit a sudden shock to demand for a subset of low-wage workers generated by the 2005 Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) program in San Antonio, Texas to identify the effects of localized economic development on crime. We use a difference-in-difference methodology that takes advantage of variation in BRAC’s impact over time and across neighborhoods. We find that appropriative criminal behavior increases in neighborhoods where a fraction of residents experienced increases in earnings. This effect is driven by residents who were unlikely to be BRAC beneficiaries, implying that criminal opportunities are important in explaining patterns of crime.

Forthcoming in the …

Crime And Economic Growth In Developing Countries: Evidence From Pakistan, Arsalan Ahmad, Sharafat Ali, Najid Ahmad

Sharafat Ali

This study investigates the impact of crime on economic growth of Pakistan by using time series data from 1980 to 2011. Augmented Dickey Fuller (ADF) test is applied to check the stationary of variables. It is hypothesized that increase in crime leads to less economic growth in Pakistan. Autoregressive Distributive lag (ARDL) to cointegration is used to find short and long run relationship between crime and Economic growth. Results reveal that crime has negative and significant impact on economic growth in the long run, whereas in short run the effect of crime on economic growth is negative but insignificant. ECM …

Race And Crime In Canada And The Usa, Sharlette A. Kellum

Dr. Sharlette A. Kellum-Gilbert

The author of this article is black. Who cares? Apparently, millions do. What would happen if the use of racial adjectives becomes extinct? How would it affect the criminal justice statistical classification system? How would the auditors of racial crime statistics categorize their arguments? Racial categories are outdated and a cause for continuous segregation. Many segments of society suffer, because of the persistent, “us vs. we” mind-numbing statistical jargon. Some use racial classifications to heighten their arguments for racial disparities, while others use them to tear down an entire group of people. The word “race” causes some to feel as …

Crime Profiling Report: Examining Child Homicide, Edson Kieu

Edson Kieu

No abstract provided.

Catholic Schools, Charter Schools, And Urban Neighborhoods, Margaret F. Brinig, Nicole Stelle Garnett

Margaret F Brinig

This paper addresses implications for urban neighborhoods of two dramatic shifts in the American educational landscape: (1) the rapid disappearance of Catholic schools from urban neighborhoods, and (2) the rise of charter schools. In previous studies, we linked Catholic school closures to increased disorder and crime, and decreased social cohesion, in Chicago neighborhoods. This paper turns to two questions unanswered in our previous investigations. First, because we focused exclusively on school closures in our previous studies, we were uncertain whether our results reflected the work that open Catholic schools do as neighborhood institutions or whether we were finding a “loss …

Retribution: The Central Aim Of Punishment, Gerard V. Bradley

Gerard V. Bradley

When I worked for the Manhattan District Attorney's Office in the early 1980s, criminal sentences were consistently and dramatically too lenient. Though those years marked the ebb tide for the rehabilitative ideal of punishment and indeterminate "zip-to-ten" sentences, only career felons and those convicted of the most serious crimes were candidates for the sentences they justly deserved. Hamstrung by apparently silly rules of constitutional etiquette and bureaucratic sclerosis, the police were eclipsed in the mind of the public by the cold-blooded Everyman, bound only by the law of the jungle and some elusive sense of justice. Ultimately, popular demand required …