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Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily G. Owens Apr 2016

Your Friends And Neighbors: Localized Economic Development And Criminal Activity, Matthew Freedman, Emily G. 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-differences 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 …

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The Criminal Justice Response To Policy Interventions: Evidence From Immigration Reform, Sarah Bohn, Matthew Freedman, Emily Owens May 2015

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

Matthew Freedman

Changes in the treatment of individuals by the criminal justice system following a policy intervention may bias estimates of the effects of the intervention on underlying criminal activity. We explore the importance of such changes in the context of the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA). Using administrative data from San Antonio, Texas, we examine variation across neighborhoods and ethnicities in police arrests and in the rate at which those arrests are prosecuted. We find that changes in police behavior around IRCA confound estimates of the effects of the policy and its restrictions on employment on criminal activity.

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Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore Aug 2012

Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …

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Living Off Crime, Kenneth Tunnell Dec 2005

Living Off Crime, Kenneth Tunnell

Kenneth Tunnell

A sociological exploration of highly active property offenders who commit themselves to careers in serious property crimes, such as burglary and armed robbery. This book takes the unique approach of situating these criminal careers within the fundamental sociological concepts of social class, criminal subcultures, and consciousness. Kenneth D. Tunnell brings class back into the dialogue of property crime among the highly criminally active and economically marginalized, and gives considerable treatment to the subcultural values of this group. The book does not ignore the politics of repetitive property offenders' behaviours; rather, it describes their actions as political, yet absent of politicized …

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