Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Criminology Commons

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

Articles 1 - 5 of 5

Full-Text Articles in Criminology

Crime In Game Theoretic Models: An Exploration Of The Rational Criminal In A Variety Of Frameworks, Benjamin A. Chalmers May 2014

Crime In Game Theoretic Models: An Exploration Of The Rational Criminal In A Variety Of Frameworks, Benjamin A. Chalmers

Student Scholarship

There is as much contention over the cause of crime as there is about how to solve it, and the two issues are inextricable from one another. While the idea of studying such a deeply social and humanistic issue through the ‘cold lens’ of mathematics may seem unorthodox or even unproductive to the layperson, the practice has become commonplace since Gary Becker’s introduction of the ‘rational criminal’ model in his paper Crime and Punishment: An Economic Approach in 1968. The rational criminal model is a method of explaining the actions of a criminal not by attributing them to an inherent …


Home Foreclosures And Neighborhood Crime Dynamics, Sonya Williams, George Galster, Nandita Verma Apr 2014

Home Foreclosures And Neighborhood Crime Dynamics, Sonya Williams, George Galster, Nandita Verma

Urban Studies and Planning Faculty Research Publications

We advance scholarship related to home foreclosures and neighborhood crime by employing Granger causality tests and multilevel growth modeling with annual data from Chicago neighborhoods over the 1998-2009 period. We find that completed foreclosures temporally lead property crime and not vice versa. More completed foreclosures during a year both increase the level of property crime and slow its decline subsequently. This relationship is strongest in higher-income, predominantly renter-occupied neighborhoods, contrary to the conventional wisdom. We did not find unambiguous, uni-directional causation in the case of violent crime and when filed foreclosures were analyzed.


Forfeiture Of Illegal Gains, Attempts And Implied Risk Preferences, Jonathan Klick, Murat C. Mungan Jan 2014

Forfeiture Of Illegal Gains, Attempts And Implied Risk Preferences, Jonathan Klick, Murat C. Mungan

All Faculty Scholarship

In the law enforcement literature there is a presumption—supported by some experimental and econometric evidence—that criminals are more responsive to increases in the certainty than the severity of punishment. Under a general set of assumptions, this implies that criminals are risk seeking. We show that this implication is no longer valid when forfeiture of illegal gains and the possibility of unsuccessful attempts are considered. Therefore, when drawing inferences concerning offenders’ attitudes toward risk based on their responses to various punishment schemes, special attention must be paid to whether and to what extent offenders’ illegal gains can be forfeited and whether …


Exploring The Effects Of Ex-Prisoner Reentry On Structural Factors In Disorganized Communities: Implications For Leadership Practice, G. Michael Davis Jan 2014

Exploring The Effects Of Ex-Prisoner Reentry On Structural Factors In Disorganized Communities: Implications For Leadership Practice, G. Michael Davis

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to explore the way(s) in which the disproportionate return of ex-prisoners to socially and economically disadvantaged communities impact(s) specific community structural factors identified in the study. After three decades of withstanding the enduring effects of the mass incarceration, communities stand at the edge of a new era. Economic realities, and the failure of policies designed to deter crime through imprisonment are rapidly ushering in an era of mass prisoner reentry. The complexity of the challenges surrounding the successful integration of offenders to communities requires a new leadership paradigm for justice leaders. This study posits …


Crime And Natural Resource Booms: Evidence From Unconventional Natural Gas Production, Timothy M. Komarek Jan 2014

Crime And Natural Resource Booms: Evidence From Unconventional Natural Gas Production, Timothy M. Komarek

Economics Faculty Publications

The USA has experienced a sudden expansion of oil and natural gas production due to the combination of hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling. The energy extraction boom has had many localized impacts, most notably in areas with substantial shale gas reserves. This paper exploits a natural experiment in the Marcellus region to examine one channel of the so-called resource curse, the effect of resource extraction on local crime. The results show that areas experiencing a natural gas extraction boom suffer an increase in overall violent crimes, while property crimes remain similar to non-boom areas. Furthermore, the violent crime increase appears …