Criminology Commons^™

The Nation's Two Measures Of Homicide, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Duren Banks, Michael Planty, Lynn Langton, Margaret Warner

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The United States uses two national data collection systems to track detailed information on homicides: the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Supplementary Homicide Reports and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Fatal Injury Reports. Both measures were developed as part of a federal effort to improve national statistical systems in the early twentieth century and have gone through a number of changes since then to improve their consistency and coverage. Each program provides valuable information on the nature, trends, and patterns of homicides in the United States. Although the two measures generally capture information on the same types of events, …

Race, Poverty, And The Traffic Ticket Cycle Exploring The Situational Context Of The Application Of Police Discretion, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Purpose – Through systematic observation of police decision-making behavior, the aim of this paper is to investigate what factors differentiate between citizens who receive a warning vs a ticket from police and whether the influence of those factors varies by race. The paper also explores the context of those decisions for both blacks and whites to further the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of any observed differences in the likelihood of receiving a ticket vs a warning. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected during police ridealongs conducted in a sample of cities within Cuyahoga County, Ohio. A total of 140 ridealongs …

Racial Residential Segregation And Social Control: A Panel Study Of The Variation In Police Strength Across U.S Cities, 1980–2010, Stephanie L. Kent, Jason T. Carmichael

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Despite a great deal of theoretical and empirical attention given to racial residential segregation and its influence on a number of social problems in the United States, few scholars have examined the role that this persistent form of racial inequality plays in shaping the magnitude of formal social control efforts. Our study examines this relationship by assessing the potential influence that the isolation of minorities may have on efforts to control crime in urban centers across the United States. Using a pooled time-series regression technique well suited for the analysis of aggregate, longitudinal data, we assess the potential influence of …

Gender, Social Bond, And Academic Cheating In Japan, Emiko Kobayashi, Miyuki Fukushima

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

There is evidence that females are less likely to cheat than males on college campuses. A frequently offered but still untested explanation is that females, with a stronger sense of responsibility for the maintenance of social relationships, tend to develop a stronger bond to a conventional society—a key explanatory concept in Hirschi’s (1969) social control theory. With academic cheating as the dependent variable, we test the hypotheses that the four elements of social bond are the intervening variables linking gender to such dishonesty among Japanese students who, due to their stronger orientation toward masculinity on Hofstede’s (1980) scale of gender …

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental And Political Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work.Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of the …

Killings Of Police In U.S. Cities Since 1980: An Examination Of Environmental Andpolitical Explanations, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Most research on killings of police in urban areas attempted to link lethal violence against officers to the violence and disorder in the communities they work. Yet support for this relationship is inconsistent. Fewer studies considered whether local political arrangements affect killings of police. This study attempts to remedy this gap by using recent data to investigate the relationship between the political conditions of large U.S. cities and the number of homicides of police officers in the line of duty in the years 1980, 1990, and 2000. Negative binomial regression analyses suggest that racial income inequality and the size of …

Homicides Clearances An Analysis Of Arrest Versus Exceptional Outcomes, John P. Jarvis, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

A number of studies in the homicide clearance literature combine arrest and exceptional clearances into a single category. This study addresses the question of whether these divergent homicide case outcomes are influenced differently by various aspects of the case. Using National Incident-Based Reporting System data on homicides from 1996 to 2002, the authors analyze logistic regression models of cases cleared by arrest and exceptionally cleared. Our results show that although certain factors have similar influences on both arrest and exceptional clearances, victim gender, offender race, weapon use, victim/offender relationship, and circumstances have differing impacts on case outcomes. The …

The Importance Of Responsivity Factors In Predicting Reductions In Antisocial Attitudes And Cognitive Distortions Among Adult Male Offenders, Dana Jones Hubbard, Jennifer Pealer

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The research has demonstrated that cognitive-behavioral treatment programs for offenders work to reduce recidivism. One reason these programs have been found to be effective is that they target one of the “number one” predictors of crime, antisocial attitudes and values. Unfortunately, these programs may not “work” for all offenders. The literature suggests that personal characteristics of offenders, although not directly related to recidivism, may in fact interfere or hinder the ability for the program to “work.” This is referred to in the literature as the “responsivity principle.” This study seeks to understand the role that personal or responsivity characteristics of …

Moving Ahead: Five Essential Elements For Working Effectively With Girls, Betsy Mattews, Dana Jones Hubbard

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Quite a bit of literature these days addresses what is believed to be an increase in the frequency and severity of girls' problem behaviors and the need for gender-responsive treatment. The extent to which this literature has been translated into juvenile justice practices, however, appears limited by several factors. This article briefly discusses these impediments, and offers suggestions for five essential elements that reflect the current state of knowledge regarding effective intervention with girls involved in the juvenile justice system.

The Conjunctive Analysis Of Case Configurations: An Exploratory Method For Discrete Multivariate Analyses Of Crime Data, Terance D. Miethe, Timothy C. Hart, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Derived from comparative approaches in both qualitative and quantitative research, the current study describes a simple exploratory technique for the multivariate analysis of categorical data. This technique is referred to as the conjunctive analysis of case configurations. After describing the logic and underlying assumptions of this conjunctive method, it is applied and illustrated in the study of the federal sentencing of drug offenders. The relative value of this conjunctive approach for purposes of exploratory data analysis and its overall utility as a method for confirmatory research are also discussed.

Clearing Murders: Is It About Time?, Wendy C. Regoeczi, John P. Jarvis, Marc Riedel

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This study uses data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to explore the impact of model selection on determining the association of victim-level and incident-level factors to the likelihood of homicide clearance. We compare both traditional operationalizations of clearance rates as well as the time to clearance as dependent variables in examinations of correlates of solvability in homicide cases. Using a different approach than most other analyses of this problem, the results affirm the consistency of some effects but also reveal some important differences when the aspect of time is factored into the model. Implications for analyses of efficiency …

Air Pollution, Economic Development Of Communities, And Health Status Among The Elderly In Urban China., Rongjun Sun, Danan Gu

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

In Western societies, the impact of air pollution on residents' health is higher in less wealthy communities. However, it is not clear whether such an interaction effect applies to developing countries. The authors examine how the level of community development modifies the impact of air pollution on health outcomes of the Chinese elderly using data from the third wave of the Chinese Longitudinal Health Longevity Survey in 2002, which includes 7,358 elderly residents aged 65 or more years from 735 districts in 171 cities. The results show that, compared with a 1-point increase in the air pollution index in urban …

The Functions Of The Social Bond, James J. Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Travis Hirschi's control or social bonding theory argues that those persons who have strong and abiding attachments to conventional society (in the form of attachments, involvement, investment, and belief) are less likely to deviate than persons who have weak or shallow bonds. Later, Gottfredson and Hirschi moved away from the social bond as the primary factor in deviance, and toward an emphasis on self-control. In short, low self-control is associated with higher levels of deviance and criminality irrespective of the strength or weakness of one's social bonds. In this article I argue that Talcott Parsons' AGIL schema easily incorporates Hirschi's …

Who Survives On Death Row? An Individual And Contextual Analysis, David Jacobs, Jason T. Carmichael, Zhenchao Qian, Stephanie L. Kent

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

What are the relationships between death row offender attributes, social arrangements, and executions? Partly because public officials control executions, theorists view this sanction as intrinsically political. Although the literature has focused on offender attributes that lead to death sentences, the post-sentencing stage is at least as important. States differ sharply in their willingness to execute and less than 10 percent of those given a death sentence are executed. To correct the resulting problems with censored data, this study uses a discrete-time event history analysis to detect the individual and state-level contextual factors that shape execution probabilities. The findings show that …

Vigilantism, Current Racial Threat, And Death Sentences, David Jacobs, Stephanie L. Kent, Jason T. Carmichael

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Capital punishment is the most severe punishment, yet little is known about the social conditions that lead to death sentences. Racial threat explanations imply that this sanction will be imposed more often in jurisdictions with larger minority populations, but some scholars suggest that a tradition of vigilante violence leads to increased death sentences. This study tests the combined explanatory power of both accounts by assessing statistical interactions between past lynchings and the recent percentage of African Americans after political conditions and other plausible effects are held constant. Findings from count models based on different samples, data, and estimators suggest that …

Murder Clearance Rates: Guest Editors' Introduction, John P. Jarvis, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

The journal Homicide Studies has long been devoted to empirical studies addressing issues pertinent to the study of homicide and violence. Although a large variety of theoretical papers, research summaries, and public policy reviews of issues concerning homicide and violence have been explored in the journal over the past 10 years, at least one issue has garnered relatively little attention—the law enforcement response to homicide. This special issue attempts to begin filling this gap in the literature.

A Case-By-Case Comparison Of The Classification Of Law Enforcement And Vital Statistics Data On Homicide, Marc Riedel, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This study uses data from the California Linked Homicide File as a basis for evaluating the validity and reliability of homicide data. Case-by-case comparisons of variables reported by both agencies indicate that agreement between law enforcement and vital statistics data is highest with classifying homicides and victim gender and race and lowest with classifying victim age, manslaughters, and police justifiable homicides. The findings from a multilevel analysis examining what types of cases are unable to be linked over the two data-collection systems reveal that homicides involving Hispanic victims, weapons other than handguns, and family members other than intimate partners and …

Missing Data In Homicide Research, Marc Riedel, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This article is an introduction to the special issue of Homicide Studies on missing data. The first section is an overview of the status of missing data approaches in homicide research. It begins by describing the importance of missing data estimation in homicide. This is followed by a discussion of missing data mechanisms, complete case analysis, imputation and weighting, and model-based procedures. The second section is a brief description of each of the articles in this issue. The conclusion describes the myth associated with imputing missing data, the use of missing data approaches in public records, the Supreme Court case …

Social Divisions And Coercive Control In Advanced Societies: Law Enforcement Strength In Eleven Nations From 1975 To 1994., Stephanie L. Kent, David Jacobs

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Conflict theory suggests that economic stratification poses a threat to order, so we should expect increased inequality to lead to a greater capacity for coercive control. The police are the primary agency that uses force to preserve order, yet we know little about the effects of economic divisions on police size in advanced nations besides the United States. The generality of findings based on a fixed-effects panel design applied to 11 developed nations should provide increased insight about how coercion is used to preserve domestic order. Other social divisions that should matter include minority presence and unemployment. With economic development, …

Taking On The Unknown: A Qualitative Comparative Analysis Of Unknown Relationship Homicides, Wendy C. Regoeczi, Terance D. Miethe

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Aside from noting the dramatic rise in their numbers, homicides with unknown victim/offender relationships have attracted little research attention. This study uses Qualitative Comparative Analysis and data from the Supplementary Homicide Reports for 1976 through 1998 to examine the nature of unknown relationship homicides and changes in their structure over time. The findings indicate that a large number of unknown relationship cases are contained within a few prevalent homicide situations while also occurring in a diverse array of less common situations. The situational context of unknown homicides exhibits considerable change over time, shifting from the killing of older White males …

The Application Of Missing Data Estimation Models To The Problem Of Unknown Victim/Offender Relationships In Homicide Cases., Wendy C. Regoeczi, Marc Riedel

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Homicide cases suffer from substantial levels of missing data, a problem largely ignored by criminological researchers. The present research seeks to address this problem by imputing values for unknown victim/offender relationships using the EM algorithm. The analysis is carried out first using homicide data from the Los Angeles Police Department (1994-1998), and then compared with imputations using homicide data for Chicago (1991-1995), using a variety of predictor variables to assess the extent to which they influence the assignment of cases to the various relationship categories. The findings indicate that, contrary to popular belief, many of the unknown cases likely involve …

Gouldner's Tragic Vision, James Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Classical literature, specifically ancient Greek philosophy and especially the study of Greek tragedy, is helpful in tracing out and understanding the transitions Alvin Gouldner made during his career as a sociologist. This article argues that a latent tragic orientation or vision existed during Gouldner's early career as a standout in the field of industrial sociology and that this tragic vision became manifest around 1962 as Gouldner was developing more and more strident denunciations of establishment sociology. This case study of Gouldner's career teaches a valuable lesson about the importance of the tragic vision in helping sociologists to understand the limitations …

Alvin W. Gouldner And Industrial Sociology At Columbia University, James Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Alvin W Gouldner (1920-1980) was a prolific sociologist of the post-World War II era

who spent the early part of his career (the 1950s) in the field of industrial sociology. A

case study of Gouldner's early life and career is useful insofar as it intertwines with the

development of industrial sociology as a distinct subfield within sociology. Through this

analysis we are also better able to understand how and in what ways a burgeoning

organizational studies program developed at Columbia University during the 1940s. This

analysis of the historical and cultural contexts within which Gouldner came to prominence

as an …

Adolescent Violent Victimization And Offending: Assessing The Extent Of The Link, Wendy C. Regoeczi

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This article discusses the association between adolescent violent victimization and offending. A key issue in understanding both criminal offending and victimization concerns victim-offender relationships. Research on crime, particularly violent offenses, requires examining the interpersonal relationships which exist among victims and offenders. Nevertheless, those studies which disaggregate crime rates by victim-offender relationships have essentially confined their analyses to adults. This coincides with a more general trend in criminological research on adolescents to confine analyses to offending behavior. Consequently, there is a dearth research on adolescents and youth victims, particularly with respect to the individuals most likely to offend against them. Within …

The Impact Of Neighborhoods, Schools, And Malls On The Spatial Distribution Of Property Damage, Teresa C. Lagrange

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Using data obtained from three different sources, principles derived from routine activities theory are used to predict the distribution of minor property crimes in a medium-sized Canadian city during a 1-year period. Mischief and vandalism incidents recorded by the local police, transit department, and department of parks and recreation are aggregated by census enumeration area using mapping software, and analyzed in relation to three sets of predictors: (1) neighborhood demographic characteristics; (2) the proximity of shopping malls; and (3) the proximity of public and Catholic senior and junior high schools. Similar patterns observed for the three types of damage …

Low Self-Control And Opportunity: Testing The General Theory Of Crime As An Explanation For Gender Differences In Delinquency, Teresa C. Lagrange, Robert A. Silverman

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

This research tests Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime as an explanation for gender differences in the delinquency of approximately 2,000 Canadian secondary school students. Separate psychological factors, including a preference for risk seeking, impulsivity, temper, present oriented, and carelessness, are used as measures of self-control, and additional measures of the construct are taken from the frequency of self-reported smoking and drinking. Elements of delinquent opportunity are controlled for by including measures of parental/adult super-vision. These measures and their interactions are used to predict self-reported general delinquency, property offenses, violence, and drug offenses. Results provide partial support for the …

Deterrence, Brutalization, And The Death Penalty: Another Examination Of Oklahoma's Return To Capital Punishment, William C. Bailey

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

A replication and extension of a weekly ARIMA analysis (1989–1991) by Cochran et al. (1994), which appeared in Criminology, confirms that Oklahoma's return to capital punishment in 1990, after a 25-year moratorium, was followed by a significant increase in killings involving strangers. Moreover, a multivariate autoregressive analysis, which includes measures of the frequency of executions, the level of print media attention devoted to executions, and selected sociodemographic variables, produced results consistent with the brutalization hypothesis for total homicides, as well as a variety of different types of killing involving both strangers and nonstrangers. No prior study has shown such strong …

Review Essay Of Jurgen Habermas’S Between Facts And Norms, James J. Chriss

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Review Of The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture And Deviance At Nasa, Peter F. Meiksins

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

Reviews the book "The Challenger Launch Decision: Risky Technology, Culture and Deviance at NASA," by Diane Vaughan.

Less-Than-Lethal Weapons And Police-Citizen Killings In U.S. Urban Areas, William C. Bailey

Sociology & Criminology Faculty Publications

There appears to be general consensus in law enforcement circles that less-than-lethal weapons are effective in reducing police-citizen killings, but this “common wisdom” has not been subject to systematic empirical analysis. Considering a large sample of U.S. cities for 1990, this article examines the association between the availability to the police of various types of less-than-lethal weapons and general and race-specific justifiable homicide rates. The analysis produces no evidence that police killing rates are affected by the availability of less-than-lethal weapons.