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Full-Text Articles in Criminology

Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan Sep 2010

Do Judges Vary In Their Treatment Of Race?, David S. Abrams, Marianne Bertrand, Sendhil Mullainathan

All Faculty Scholarship

Are minorities treated differently by the legal system? Systematic racial differences in case characteristics, many unobservable, make this a difficult question to answer directly. In this paper, we estimate whether judges differ from each other in how they sentence minorities, avoiding potential bias from unobservable case characteristics by exploiting the random assignment of cases to judges. We measure the between-judge variation in the difference in incarceration rates and sentence lengths between African-American and White defendants. We perform a Monte Carlo simulation in order to explicitly construct the appropriate counterfactual, where race does not influence judicial sentencing. In our data set, …


Metacognition In Criminal Profiling, Barry Woodhouse, Wayne Petherick Aug 2010

Metacognition In Criminal Profiling, Barry Woodhouse, Wayne Petherick

Wayne Petherick

Extract:
As with many professions, one of the more serious problems that confronts the profiling community is that of the inept examiner. Deliberately unethical behavior is one thing, but ongoing incompetence because of profiler ignorance is something else entirely. In some instances, ignorance is the result of a metacognitive deficit caused by a lack of study, a lack of training, or a general lack of mental dexterity. In such instances, the profiler will continually do the wrong thing, such as using flawed methods and erroneous logic, because he lacks the ability to recognize his own ineptitude; the profiler cannot perceive …


An Introduction To Crime And Deviance, Wayne Petherick, Claire Ferguson Aug 2010

An Introduction To Crime And Deviance, Wayne Petherick, Claire Ferguson

Wayne Petherick

Extract: Criminological knowledge as it relates to concepts of deviance have been stagnating. Historically, new texts contain very little new knowledge. They have tended towards the recycled rather than the original. Old theories are posited over and over again, with little consideration or regard to whether they even apply in the current universe of criminal behavior. New editions rarely contain little more than new case studies as if this somehow keeps them contemporary. At best, many works offer a different spin on old approaches or theories. It is for these reasons that we have endeavoured to make this book a …


Behavioral Consistency, The Homology Assumption And The Problems Of Induction, Wayne Petherick, Claire Ferguson Aug 2010

Behavioral Consistency, The Homology Assumption And The Problems Of Induction, Wayne Petherick, Claire Ferguson

Wayne Petherick

Extract: The ultimate goal of profiling is to identify the major behavioral and personality characteristics to narrow the suspect pool. Inferences about offender characteristics can be accomplished deductively, based on the analysis of discrete offender behaviors established within a particular case. They can also be accomplished inductively, involving prediction based on abstract offender averages from group data (these methods were detailed extensively in Chapter 2; see also Petherick & Turvey, 2008a). As discussed, these two approaches are by no means equal.


Alcohol, Drugs And Crime, Wayne Petherick, Nila Myers Aug 2010

Alcohol, Drugs And Crime, Wayne Petherick, Nila Myers

Wayne Petherick

Extract:
There are a great many factors that contribute to criminality. These include, but are not limited to poverty, mental disorder, personality disorder, sub-cultures (such as gangs), personality differences, and socialization. One of the more prevalent though would be the use of alcohol and other drugs. This applies to both the offender and the victim. That is, many offenders are under the influence of drugs and/or alcohol at the time of their offense, and so are victims. In fact, victim use of drugs parallels that of offenders in many offense types.


Cults, Wayne Petherick Aug 2010

Cults, Wayne Petherick

Wayne Petherick

Extract: Cults are a universal phenomenon, and can likely be found in some form in every country around the world. Haworth (1997) suggests that there are 500 cult groups operating in the UK and other parts of Europe, meaning that on a per capita basis, the problem is the same as in the USA. Langone (undated) suggests that cult educational organizations have compiled lists of more than 2,000 groups with perhaps 1,000 of these groups actually meeting the criteria of cults, Furthermore, as an indication of their global nature, he suggests that grassroots cult educational organizations exist in more than …


School Shootings And Guns, Wayne Petherick, Brent Turvey, Jared Kreeger Aug 2010

School Shootings And Guns, Wayne Petherick, Brent Turvey, Jared Kreeger

Wayne Petherick

Extract: School shootings are a global phenomenon, as they occur in almost every country around the world. However, the United States ranks number one in terms of the total number of school shooters and total number of victims in a single incident. Despite the media attention such incidents receive, they are uncommon and as such are deviant both statistically and ideologically as an extreme form of anti-social (and homicidal) behavior.


Untangling Fear Of Crime: A Multi-Theoretical Approach To Examining The Causes Of Crime-Specific Fear, Mariel Alper Apr 2010

Untangling Fear Of Crime: A Multi-Theoretical Approach To Examining The Causes Of Crime-Specific Fear, Mariel Alper

Sociology & Criminal Justice Theses & Dissertations

Fear of crime has been a major research topic over the past several decades. However, multiple explanations have been proposed and no clear theoretical model exists. Building on existing research, this study attempts to build a crime type-specific theoretical model of fear. In particular, the predictive power of three theoretical models is explored. This study addresses several methodological shortcomings by measuring offense type-specific, emotionally-based fear of violent and property crime. The results suggest that the predictors of each type of fear vary, and some theoretical models are a better explanation of one type of fear than the other. Overall, the …


Social Disorganization And The Spatial Distribution Of Homicides In El Paso, Nicholas Andrew Emerick Jan 2010

Social Disorganization And The Spatial Distribution Of Homicides In El Paso, Nicholas Andrew Emerick

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

Recent research on social disorganization theory shows general support for economic and stability measures of disorganization, but spatial dispersions and the disaggregation of homicides of crime have not been fully examined. 1985-1995 homicide data from the El Paso Police Department's detective logs and US Census data are combined to explore social disorganization in El Paso, the impact of ports of entry, and how motive interacts with social disorganization. Findings for total homicides in El Paso support existing social disorganization research. Motive specific homicides displayed distinct relationships to the disorganization measures. The concentrations of homicides near ports of entry can be …


Community-Level Crime Control : A Closer Look At The Mediating Variables Of Social Disorganization Theory, David Paul Armstrong Jan 2010

Community-Level Crime Control : A Closer Look At The Mediating Variables Of Social Disorganization Theory, David Paul Armstrong

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

The present study focuses on the mediating factors of social disorganization theory. To be more specific, this study combines the insights from the classical social disorganization model, the systemic model of crime, and the more recent work of Sampson and colleagues on collective efficacy and Carr (2003) on the new parochialism to answer some of the lingering questions within the perspective. The three mediating factors examined are social ties, collective efficacy, and organizational activism, a concept derived from Carr's work on the new parochialism. The concept organizational activism refers to using local organizations with access to outside resources to indirectly …


Segregation And Social Control : An Agent Based Simulation, Stephen Matthew Pate Jan 2010

Segregation And Social Control : An Agent Based Simulation, Stephen Matthew Pate

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

There exists a considerable body of literature devoted to the evolution of segregated


Street Stops And Broken Windows Revisited: The Demography And Logic Of Proactive Policing In A Safe And Changing City, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller, Garth Davies, Valerie West Jan 2010

Street Stops And Broken Windows Revisited: The Demography And Logic Of Proactive Policing In A Safe And Changing City, Jeffrey A. Fagan, Amanda Geller, Garth Davies, Valerie West

Faculty Scholarship

This chapter examines the development of “order maintenance policing” in New York City. It studies the stop-and-frisk activities of New York City police officers by examining temporal and spatial patterns of stops from 1999, 2003, and 2006. Findings reveal that stop rates have increased by 500 percent since 1999 despite little change in crime rates Stop activity was greatest in poor and minority communities, and stop patterns were more closely tied to demographic and social conditions than to disorder or crime. The efficiency of stops, measured as “hit rates,” dropped considerably, with the sharpest declines occurring in minority neighborhoods. Overall, …