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Public Attitudes About The Culpability And Punishment Of Young Offenders, Elizabeth S. Scott, N. Dickon Reppucci, Jill Antonishak, Jennifer T. Degennaro
Public Attitudes About The Culpability And Punishment Of Young Offenders, Elizabeth S. Scott, N. Dickon Reppucci, Jill Antonishak, Jennifer T. Degennaro
Faculty Scholarship
Conventional wisdom holds that the public supports harsh punishment of juvenile offenders, and politicians often argue that the public demands tough policies. But public opinion is usually gauged through simplistic polls, often conducted in the wake of highly publicized violent crimes by juveniles. This study seeks to probe public opinion about the culpability of young offenders as compared to adult counterparts through more nuanced and comprehensive measures in a neutral setting (i.e. not in response to a high profile crime or during a political campaign when the media focuses on the issue). The opinions of 788 community adults were individually …
Crime And Work, Jeffrey Fagan, Richard B. Freeman
Crime And Work, Jeffrey Fagan, Richard B. Freeman
Faculty Scholarship
Crime and legal work are not mutually exclusive choices but represent a continuum of legal and illegal income-generating activities. The links between crime and legal work involve trade-offs among crime returns, punishment costs, legal work opportunity costs, and tastes and preferences regarding both types of work. Rising crime rates in the 1980s in the face of rising incarceration rates suggest that the threat of punishment is not the dominant cost of crime. Crime rates are inversely related to expected legal wages, particularly among young males with limited job skills or prospects. Recent ethnographic research shows that involvement in illegal work …
Guns, Youth Violence, And Social Identity In Inner Cities, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson
Guns, Youth Violence, And Social Identity In Inner Cities, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson
Faculty Scholarship
While youth violence has always been a critical part of delinquency, the modern epidemic is marked by high rates of gun violence. Adolescents in cities possess and carry guns on a large scale, guns are often at the scene of youth violence, and guns often are used. Guns play a central role in initiating, sustaining, and elevating the epidemic of youth violence. The demand for guns among youth was fueled by an "ecology of danger," comprising street gangs, expanding drug markets with high intrinsic levels of violence, high rates of adult violence and fatalities, and cultural styles of gun possession …