Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48(2)

The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis
Graham Farrell, Andromachi Tseloni, Jen Mailley, and Nick Tilley

Major crime drops were experienced in the United States and most other industrialized countries for a decade from the early to mid-1990s. Yet there is little agreement over explanation or lessons for policy. Here it is proposed that change in the quantity and quality of security was a key driver of the crime drop. From evidence relating to vehicle theft in two countries, it is concluded that electronic immobilizers and central locking were particularly effective. It is suggested that reduced car theft may have induced drops in other crime including violence. From this platform, a broader security hypothesis, linked to routine activity and opportunity theory, is outlined.

Low-Skill Employment Opportunity and African American-White Difference in Recidivism
Paul E. Bellair and Brian R. Kowalski

Previous contextual analyses of recidivism are limited by a focus on traditional disadvantage indicators. The authors examine whether those indicators, including poverty, family composition, high school dropout, and unemployment explain disproportionate involvement in serious criminal recidivism among African American relative to White ex-prisoners. Given the fundamental necessity of finding employment after release, the authors move beyond traditional measures and investigate the availability of low-skill employment opportunity in the industries that prior research suggests are most likely to hire ex-prisoners (retail and manufacturing). To address the issue, the authors collected and geo-coded data for a representative sample of 1,568 Ohio ex-prisoners released on community supervision during the first six months of 1999. Contextual analysis reveals that race difference in serious recidivism is explained by low-skill employment opportunity in manufacturing and that it is contingent on levels of neighborhood disadvantage and unemployment.

Getting into the Script of Adult Child Sex Offenders and Mapping out Situational Prevention Measures
Benoit Leclerc, Richard Wortley, and Stephen Smallbone

The current study describes and examines the crime-commission process followed in child sex offending. There are two major aims in this study. The first aim is to propose a script model in child sex offending. The second aim is to show the relevance of completing crime scripts to identify situational crime prevention measures. One of the weaknesses in the current crime script literature is the absence of proposed prevention measures. Besides Cornish, only Clarke and Newman have used crime scripts for its main purpose, which is to offer a way to develop situational crime prevention techniques. In this study, situational prevention measures are mapped onto the crime-commission process in child sex offending.

Racial/Ethnic Threat and Federal Sentencing
Ben Feldmeyer and Jeffery T. Ulmer

This study examines whether federal sentencing decisions are influenced by the racial/ethnic composition of federal court districts. Multilevel models of individual cases within federal judicial districts show that Black defendants receive moderately longer sentences than Whites, and that Hispanics and Whites receive similar sentences. These race/ethnicity effects on sentence length are found to vary across federal districts but not as predicted by racial threat theory. In contrast to racial threat predictions, Black sentence lengths are not significantly conditioned by the district Black population. Contrary to racial threat predictions, Hispanic defendants receive the harshest sentences when they account for the smallest share of the population (1 to 3 percent) and the most lenient sentences when they make up more sizable shares of district populations (more than 27 percent). Our results indicate that racial threat theory provides an inadequate explanation of how social contexts influence the federal sentencing of Blacks and Hispanics.

Networks of Collaborating Criminals: Assessing the Structural Vulnerability of Drug Markets
Aili Malm and Gisela Bichler

Uncovering the resiliency of ties between individuals involved in criminal enterprise will contribute to our understanding of how illicit markets function. To examine activities along the entire drug market commodity chain, this study extracted information about individuals involved or associated with trafficking (1,998 people) from police intelligence reports generated from 2004 to 2006. Significant differences were found for centrality and cohesion across market niches. Results show that the highest fragmentation potential lies with individuals who are involved with smuggling, supply, and financing, particularly when these individuals are also involved in other niches. Variability in small-world and scale-free properties suggest that interdiction strategies must be tailored to niche characteristics.

Ecological Origins of Shared Perceptions of Troublesome Teen Groups: Implications for the Basic Systemic Model of Crime, the Incivilities Thesis, and Political Economy
Ralph B. Taylor, Phillip W. Harris, Peter R. Jones, R. Marie Garcia, and Eric S. McCord

This work investigates how community variation in perceptions of troublesome teen groups are shaped by delinquency, violent crime, and community socioeconomic status (SES). Experts consider this outcome the key indicator of impaired local supervisory control, and past work has confirmed its critical role in linking community structure to crime and victimization outcomes. The investigation responds to recent calls to learn more about impacts of crime on key community processes. Analyses of Philadelphia survey, census, violent crime, and delinquency data find strong impacts of SES. Impacts of crime and delinquency are significant but depend on how they are separated from SES. Influences of the spatially lagged outcome and partialled SES highlight connections between public and parochial control dynamics. These deserve closer theoretical scrutiny in both the basic systemic model of crime and the incivilities thesis.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, May 2011: Volume 48, Issue 2