Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 49(2)

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, May 2012: Volume 49, Issue 2

The Effects of Corporation- and Industry-Level Strain and Opportunity on Corporate Crime
Xia Wang and Kristy Holtfreter

Although recent corporate crime studies have made important advances by investigating how individuals decide to offend, they have paid limited attention to a corporation’s organizational structures. Yet, the extant organizational studies have generated inconclusive evidence when assessing the relationship between financial performance and corporate crime, and few studies have combined organizational and industrial factors in models of corporate crime. Building on strain and opportunity theories and prior research, the authors develop hypotheses about the direct and interactive effects of corporation- and industry-level strains and opportunity structures. The authors test these hypotheses using Clinard and Yeager’s Illegal Corporate Behavior data. In short, the results indicate that the effect of corporation-level strain is more pronounced for corporations marked by lower levels of diversification and corporations that operate in industries experiencing higher levels of strain. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for theory, research, and policy.

Patterns of Near-Repeat Gun Assaults in Houston
William Wells, Ling Wu, and Xinyue Ye

The study assesses the extent to which gun assaults are clustered in space and time using crime data from Houston, Texas. The analysis examines patterns of gun assaults at the city-level as well as more localized levels in order to understand the spatial distribution of near-repeats within the city. Consistent with prior research, the city-level analysis shows significant and meaningful near-repeat patterns. The localized analysis indicates that the risk of near-repeats is not evenly distributed across space within the city, but is concentrated among a small portion of incidents and four relatively small spatial clusters. In addition, an examination of crime types, locations, and gang involvement shows slight differences between gun assaults with and without near-repeat follow-up shootings.

Local Businesses as Attractors or Preventers of Neighborhood Disorder
Wouter Steenbeek, Beate Völker, Henk Flap, and Frank van Oort

While businesses may attract potential offenders and thus be conducive to disorder, the number of employees could offset this by exercising social control on offenders. This study uses data from different sources to test this expectation across 278 Dutch neighborhoods in the four largest cities of the Netherlands, using multivariate multilevel analysis to disentangle individual perception differences of disorder and neighborhood effects. Attention is paid to traditional explanations of disorder (i.e., poverty, residential mobility, and ethnic heterogeneity). Results show a positive relationship between business presence and neighborhood disorder. We do not find consistent results of the number of employees (i.e., bigger businesses are not always better or worse). Our research demonstrates that the presence of neighborhood businesses could rival the effects of social disorganization theory.

Getting the Upper Hand: Scripts for Managing Victim Resistance in Carjackings
Heith Copes, Andy Hochstetler, and Michael Cherbonneau

Increasing theoretical and empirical interest has turned to the process and dynamics of offender decision making and to how offenders commit discrete acts of crime. One outcome is attention to how offenders manage risks they view as significant. Here, the authors examine how carjackers script and manage victim resistance—the foremost obstacle in the accomplishment of robbery. Using semi-structured interviews with 30 carjackers, the authors explore their perspectives on the ramifications of victim resistance and their strategies to forestall and control it. The authors find that offenders are cognizant that resistance interferes with their goals and that mistakes in managing their victims not only lead to unsuccessful carjackings but also threaten their safety. Much of the scripting of criminal opportunity and the enactment of carjacking are explained, therefore, by strategies offenders use to minimize the chances that victims can resist. Discussion focuses on the implications of findings for theories of offender decision making.

The Offenders’ Perspective on Prevention: Guarding Against Victimization and Law Enforcement
Scott Jacques and Danielle M. Reynald

Law-abiding citizens are concerned with deterring and preventing crime. One strategy to accomplish this goal is to increase the costs and reduce the benefits that particular situations present to offenders. This form of crime control is known as situational crime prevention. Like law-abiding persons, offenders must concern themselves with being victimized. Differently, however, offenders must also worry about being detected and punished by formal agents. Thus, situational prevention from the offenders’ perspective is relatively complex, encompassing efforts to block not only opportunities for victimization but also for law enforcement. Building on the work of Clarke, the present study uses qualitative data from drug dealers to illustrate how and why offenders use situational strategies and techniques to evade their adversaries. The article concludes by discussing implications for future work.

Unsafe at Any Age: Linking Childhood and Adolescent Maltreatment to Delinquency and Crime
Joshua P. Mersky, James Topitzes, and Arthur J. Reynolds

Objectives. This study compares the effects of childhood maltreatment and adolescent maltreatment on delinquency and crime, including violent and nonviolent offending. Methods. Data were derived from the Chicago Longitudinal Study, a prospective investigation of 1,539 underprivileged, minority subjects. Results. Results confirmed that rates of overall delinquency, along with violent, drug, and property offending specifically, were elevated among childhood and adolescent maltreatment victims compared to their nonmaltreated peers. Childhood maltreatment was associated with delinquency independent of adolescent maltreatment, and strong connections between adolescent maltreatment and delinquency were present independent of prior victimization. Childhood maltreatment was also significantly related to a panel of adult crime measures, while the effects of adolescent maltreatment on adult crime were less robust. Conclusions. The study findings suggest that maltreatment at any age increases the risk of future offending, implying that investments in prevention and intervention strategies throughout childhood and adolescence may reduce delinquency and crime.

Theory and Society 41(3)

Theory and Society, May 2012: Volume 41, Issue 3

Sex work and the construction of intimacies: meanings and work pragmatics in rural Malawi
Iddo Tavory and Michelle Poulin

Carceral politics as gender justice? The “traffic in women” and neoliberal circuits of crime, sex, and rights
Elizabeth Bernstein

Explaining the move toward the market in US academic science: how institutional logics can change without institutional entrepreneurs
Elizabeth Popp Berman

Sources of state capacity in Latin America: commodity booms and state building motives in Chile
Ryan Saylor

Social Problems 59(2)

Social Problems, May 2012: Volume 59, Issue 2

This School's Gone Downhill: Racial Change and Perceived School Quality among Whites
Kimberly A. Goyette, Danielle Farrie and Joshua Freely

Racial segregation in schools and neighborhoods in the United States is stark and persistent. The results of this research provide clues as to why it may be so enduring. We find that as predominantly white schools in the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area experience increases in black representation of up to seven percentage points during a four- to five-year period, white neighborhood residents are more likely to perceive that the quality of their schools has declined, despite the current conditions of the schools and in spite of changes in school characteristics. Our results are more consistent with racial threat theory than contact theory because they suggest that white residents may initially be threatened by racial change and judge declining school quality according to the racial change itself. As a consequence, white families may flee these integrating schools and neighborhoods, further contributing to school and neighborhood segregation.

An Opening in the Congregational Closet? Boundary-Bridging Culture and Membership Privileges for Gays and Lesbians in Christian Religious Congregations
Gary Adler

Openness to homosexuality at the congregational level of American religious life has only recently received scholarly attention. This research reports patterns of membership openness to gays and lesbians among American Christian congregations and synthesizes emerging hypotheses to explain such openness. Using data from the second wave of the National Congregations Study (Chaves 2007), multinomial logistic regression models demonstrate evidence for the importance of clergy characteristics, membership demographics, local context, local theological culture, and religious tradition. A boundary-bridging cultural model also conceptualizes how the bridging practices of congregations influence membership openness. Interfaith volunteering and interracial worship express an organizational approach to social boundaries that prioritizes diversity and openness. With a controversial social issue (homosexuality), and a relative lack of local organizational processes to deal with such an issue, boundary-bridging customs may shape the sexuality boundaries of congregations. This research develops knowledge of cultural processes and homosexuality within American religious congregations.

Unequal Motherhood: Racial-Ethnic and Socioeconomic Disparities in Cesarean Sections in the United States
Louise Marie Roth and Megan M. Henley

Disparities in cesarean rates in the United States represent an important social problem because cesareans are related to maternal deaths and to the high cost of American health care. There are pervasive racial-ethnic and socioeconomic disparities in maternity care as in health care more generally, yet there has been little scrutiny of how overuse of cesarean deliveries might be linked to these disparities. There are at least two possibilities when it comes to c-sections: black, Hispanic, Native American, and low socioeconomic status (SES) mothers could be less likely to have needed cesareans, leading to more negative outcomes for both mothers and babies, or they could be more likely to have medically unnecessary cesareans, leading to more negative outcomes as a result of the surgery itself. This research uses data on all recorded births in the United States in 2006 to analyze differences in the odds of a cesarean delivery by race-ethnicity and SES. The analysis reveals that non-Hispanic black, Hispanic/Latina, and Native American mothers are more likely to have cesarean deliveries than non-Hispanic white or Asian mothers. Also, after accounting for medical indications, increasing education is associated with a decline in odds of a cesarean delivery, especially for non-Hispanic whites. The results suggest that high cesarean rates are an indicator of low-quality maternity care, and that women with racial and socioeconomic advantages use them to avoid medically unnecessary cesarean deliveries rather than to request them.

Imprisonment and Infant Mortality
Christopher Wildeman

This article extends research on the consequences of parental incarceration for child well-being, the effects of mass imprisonment on black-white inequalities in child well-being, and the factors shaping black-white inequalities in infant mortality by considering the relationship between imprisonment and infant mortality, using individual- and state-level data from the United States, 1990 through 2003. Results using data from the Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System (PRAMS) show that parental incarceration is associated with elevated early infant mortality risk and that partner violence moderates this relationship. Infants of recently incarcerated fathers who are not abusive have twice the mortality risk of other infants, but there is no association if the father was abusive. Results from state-level analyses show a positive association between the imprisonment rate and the total infant mortality rate, black infant mortality rate, and black-white inequality in the infant mortality rate. Assuming a causal effect, results show that had the imprisonment rate remained at its 1990 level, the 2003 infant mortality rate would have been 3.9 percent lower, black-white inequality in the infant mortality rate 8.8 percent lower. Thus, results imply that imprisonment may have health consequences that extend beyond ever-imprisoned men to their social correlates and that these health spillover effects are not limited to infectious disease.

Metropolitan Heterogeneity and Minority Neighborhood Attainment: Spatial Assimilation or Place Stratification?
Jeremy Pais, Scott J. South and Kyle Crowder

Using geo-referenced data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, in conjunction with decennial census data, this research examines metropolitan-area variation in the ability of residentially mobile blacks, Hispanics, and whites to convert their income into two types of neighborhood outcomes—neighborhood racial composition and neighborhood socioeconomic status. For destination tract racial composition, we find strong and near-universal support for the “weak version” of place stratification theory; relative to whites, the effect of individual income on the percent of the destination tract population that is non-Hispanic white is stronger for blacks and Hispanics, but even the highest earning minority group members move to tracts that are “less white” than the tracts that the highest-earning whites move to. In contrast, for moves into neighborhoods characterized by higher levels of average family income, we find substantial heterogeneity across metropolitan areas in minorities' capacity to convert income into neighborhood quality. A slight majority of metropolitan areas evince support for the “strong version” of place stratification theory, in which blacks and Hispanics are less able than whites to convert income into neighborhood socioeconomic status. However, a nontrivial number of metropolitan areas also evince support for spatial assimilation theory, where the highest-earning minorities achieve neighborhood parity with the highest-earning whites. Several metropolitan-area characteristics, including residential segregation, racial and ethnic composition, immigrant population size, poverty rates, and municipal fragmentation, emerge as significant predictors of minority-white differences in neighborhood attainment.

Choking on Modernity: A Human Ecology of Air Pollution
Richard York and Eugene A. Rosa

Ground-level air pollution has serious effects on the natural environment and human health, but it has not received the same attention in the sociological literature as the greenhouse gases polluting the upper atmosphere. To address questions about the effects of social structural forces on environmental impacts, we analyze cross-national time-series data (1990–2000) to assess influences on the emission of ground-level air pollutants: sulfur dioxide, nitrogen oxides, carbon monoxide, and non-methane volatile organic compounds. Drawing on human ecological theory, we move beyond previous analyses by assessing demographic effects on pollution emissions in a nuanced way by dividing population into the number of households and average household size. We found that the number of households has a greater effect on SO2 emissions than average household size. This suggests that the effect of population on the environment is not simply due to its size and growth, but also to its distribution across households. The difference we found has important implications, since the global growth rate in the number of households is greater than the growth rate in population. Furthermore, while the population growth rate in less developed nations is over four times that in developed nations, the household growth rate is only double. This finding suggests that developed nations will contribute more to air pollution in the coming years than would be assumed based on population growth alone.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 28(2)

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, June 2012: Volume 28, Issue 2

Race and Women’s Imprisonment: Poverty, African American Presence, and Social Welfare
Karen Heimer, Kecia R. Johnson, Joseph B. Lang, Andres F. Rengifo and Don Stemen

Female imprisonment rates have increased proportionately more than male imprisonment rates over recent decades. There are substantial race differences in women’s rates, as is the case for men. Yet, there has been little quantitative research on the correlates of women’s imprisonment using data over time, or on potential race differences in those correlates. The present research analyzes data on black and nonblack female imprisonment rates in the 50 states for the period 1981–2003. The analyses are guided substantively by existing research on race, social threat and criminal punishment, and theory and research on the penal-welfare hypothesis. The study uses bivariate-response multilevel modeling to simultaneously examine the factors associated with black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates. The results show that black female imprisonment rates increase when the concentration of African Americans in metropolitan areas and poverty rates grow, whereas nonblack female imprisonment rates are unaffected by poverty rates and actually decrease when African American populations become more concentrated in metro areas. Both black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates increase when welfare spending declines. The results are consistent with social threat perspectives and the penal-welfare hypotheses.

Specialized Versus Versatile Intergenerational Transmission of Violence: A New Approach to Studying Intergenerational Transmission from Violent Versus Non-Violent Fathers: Latent Class Analysis
Sytske Besemer

This paper investigates whether fathers who have been convicted of a violent offense transmit criminal and violent behavior more strongly than fathers who were convicted, but never for violence. First, a more traditional approach was taken where offending fathers were divided into two groups based on whether they had a violence conviction. Secondly, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was performed to identify two classes of fathers, one of which was characterized as violent. Sons of fathers in this class had a higher risk of violent convictions compared with sons whose fathers were in the other class.

Racial Context and Crime Reporting: A Test of Black’s Stratification Hypothesis
Min Xie and Janet L. Lauritsen

Contextual factors that contribute to race differences in reporting crime to the police are an important element in Donald Black’s theory of the behavior of the law, yet few studies have investigated whether these differences vary depending on social context. The present study investigates whether the relationships between victim and offender race and the reporting of crime are moderated by the level of racial stratification in a given place as Black’s stratification hypothesis would predict. Using victim survey data from 40 metropolitan areas, as well as data from other sources, we find results that are consistent with Black’s stratification hypothesis, namely, that victim and offender race are more strongly associated with the reporting of crime in those metropolitan areas where the gap in economic status between blacks and whites is larger and the groups are more residentially segregated. The theory, however, is unable to account for the high rates of reporting of black-on-black assaults found across the 40 metropolitan areas. The question of how the needs of black victims may outweigh their reluctance to call the police is an important issue for future research.

Cycles in Crime and Economy: Leading, Lagging and Coincident Behaviors
Claudio Detotto and Edoardo Otranto

In the last decades, the interest in the relationship between crime and business cycle has widely increased. It is a diffused opinion that a causal relationship goes from economic variables to criminal activities, but this causal effect is observed only for some typology of crimes, such as property crimes. In this work we examine the possibility of the existence of some common factors (interpreted as cyclical components) driving the dynamics of Gross Domestic Product and a large set of criminal types by using the nonparametric version of the dynamic factor model. A first aim of this exercise is to detect some comovements between the business cycle and the cyclical component of some typologies of crime, which could evidence some relationships between these variables; a second purpose is to select which crime types are related to the business cycle and if they are leading, coincident or lagging. Italy is the case study for the time span 1991:1–2004:12; the crime typologies are constituted by the 22 official categories classified by the Italian National Statistical Institute. The study finds that most of the crime types show a counter-cyclical behavior with respect to the overall economic performance, and only a few of them have an evident relationship with the business cycle. Furthermore, some crime offenses, such as bankruptcy, embezzlement and fraudulent insolvency, seem to anticipate the business cycle, in line with recent global events.

The Transcendence of Violence Across Relationships: New Methods for Understanding Men’s and Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence Across the Life Course
Kristin Carbone-Lopez, Callie Marie Rennison and Ross Macmillan

The notion of transitions is an increasingly central concept in contemporary criminology and such issues are particularly significant in the study of intimate partner violence (IPV). Here, attention focuses on relationship dynamics and movement into and out of relationships for understanding long-term patterns of victimization over the life course. Still, a focus on transitions raises questions about how IPV is patterned over time and across relationships and how this contributes to stability and change in victimization risk over the life span. Our study examines this issue using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Findings from latent transition analyses reveal strong evidence for change in victimization experiences across the life course. Among women, those who experienced serious, multifaceted violence are most likely to transition out of relationships followed by transition into subsequent relationships characterized by conflict and aggression and a similar pattern is observed among men. At the same time, men who experience physical aggression in previous relationships are most likely to transition into non-violent relationships, while women with similar experiences are much less differentiated in the types of relationships they enter into. When we account for background characteristics (e.g., respondent’s race, education, and age) and childhood experiences of parental violence, the latter is particularly significant in accounting for exposure to serious IPV in later adulthood. Such findings extend our understanding of how life course transitions connect to violence and offending and highlight processes of continuity and change beyond the traditional focus on criminal offending.

Having a Bad Month: General Versus Specific Effects of Stress on Crime
Richard B. Felson, D. Wayne Osgood, Julie Horney and Craig Wiernik

We examine whether particular types of stress are related to particular types of crime or whether all types of stress are related to all types of crime. Our estimates are based on analyses of within-individual change over a 36 month period among recently incarcerated offenders. We find that assault is most strongly related to family stress, suggesting that conflicts between family members lead to assault. Economic crimes (property crimes and selling illicit drugs) are most clearly related to financial stress, suggesting that these crimes often reflect attempts to resolve financial problems. On the other hand, crime is generally unrelated to stress from illness/injury, death, and work. The results support the idea that criminal behavior is a focused response to specific types of problems rather than a general response to stress. They are more consistent with explanations that focus on perceived rewards and costs (e.g., the rational-choice approach) than with explanations that portray negative affect as a generalized impetus toward violence or crime (e.g., frustration aggression approaches).

Integrated Theory and Crimes of Trust
Scott Menard and Robert G. Morris

The integrated theory first proposed by Elliott et al. (1979), combining strain, social control, and social learning (and sometimes social disorganization) theories, has been repeatedly tested and consistently supported for a wide range of behaviors including licit and illicit substance use, violence, and other forms of illegal behavior. It has not, however, been tested for a class of illegal behaviors best described as crimes of trust, which include different types of fraud, workplace theft, and income tax evasion. This category of offending includes offenses commonly regarded as white collar crime, and also offenses that have been more or less marginal to the study of white collar crime. The present paper tests the integrated theory specifically for crimes of trust in the National Youth Survey Family Study, a national, multigenerational sample of individuals whose focal respondents were 11–17 years old in 1976–1977, and who are now in middle adulthood. Relying on structural equation modeling (SEM), parallel tests are performed for two generations, the focal respondents in early middle age (ages 38–45) and their adult offspring (ages 18–24) for the period 2002–2004.

Criminology & Public Policy 11(2)

Criminology & Public Policy, May 2012: Volume 11, Issue 2

Vollmer Award

On Behalf of Women Offenders: Women's Place in the Science of Evidence-Based Practice
Patricia Van Voorhis

Patricia Van Voorhis: Have vision, will travel
Emily J. Salisbury and Meda Chesney-Lind

“Every Time a Bell Rings an Angel Gets His Wings”: Commentary on Patricia Van Voorhis's Receipt of the 2011 Vollmer Award
Bonita M. Veysey

The Impact of Drug Market Pulling Levers Policing on Neighborhood Violence: An Evaluation of the High Point Drug Market Intervention

Editorial Introduction
Philip J. Cook

The Impact of Drug Market Pulling Levers Policing on Neighborhood Violence: An Evaluation of the High Point Drug Market Intervention
Nicholas Corsaro, Eleazer D. Hunt, Natalie Kroovand Hipple and Edmund F. McGarrell

Getting deterrence right?: Evaluation evidence and complementary crime control mechanisms
Anthony A. Braga

Good Markets Make Bad Neighbors: Regulating Open-Air Drug Markets
Peter Reuter and Harold A. Pollack

Getting the Law Involved: A Quasi-Experiment in Early Intervention Involving Collaboration Between Schools and the District Attorney's Office

Editorial Introduction
Alex R. Piquero

Getting the Law Involved: A Quasi-Experiment in Early Intervention Involving Collaboration Between Schools and the District Attorney's Office
John Paul Wright, Pamela M. McMahon, Claire Daly and J. Phil Haney

New Standards for Demonstrating Program Effectiveness
Peter W. Greenwood

The Case for Early Crime Prevention
Brandon C. Welsh

Should the Juvenile Justice System be Involved in Early Intervention?
David P. Farrington

Crime Place and Pollution: Expanding Crime Reduction Options Through a Regulatory Approach

Crime as Pollution: Lessons from Environmental Regulation (Editorial Introduction)
Daniel S. Nagin

Crime Place and Pollution: Expanding Crime Reduction Options Through a Regulatory Approach
John E. Eck and Emily B. Eck

Bringing Social Context Back Into the Equation: The Importance of Social Characteristics of Places in the Prevention of Crime
David Weisburd

Some Problems with Place-Based Crime Policies
Dan A. Black and Kyung Park

Crime, Place, and Pollution: Expanding Crime Reduction Options Through a Regulatory Approach
Lorraine Mazerolle and Janet Ransley

Joining the Regulatory Fold
Malcolm K. Sparrow

Crime Reduction: Responsibility, Regulation, and Research
Nick Tilley

Assessing the Earned Discharge Pilot Project: The Importance of Context, Capacity, and Content

Evidence-Based Policy and the Politics of Criminal Justice Reform (Editorial Introduction)
Heather Schoenfeld

Research Article
Assessing the earned discharge pilot project:: The Importance of Context, Capacity, and Content
Sarah M. Smith, Marisa K. Omori, Susan F. Turner and Jesse Jannetta

Perpetual “Crisis” and the Dysfunctional Politics of Corrections in California
Michael C. Campbell

Resisting “Evidence” in Challenging Correctional Environments
Jeffrey Lin