Crime & Delinquency 59(3)

Crime & Delinquency, April 2013: Volume 59, Issue 3

Guns and Trafficking in Crack-Cocaine and Other Drug Markets
Richard B. Felson and Luke Bonkiewicz

This article examines the relationship between gun possession and the nature of an offender’s involvement in drug markets. The analyses are based on data obtained from drug offenders who participated in the 1997 Survey of Inmates of State and Federal Correctional Facilities. The authors find that participants in crack-cocaine markets are more likely to possess guns than participants in powdered-cocaine, opiate, and marijuana markets, particularly if they are street-level crack dealers. However, participants in barbiturates and amphetamine markets also have high rates of gun possession. The authors also find relatively high levels of gun possession among traffickers who handle stashes of moderately large market value, who have central roles in the trade, and who are members of drug organizations. Finally, offenders who are young, female, African American, and from lower economic status are more likely to traffic in crack cocaine than in other drugs.

Neighborhood Context and Police Vigor: A Multilevel Analysis
James J. Sobol, Yuning Wu, and Ivan Y. Sun

This study provides a partial test of Klinger’s ecological theory of police behavior using hierarchical linear modeling on 1,677 suspects who had encounters with police within 24 beats. The current study used data from four sources originally collected by the Project on Policing Neighborhoods (POPN), including systematic social observation, in-person interviews with officers, census data, and police crime records. It investigates the effects of neighborhood violent crime rates and concentrated disadvantage on officer vigor, controlling for individual-level officer characteristics and situational factors. The analyses reveal that police vigor was significantly shaped by beat-level crime rates, with high–crime rate neighborhoods experiencing higher levels of police vigor in handling suspects. The findings are not consistent with the ecological propositions set forth by Klinger. Implications of these findings and suggestions for future research and theoretical development are discussed.

The Impact of Drivers’ Race, Gender, and Age During Traffic Stops: Assessing Interaction Terms and the Social Conditioning Model
Rob Tillyer and Robin S. Engel

Recent research has demonstrated that minority drivers receive disparate traffic stop outcomes compared with similarly situated White drivers. This research, however, is often not grounded within a theoretical framework and fails to examine specific combinations of driver demographics. This study addresses those shortcomings by examining research questions based on the social conditioning model and investigating the relationship between specific combinations of drivers’ race/ethnicity, gender, and age, and traffic stop outcomes. Using alternative measures of stop outcomes and robust official traffic stop data collected from a state law enforcement agency, the results demonstrate that warnings and citations, but not arrests, are differentially issued to young, Black male drivers. The findings also confirm the influence of legal factors on police decision making during traffic stops. Research and policy implications are discussed.

Race, Pre- and Postdetention, and Juvenile Justice Decision Making
Michael J. Leiber

A detailed examination was conducted of the factors associated with pre- and postadjudication secure detention, including secure detention as a dispositional sentence and the effects of secure detention on decision making that further contribute to cumulative disadvantage for African Americans. The research was based on interpretations of the symbolic threat thesis, with emphasis on the stereotyping of African Americans as threatening, delinquent, and/or in need of confinement, to study decision making in one juvenile court jurisdiction. The results reveal that legal factors were most often predictors of each type of secure detention and decision making at other stages, but so too was race individually and in combination with legal and extralegal considerations and indirectly through secure detention. The relationships, however, did not always result in disadvantageous outcomes.

A Comparison of Robbers’ Use of Physical Coercion in Commercial and Street Robberies
John D. McCluskey

The face-to-face confrontation involved in the crime of robbery renders vast amounts of financial, physical, and psychological injury in the United States. This study developed hypotheses from existing literature regarding salient situational factors associated with the prevalence of overt physical coercion during commercial and street robberies. The study examined the effect of situational and personal characteristics on robbers’ use of coercion, with data coded from police reports of 1,281 street and commercial robberies in one precinct of Detroit, Michigan, between 2000 and 2003. The research results are relatively consistent with findings from the literature on robbery in the last 40 years: Street robberies involve a greater prevalence of physical force than do commercial robberies; guns reduce the likelihood of physical force; and victim resistance increases physical force. Additionally, characteristics of victims and offenders play a secondary role in predicting whether physical coercion is brought to bear on the victims of robbery.

A Multivariate Analysis of the Sociodemographic Predictors of Methamphetamine Production and Use
Todd A. Armstrong and Gaylene S. Armstrong

To date, research testing the community characteristics associated with methamphetamine production and use has found that the community-level sociodemographic predictors of methamphetamine production and use vary from those of drug use in general. In this study, the authors furthered the research in this area using data from all 102 counties in Illinois. These data included measures of sociodemographic characteristics taken from the U.S. census, measures of methamphetamine production and use, and a measure of arrests for controlled-substance violations. Negative binomial regression models showed that poverty and the racial and ethnic compositions of communities were the strongest and most consistent predictors of the authors’ methamphetamine measures. The results also showed that the sociodemographic characteristics associated with methamphetamine measures were different in important ways from those associated with arrests for controlled-substance violations.

Testing the Link Between Child Maltreatment and Family Violence Among Police Officers
Egbert Zavala

The purpose of this study is to document the relationship between physical abuse during childhood and family violence among a group of police officers from the Baltimore Police Department in the United States. Analyzing data from the Police and Domestic Violence in Police Families in Baltimore, Maryland, 1997-1999, this study found a positive relationship between physical abuse and family violence toward spouses and children. Specifically, this study found that police officers who indicated that their parents where physical with them were more likely to report being physical with their spouse and children. They were also more likely to report yelling or shouting toward family members. This study shows a positive relationship between physical abuse and involvement in family violence, and increases our knowledge regarding the cycle of violence in police families. This study points to the need for better recognition of physical abuse and the negative consequences children are likely to endure.