Crime & Delinquency 60(1)

Crime & Delinquency, February 2014: Volume 60, Issue 1

Registered Sex Offenders in the United States: Behind the Numbers
Andrew J. Harris, Jill S. Levenson, and Alissa R. Ackerman

Although sex offender registration and notification policies have occupied an increasingly prominent place on state and federal crime control agendas, much policy discourse has occurred amid a dearth of reliable and relevant national data. This article presents the results of a study designed to broaden knowledge about the registered sex offender (RSO) population and the content of the nation’s sex offender registries. The authors analyze state-level RSO populations across several dimensions, including levels of public Internet disclosure, RSO residential status, supervision status, and assigned risk levels. Findings suggest significant interstate variation across these dimensions, and indicate that the nation’s RSO population is considerably more diverse and complex than commonly portrayed in the media and in policy debates. Implications for federal and state policies aimed at reforming the nation’s sex offender registries are discussed.

Calling the Police in Instances of Family Violence: Effects of Victim–Offender Relationship and Life Stages
Crime & Delinquency 2014;60 34-59

This study examines the impact of the victim–offender relationship on the willingness of victims to call the police in family violence incidents, with particular attention to the life stages of victims. Different stages of life have an impact on the decision to report criminal victimization. Family composition and the roles of family members change over life stages. When children are young, adults in the household have child-rearing responsibilities that shape the interpersonal dynamics in the household. When children approach adulthood and parents age, the parents may become more dependent on the children in a variety of ways. These changes in family composition and organization across life stages can affect the normative and cost–benefit considerations in deciding whether to call the police or not. Yet studies of responses to family violence have virtually ignored the influence of life stage on the decision to call the police. In addition, most studies of victims of family violence focus on marital or intimate relationships and fail to examine any other relationships in the family. It is not clear whether the findings from the general literature on domestic violence are applicable to intergenerational family violence. This article examines the impact of a broader range of victim–offender relationships across three age groups representing different life stages. The authors find that the factors explaining victims’ decisions to report victimization to the police vary across life stages.

A Game of Catch-Up? The Offending Experience of Second-Generation Immigrants
Bianca E. Bersani

Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared with their first-generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist, namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis—born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second-generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from nine waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer, and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second-generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second-generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared with native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.

The Aftermath of Criminal Victimization: Race, Self-Esteem, and Self-Efficacy
Matt DeLisi, Gloria Jones-Johnson, W. Roy Johnson, and Andy Hochstetler

Criminal victimization is associated with a cascade of negative effects on social development, but research has primarily focused on children and adolescents. Less is known about the effects of criminal victimization on psychosocial functioning of Americans age 50 and older. Relying on individual-level data from Waves 1 and 2 of a longitudinal panel study of older adults—the Americans’ Changing Lives study—the current study explored the effects of criminal victimization on self-esteem and self-efficacy separately for Whites and African Americans. Net of the effects of employment, income, depression, age, sex, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, criminal victimization reduced self-esteem and self-efficacy among African Americans but not Whites. However, Whites who had greater difficulty dealing with their victimization evinced lower subsequent self-esteem. Greater difficulty with their victimization was also modestly associated with subsequent self-efficacy for Whites and African Americans. Implications and directions for future research are provided.

Females in the Juvenile Justice System: Who Are They and How Do They Fare?
Charlotte Lyn Bright, Patricia L. Kohl, and Melissa Jonson-Reid

Increasing numbers of female youth involved in the juvenile justice system highlight the need to examine this population. This study enumerates distinct profiles of risk and protection among juvenile court-involved females, examining young adult outcomes associated with these profiles. Administrative data on 700 participants were drawn from multiple service sectors in a Midwest metropolitan region. Latent class and Pearson chi-square analyses were used. Five unique classes were identified; these classes were associated with young adult outcomes. One class of impoverished African American females was most likely to experience problematic young adult outcomes but least likely to have received juvenile justice services. Findings highlight the heterogeneity in the female juvenile court population and discrepancies between service needs and service receipt.

First Offenders With Psychosis: Justification of a Third Type Within the Early/Late Start Offender Typology
Josanne D. M. van Dongen, Nicole M. L. Buck, and Hjalmar J. C. van Marle

Within the early/late start typology of offenders with schizophrenia, a third type, first offenders (FO), has been proposed. The aim of this study was to examine the justification of this first offender type. Retrospective file study consisted of 97 early starters (ES), 100 late starters, and 26 FO. Variables in different domains were scored. There were significant differences between the groups within the domains life functioning, abuse and family-related problems, psychiatric functioning, substance misuse, antisocial personality, and offense characteristics. Most differences were between the ES and FO. The existence of the first offender type is justified by the present findings. These findings underscore the importance of offender subtyping for better offender treatment interventions.

A Method for Internal Benchmarking of Criminal Justice System Performance
Greg Ridgeway and John M. MacDonald

Although sex offender registration and notification policies have occupied an increasingly prominent place on state and federal crime control agendas, much policy discourse has occurred amid a dearth of reliable and relevant national data. This article presents the results of a study designed to broaden knowledge about the registered sex offender (RSO) population and the content of the nation’s sex offender registries. The authors analyze state-level RSO populations across several dimensions, including levels of public Internet disclosure, RSO residential status, supervision status, and assigned risk levels. Findings suggest significant interstate variation across these dimensions, and indicate that the nation’s RSO population is considerably more diverse and complex than commonly portrayed in the media and in policy debates. Implications for federal and state policies aimed at reforming the nation’s sex offender registries are discussed.