Journal of Criminal Justice 42(1)

Journal of Criminal Justice, January 2014: Volume 42, Issue 1

False positive and false negative rates in self-reported intentions to offend: A replication and extension
M. Lyn Exum, Diana Bailey, Eric L. Wright

Purpose: Studies of criminal decision making commonly rely on college students’ self-reported intentions to commit a hypothetical offense. The current study evaluates the predictive validity of these intentions to offend. Methods: Undergraduate students (n = 726) read a fictitious but seemingly realistic newspaper article describing an illegal opportunity for acquiring digital music files, and then reported their intentions to act upon the opportunity. Afterward, participants’ real world attempts to follow-through on the opportunity were monitored covertly. Results: Findings reveal that participants who reported weak intentions to offend typically refrained from the act, resulting in a low false negative rate. However, those who reported strong intentions to offend also typically refrained from the act, thereby resulting in a high false positive rate. Conclusions: These findings suggest that while participants’ predictions of criminal abstention are generally accurate, their predictions of criminal involvement are more problematic. Such faulty intentions have important implications for research on criminal decision making.

Foundation for a temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior and criminal justice system involvement
Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn

Background: Temperament has been shown to be associated with behavior for millennia but has not been explicitly used in a theory of crime. Methods: This state-of-the-art review incorporates theory and research from over 300 studies from developmental psychology, psychiatry, genetics, neuroscience, and criminology to introduce a temperament-based theory of antisocial conduct with criminal justice system implications. Findings: Two temperamental constructs—effortful control and negative emotionality—are significantly predictive of self-regulation deficits and behavioral problems in infancy, in toddlerhood, in childhood, in adolescence, and across adulthood. Conclusion: Unlike other theories that focus merely on explaining problem behaviors, our temperament approach also explains negative and aversive interactions with criminal justice system practitioners and associated maladjustment or noncompliance with the criminal justice system. A program of research is also offered to examine and test the theory.

A New Look into Broken Windows: What Shapes Individuals’ Perceptions of Social Disorder?
Joshua C. Hinkle, Sue-Ming Yang

Purpose: This study compares perceptual and observational measures of social disorder to examine the influence of observable levels of disorder in shaping residents’ perceptions of social problems on their street. Methods: This study uses regression models utilizing data from a survey of residents, systematic social observations and police calls for service to explore the formation of perceptions of social disorder. Results: We find little correspondence between residents’ perceptual and researchers’ observational measures of social disorder, suggesting that residents form perceptions of social disorder differently than do outsiders to their community. However, researchers’ observations of physical disorder were found to strongly influence residents’ perceptions of social disorder. Findings also suggest that people with different demographic backgrounds and life experiences may perceive the same social environment in very different ways. Conclusions: The results add to a growing literature suggesting that social disorder is a social construct, rather than a concrete phenomenon. Moreover, we suggest that the linkage between physical disorder and residents’ perceptions of social disorder might provide an avenue for police to address residents’ fear of crime while avoiding some of the criticisms that have been leveled against programs targeting social disorder.

Formal and informal control views in China, Japan, and the U.S.
Shanhe Jiang, Eric G. Lambert, Jianhong Liu, Toyoji Saito

Purpose: This study compared and contrasted the views of formal and informal crime control among college students from China, Japan, and the U.S., and examined the correlates behind the views. Methods: Using the same questionnaire, this study collected data from 1,275 completed surveys in the three nations. Results: The study revealed that both Chinese and Japanese respondents evaluated formal and informal control and their combination in crime control as more important than American counterparts did. The variable trust in police was a predictor of attitudes toward formal control and the mix of formal and informal control in all the three nations. Demographics in the U.S. were more important factors than in China and Japan in predicting the respondents' ranking of the importance of formal control and informal control and their combination in crime control. Conclusions: This is the first empirically comparative study of the perceived importance of formal and informal mechanisms in crime prevention and control in China, Japan and the U.S. The study found both similarities and differences in the perceived importance and reasons behind them. More research is needed in the future.

Genetic and environmental influences on the co-occurrence of early academic achievement and externalizing behavior
Jamie Newsome, Danielle Boisvert, John Paul Wright

Purpose: Several studies have observed a relationship between academic achievement and externalizing behaviors, both of which are predictors of delinquency and criminal behavior in adulthood. There is, however, no consensus on an explanation for their co-occurrence. One perspective is that both emerge as a result of a common underlying factor. This study investigates the degree to which the same genetic and environmental factors account for the co-occurrence of these two outcomes. Methods: The sample consists of twins (N = 360) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. Bivariate genetic analyses were conducted to assess the genetic and environmental influence on the relationship between academic achievement and externalizing behaviors during kindergarten. Results: The covariation was due primarily to common shared environmental factors (55-87%), followed by common genetic (8-44%) and nonshared environmental factors (1-13%). Conclusions: Both early academic achievement and externalizing behaviors are partially influenced by the same genetic and environmental factors. The large proportion of covariance attributed to shared environmental influences suggests that identifying and targeting shared environmental factors in prevention and intervention strategies may improve both behavior and academic achievement.

Do school disciplinary policies have positive social impacts? Examining the attenuating effects of school policies on the relationship between personal and peer delinquency
Gregory M. Zimmerman, Carter Rees

Purpose: Empirical research has yet to demonstrate that strict school disciplinary policies deter student misconduct. However, underlying the null and negative effects observed in prior research may be competing social impacts. What is missing from prior research is an acknowledgement that the deviance amplification effects of criminogenic risk factors may be partially offset by the general deterrence effects of strict school sanctions. Methods: Using data from the school administrator questionnaire, the in-school interview, and the in-home interview from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study employs logistic hierarchical models to investigate whether strict school sanctions condition the relationship between personal and peer smoking, drinking, and fighting. Results: Results indicate that the effects of peer smoking, drinking, and fighting on corresponding respondent delinquency are attenuated in schools with strict sanction policies for these behaviors. Conclusions: Results suggest that school policies can aid in preventing crime in unanticipated ways, for example, by reducing the crime-inducing effects of having delinquent peers. Prior research may therefore be unintentionally discounting the general deterrence effects of school disciplinary policies by neglecting the moderating mechanisms through which these policies operate.

Psychopathic traits and offending trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood
Evan C. McCuish, Raymond Corrado, Patrick Lussier, Stephen D. Hart

Purpose: Measures of adolescent psychopathy have yet to be examined in offending trajectory studies. This may explain why identifying etiological differences between individuals following high-rate and moderate-rate offending trajectories has remained elusive. The current study used the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) to examine psychopathic traits and offending trajectories within a sample of incarcerated offenders. Methods: Convictions were measured for Canadian male (n = 243) and female (n = 64) offenders at each year between ages 12 and 28. Semi-parametric group based modeling identified four unique trajectories: adolescence-limited (AL) (27.3% of sample), explosive-onset fast desister (EOFD) (30.6%), high-rate slow desister (HRSD) (14.6%), and high frequency chronic (HFC) (27.5%). Findings: Both a three and a four factor model of psychopathy were tested, and both factor structures were positively and significantly associated with the HRSD and HFC trajectories. Regarding individual factors of psychopathy, the ‘Antisocial’ factor of the PCL:YV was the only individual dimension significantly associated with membership in high-rate compared to moderate-rate offending trajectories. Conclusions: Psychopathic traits appear more commonly present amongst individuals who follow chronic versus moderate offending trajectories. Implications for early intervention and risk management of offenders are discussed.

Inked into Crime? An Examination of the Causal Relationship between Tattoos and Life-Course Offending among Males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development
Wesley G. Jennings, Bryanna Hahn Fox, David P. Farrington

Purpose: There have been a number of prior studies that have investigated the relationship between tattoos and crime with most documenting evidence of an association. Specifically, prior research often suggests that individuals with tattoos commit more crime, are disproportionately concentrated in offender and institutionalized populations, and often have personality disorders. Having said this, the bulk of the prior research on this topic has been correlational. Methods: In the current study, we rely on data from a prospective longitudinal study of 411 British males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and employ propensity score matching to determine if the link between tattoos and crime may in fact be causal. Results: Results suggest that having tattoos is better considered as a symptom of another set of developmental risk factors and personality traits that are both related to tattooing and being involved in crime rather than as a causal factor for predicting crime over the life-course. Conclusions: Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.