Sunday, November 16, 2014

Journal of Criminal Justice 42(6)

Journal of Criminal Justice, November 2014: Volume 42, Issue 6

Antisocial Traits Murdered the Code of the Street in a Battle for Respect 
Matt DeLisi

Implementing Intelligence-Led Policing: An Application of Loose-Coupling Theory
Jeremy G. Carter, Scott W. Phillips, S. Marlon Gayadeen
Purpose: This research is intended to inform a knowledge gap in the literature and present the first national findings related to intelligence-led policing adoption among state and local agencies. Specific practices are identified to inform scholars and practitioners regarding intelligence-led policing behaviors. Methods: Original survey research from a federally-funded project is gleaned to explore intelligence-led policing adoption through a loose-coupling theoretical perspective. Negative binomial and logistic regression models are employed to identify predictive relationships. Results: Agencies nationwide appear to be closely following the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan recommendations to enhance information sharing. Consistent with the Department of Homeland Security’s Target Capabilities List is also observed. Agency size appears to have a significant effect on key organizational information sharing behaviors. The findings are tempered due to limitations in the research design. Conclusions: Local agencies appear to be tightly-coupled with the recommendations put forth in the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan in their efforts to adopt intelligence-led policing. Agency size appears to enhance adoption across most dependent metrics. This research progresses the limited evidence base and progress regarding this emerging policing philosophy.

The influence of strain on law enforcement legitimacy evaluations
Frank V. Ferdik
Purpose: While law enforcement officers have the state-sanctioned authority to use force as a way to ensure citizen obedience with the law, research has found that when private citizens evaluate the police as legitimate, they are more likely to comply with legal demands and cooperate with the police. Although procedural justice has shown to be a highly significant predictor of perceived police legitimacy, research has found other correlates of this outcome, including ethnic identity, low self-control and structural economic disadvantage. To date, no study has explored whether strain influences perceptions of the legitimacy of law enforcement. Methods: A series of linear regression equations was estimated using survey data collected from a convenience sample of college students to determine the effect of strain on perceived police legitimacy. Results: Even after controlling for procedural justice, strain exerted a negative and statistically significant influence on law enforcement legitimacy evaluations. Conclusions: Police officers are encouraged to interact with citizens in procedurally just manners and to also consider people's strain levels when enforcing the law.

A biosocial analysis of the sources of missing data in criminological research
Joseph A. Schwartz, Kevin M. Beaver
Purpose: Failing to deal with missing data patterns effectively may result in biased parameter estimates and ultimately may produce inaccurate results and conclusions. The vast majority of criminological research has addressed this issue with listwise deletion (LD) and multiple imputation (MI) techniques. Identifying the specific covariates that directly contribute to patterns of missingness is highly important in deciding which technique to use. One of the more surprising omissions from the identified list of covariates is the potential role of genetic influences in the development of missingness. Methods: The current study addresses this gap in the literature by estimating genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and the nonshared environmental (E) influences on missingness across measures of delinquency and self-control within a longitudinal sample of twin and sibling pairs. Results: The results indicated that genetic influences explain a significant portion of the variance in missing values related to both delinquency and self-control. Conclusions: Current methodological techniques aimed at addressing missing data should be amended to take genetic influences into account. Such modifications and the implications of the findings for future research are discussed.

Causes and correlates of prison inmate misconduct: A systematic review of the evidence
Benjamin Steiner, H. Daniel Butler, Jared M. Ellison
Purpose: Inmate rule violations or “misconducts” reflect offending within a prison, and this study involved a systematic review of studies of the causes/correlates of inmate misconduct published between 1980 and 2013. Methods: An exhaustive search of relevant high impact journals yielded 98 studies of causes/correlates of inmates misconduct published between 1980 and 2013. The final models from these studies were examined to assess the impact of the predictor variables on misconduct. Results: Findings revealed that predictor variables reflecting inmates’ background characteristics (e.g., age, prior record), their institutional routines and experiences (e.g., prior misconducts), and prison characteristics (e.g., security level) all impact misconduct. Conclusions: Researchers should apply general theories of crime and deviance (e.g., control) that can incorporate all of the empirically relevant inmate and prison characteristics to the study of offending in prison (misconduct). Researchers should also examine the sources of variability in the effects of predictor variables across studies.

On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research
J.C. Barnes, Brian B. Boutwell, Kevin M. Beaver, Chris L. Gibson, John P. Wright
Purpose: Many criminological scholars explore the social causes of crime while giving little consideration to the possibility that genetic factors underlie the observed associations. Indeed, the standard social science method (SSSM) assumes genetic influences do not confound the association between X and Y. Yet, a nascent stream of evidence has questioned the validity of this approach by revealing many criminological variables are at least partially affected by genetic influences. As a result, a substantial proportion of the literature may be misspecified due to uncontrolled genetic factors. No effort has been made to directly estimate the extent to which genetic confounding has biased the associations presented in criminological studies. Methods: The present study seeks to address this issue by drawing on simulated datasets. Results: clusions Results: gest genetic confounding may account for a negligible portion of the relationship between X and Y when their correlation (ryx) is larger than the correlation between genetic factors and Y (i.e., ryx > ryg). Genetic confounding appears to be much more problematic when the correlation between X and Y is in the moderate-to-small range (e.g., ryx = .20) and the genetic effect is in the moderate-to-large range (e.g., ryg ≥ .30).

Criminal epidemiology and the immigrant paradox: Intergenerational discontinuity in violence and antisocial behavior among immigrants
Michael G. Vaughn, Christopher P. Salas-Wright, Brandy R. Maynard, Zhengmin Qian, Lauren Terzis, Abdi M. Kusow, Matt DeLisi
Purpose: A growing number of studies have examined the immigrant paradox with respect to antisocial behavior and crime in the United States. However, there remains a need for a comprehensive examination of the intergenerational nature of violence and antisocial behavior among immigrants using population-based samples. Methods: The present study, employing data from Wave I and II data of the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), sought to address these gaps by examining the prevalence of nonviolent criminal and violent antisocial behavior among first, second, and third-generation immigrants and compare these to the prevalence found among non-immigrants and each other in the United States. Results: There is clear evidence of an intergenerational severity-based gradient in the relationship between immigrant status and antisocial behavior and crime. The protective effect of nativity is far-and-away strongest among first-generation immigrants, attenuates substantially among second-generation immigrants, and essentially disappears among third-generation immigrants. These patterns were also stable across gender. Conclusion: The present study is among the first to examine the intergenerational nature of antisocial behavior and crime among immigrants using population-based samples. Results provide robust evidence that nativity as a protective factor for immigrants wanes with each successive generation.

The impact of neighborhood crime levels on police use of force: An examination at micro and meso levels
Hoon Lee, Michael S. Vaughn, Hyeyoung Lim
Purpose: Neighborhood contextual factors have gained a considerable amount of attention, relating neighborhood crime levels to police force. Prior research mainly examined the relationship either at the police district level or at the city level. The current study intends to investigate the relationship at lower levels of geographic aggregation. Methods: Using Geographic Information System techniques, the current study utilized four radial buffer zones around each use of force incident location to measure the impact of neighborhood violent criminal activities at the micro level on the level of police force used. In addition, hierarchical linear modeling using neighborhood crime rates within police command areas allowed for a comparison study to measure the impact of neighborhood criminal activities at the meso level on police force. Results: The current study found that neighborhood crime levels have a significant and positive effect of increasing the level of police force used at the micro level. Conclusions: The current study supports the work of Black and Smith, concluding that more training and supervision are required for officers working in high crime areas.

Correctional destabilization and jail violence: The consequences of prison depopulation legislation
Jonathan W. Caudill, Chad R. Trulson, James W. Marquart, Ryan Patten, Matthew O. Thomas, Sally Anderson
Purpose: This study explored the effects of prison depopulation on local jail violence through a general systems perspective – where an abrupt shift in the processing of offenders had the potential to create ripple effects through other organizations – of the criminal justice system. Methods: In 2011, California passed the Criminal Justice Realignment legislation aimed to reduce prison population by making low-level felony offenders ineligible for state incarceration and diverting those already in state prison for the included offenses from state to county-level community supervision once paroled. This study incorporated bivariate and negative binomial regression analyses to model officially-recorded county jail panel data to estimate the effects of state prison depopulation on California county jails. Results: Findings demonstrated support for the general systems framework as there was a significant decrease in jail utility in the bivariate analysis and a significant increase in jail violence in the multivariate analysis associated with passage of California’s prison depopulation legislation. Conclusions: The results supported the notion of an interconnected criminal justice system. Policy implications include the consequences of increased violence on jail operations, the potential for a cadre of habitual offenders, and generalizing these findings to the community.

Sex industry exposure over the life course on the onset and frequency of sex offending
Christina Mancini, Amy Reckdenwald, Eric Beauregard, Jill S. Levenson
Purpose: Research has examined pornography use on the extent of offending. However, virtually no work has tested whether other sex industry experiences affect sex crime. By extension, the cumulative effect of these exposures is unknown. Social learning theory predicts that exposure should amplify offending. Separately, the developmental perspective highlights that the timing of exposure matters. Methods: Drawing on retrospective longitudinal data, we first test whether exposure during adolescence is associated with a younger age of onset; we also examine whether adulthood exposure is linked with greater frequency of offending. Results: Findings indicate that most types of adolescent exposures as well as total exposures were related to an earlier age of onset. Exposure during adulthood was also associated with an overall increase in sex offending, but effects were dependent on “type.” Conclusion: There are nuances in the effect of sex industry exposure on offending patterns. Implications of results are discussed.

Do the adult criminal careers of African Americans fit the “facts”?
Elaine Eggleston Doherty, Margaret E. Ensminger
Purpose: A major gap in the criminal career research is our understanding of offending among African Americans, especially beyond early adulthood. In light of this gap, this study describes the criminal career patterns of a cohort of African American males and females. Methods: This paper uses official criminal history data spanning ages 17 to 52 from the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort of 1,242 urban African American males and females. We use basic descriptive statistics as well as group-based modeling to provide a detailed description of the various dimensions of their adult criminal careers. Results: We find cumulative prevalence rates similar to those for African Americans from national probability sample estimates, yet participation in offending extends farther into midlife than expected with a substantial proportion of the cohort still engaged in offending into their 30s. Conclusions: The descriptive analyses contribute to the larger body of knowledge regarding the relationship between age and crime and the unfolding of the criminal career for African American males and females. The applicability of existing life course and developmental theories is discussed in light of the findings.

Dissecting the relationship between mental illness and return to incarceration
James A. Wilson, Peter B. Wood
Purpose: We examine all releases to parole supervision in a single state over a period of four years to consider how a diagnosis of mental illness is associated with return to incarceration. Methods: We use survival methods and Cox regression to understand patterns of and influences on return to prison. Our measure of mental illness is based on in-prison clinical diagnoses. Data include a rich set of administrative variables with demographic, criminal history and institutional controls. Results: Our findings suggest that (1) there is a statistically significant relationship between having a DSM diagnosis and reincarceration, (2) substance-related disorders account for most of that relationship, and (3) there are some important variations among types of disorders examined. Conclusions: Research that examines mental illness and recidivism without controlling for substance use disorders/problems is likely to be uninformative and misleading. Findings provide qualified support for the notion that programming addressing criminogenic risks and needs may be as important, or more so, than therapeutic programming focusing on mental illness when recidivism reduction is the goal.

General strain theory, exposure to violence, and suicide ideation among police officers: A gendered approach
Stephen A. Bishopp, Denise Paquette Boots
Purpose: A wide body of research has demonstrated that police officers are profoundly affected by their exposure to violence and the traumatic events viewed commonly as part of their job duties. Faced with stress, officers learn to adapt by incorporating coping techniques. Methods: The current study utilizes Agnew's general strain theory to explain occurrences of the most dangerous maladaptive coping technique: suicide ideation. Male and female police officers from three large cities in Texas were surveyed (n = 1,410). Results: The present study utilizes logistic regression techniques, finding that strain has a positive and direct effect on male officers suicide ideation risk, but not for female police. Moreover, depression has a mediating effect on strain and suicide ideation for both genders. Conclusions: Some critical differences in suicide ideation outcomes between male and female police officers are reported. Policy implications concerning retention and recruiting are also discussed.

Cops and cameras: Officer perceptions of the use of body-worn cameras in law enforcement
Wesley G. Jennings, Lorie A. Fridell, Mathew D. Lynch
Purpose: There has been a recent surge in the adoption of and media attention to the use of body-worn cameras in law enforcement. Despite this increase in use and media attention, there is little to no research on officer perceptions of body-worn cameras. Methods: This study relies on baseline data of officer perceptions toward body-worn cameras collected from surveys administered to Orlando Police officers who are participants in a randomized experiment evaluating the impact of body-worn cameras (Taser AXON Flex) in law enforcement. Results: Results suggest that police officers are, by and large, open to and supportive of the use of body-worn cameras in policing, they would feel comfortable wearing them, and that they perceive a potential for benefits of body-worn cameras in improving citizen behavior, their own behavior, and the behavior of their fellow officers. Conclusions: Officers are generally supportive of body-worn cameras, and they hold perceptions that these devices can be beneficial in positively affecting relevant outcomes. Study limitations and implications are also discussed.

Assessing stereotypes of adolescent rape
Monica Williams, Bill McCarthy
Purpose: This study examined adolescent rape in light of two popular stereotypes of young rapists. The “deficit” view emphasizes various sexual, psychological, or social problems, whereas the “entitlement” perspective highlights instrumental motivation, confidence, and gender-based privileges. Methods: The study analyzed data on adolescent males from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). We used rare events logistic regression analysis to test the associations between rape and sexual abuse, sexual activity, personality and social attributes, and control variables. Results: Findings indicated notable associations between adolescent rape and variables emphasized by both stereotypes: net of a range of controls, a history of sexual abuse and low sexual self-control were associated with rape, but rape was also positively associated with self-esteem. We found no significant relationships between adolescent rape and sexual precociousness, number of sexual partners, using sex as a coping mechanism, social isolation, impulsivity, or narcissism. Conclusions: These findings suggest that both the deficit and entitlement stereotypes hold some merit for understanding why some young men rape.

In the eye of the beholder? An examination of the inter-rater reliability of the LSI-R and YLS/CMI in a correctional agency
Michael Rocque, Judy Plummer-Beale
Purpose: To examine the inter-rater reliability of two risk assessment tools: The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI). Methods: Two identical experiments are reported. For both studies, a random sample of 10 offenders were interviewed and videotaped with each tool (totaling 20 offenders). The tapes were then shown to a random selection of 20 raters (for a total of 40 raters) employed at a state agency. The fully-crossed design allowed each of the raters to rate the each of the cases, resulting in 200 total risk score observations for each tool. Inter-rater reliability analyses were then conducted. Results: The LSI-R demonstrated adequate to fair reliability, with certain domains showing lower reliability. Overall, the LSI-R had an ICC of .65. The YLS/CMI demonstrated higher reliability (ICC of .78). In addition, for the LSI-R study, comparisons were made between staff raters who work in a facility versus those in the community (e.g., probation officers). For the YLS/CMI study, comparisons were made between incarcerated offenders versus probationers. Neither comparison yielded consistent differences. Conclusions: The YLS/CMI is generally reliable. The LSI-R showed less reliability. However, each study showed certain domains with less than ideal reliability.

Revisiting broken windows theory: A test of the mediation impact of social mechanisms on the disorder–fear relationship
Jacinta M. Gau, Nicholas Corsaro, Rod K. Brunson
Purpose: Broken windows theory predicts that disorder signals a lack of neighborhood control, sparks fear of crime, and sets off a chain reaction ultimately resulting in crime. Support has been found for the disorder–fear link, but the present study argues that this link is actually intended to be indirect—perceived loss of control is what should cause fear. Methods: Hierarchical linear models and structural equation models test four hypotheses regarding whether social cohesion and expectations for social control mediate the disorder–fear relationship. Results: Results support partial mediation. Conclusion: Results suggest confirmation of a portion of broken windows theory, in that disorder may inspire fear partially as a result of its detrimental impact on neighborhood cohesion and shared expectations for social control.

The Effects of Suspect Characteristics on Arrest: A Meta-Analysis
Daniel J. Lytle
Purpose: Synthesis research on the correlates of arrest has had a long history of analysis in police decision making research. Yet, much of this line of synthesis research has found mixed results and has been unable to definitively state whether relationships exist between suspect demographic characteristics, race, gender, age, and ethnicity, and arrest. This research attempts to clear this confusion created by previous synthesis attempts particularly. Methods: Meta-analysis was used to generate weighted mean effect sizes of the effect of race, gender, age, and ethnicity on arrest. Effect sizes were weighted using the inverse variance method and random effects modeling was also used. Moderator analyses were also performed. Results: Black individuals, males, and Hispanic individuals were significantly more likely to be arrested than white individuals, females, and non-Hispanic individuals. These effects persisted across the majority of moderator categories. Age was not a significant predictor of arrest. Conclusions: The results here bring some degree of order to a large amount of arrest decision making literature. The findings confirm the results of a previous meta-analysis on race and arrest and also expand upon that research. These results expand “what we know” about the effect of race on arrest.

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