Crime & Delinquency 61(4)

Crime & Delinquency, May 2015: Volume 61, Issue 4

Arab Americans’ Confidence in Police
Ivan Y. Sun and Yuning Wu

Although the September 11 attacks have drawn much law enforcement attention to Arab Americans, research on Arab Americans’ perceptions of police is almost nonexistent. Using survey data collected from 850 Arab Americans who resided in the Detroit metropolitan area, this study empirically examined the effects of demographic characteristics, personal experience, social attitudes and values, and social trust, of confidence in local police. The results indicated that the majority of Arab Americans had a great deal or a lot of confidence in police. Arab Americans’ confidence in police was significantly related to their social attitudes and trust, such as conservative outlook, confidence in the legal system, respect for authority, and trust in neighbors. Arab Americans’ background characteristics and experience had a weak effect on their confidence in police. More empirical research is warranted to assess Arab Americans’ evaluations of local police along more indicators of police performance.

Explaining Leniency: Organizational Predictors of the Differential Treatment of Men and Women in Traffic Stops
Amy Farrell

Scholars have devoted significant attention to measuring the degree to which a driver’s personal characteristics affect police decisions to stop and sanction motorists. Following the pattern of research on gender and enforcement practices more broadly, traffic stop studies show that female drivers are less likely to receive formal sanctions such as a citation following routine traffic stops. Despite the consistency of these findings across places and times, we know little about the conditions under which female traffic violators are granted leniency. This article extends research on the effect of driver and stop characteristics on gender disparities in traffic enforcement decisions by examining 149,888 stops from across 37 communities in Rhode Island with different local needs and variation in police organizational culture and structure. The findings confirm that although women are less likely to be cited than men, community-level variation in police agency culture and structure, particularly the proportion of female officers in an agency, moderates the effect of driver sex on stop outcomes.

Substance Use, Personality, and Inhibitors: Testing Hirschi’s Predictions About the Reconceptualization of Self-Control
Shayne Jones, Donald R. Lynam, and Alex R. Piquero

Hirschi argues that self-control has not been properly measured or conceptualized in previous research. He insists that personality-based notions of self-control should be replaced with inhibitors/social bonds as the key construct, which in turn influence whether an individual considers the full range of costs associated with an antisocial behavior. This analysis supplements a small literature exploring this new conceptualization of self-control, specifically by examining substance use. The findings indicate that inhibitors/bonds do exert an effect on substance use but are not mediated by perceived costs. Furthermore, different variants of impulsivity continue to exert independent influences, with some mediated by perceived costs. Finally, perceived rewards not only influenced substance use directly but were also the most consistent mediator of inhibitors/bonds and impulsivity.

The Benefits of Keeping Idle Hands Busy: An Outcome Evaluation of a Prisoner Reentry Employment Program
Grant Duwe

This study evaluated the effectiveness of EMPLOY, a prisoner reentry employment program, by examining recidivism and postrelease employment outcomes among 464 offenders released from Minnesota prisons between 2006 and 2008. As outcome data were collected on the 464 offenders through the end of June 2010, the average follow-up period was 28 months. Observable selection bias was minimized by using propensity score matching to create a comparison group of 232 nonparticipants who were not significantly different from the 232 EMPLOY offenders. Results from the Cox regression analyses revealed that participating in EMPLOY reduced the hazard ratio for recidivism by 32% to 63%. The findings further showed that EMPLOY increased the odds of gaining postrelease employment by 72%. Although EMPLOY did not have a significant impact on hourly wage, the overall postrelease wages for program participants were significantly higher because they worked a greater number of hours. The study concludes by discussing the implications of these findings.

A Test of the Routine Activities and Neighborhood Attachment Explanations for Bias in Disorder Perceptions
Danielle Wallace

“Neighborhood disorder” refers to how people perceive neighborhoods as unsafe and disorganized. However, certain disorder cues may indicate disorder to some residents but not to others. There are many explanations for disorder perception bias, though few have been tested. This article uses data on 4,721 residents in 100 neighborhoods in Seattle to assess two explanations for biases: neighborhood attachment and routine activities. Using fixed-effect models, this article shows that neighborhood attachment and routine activities provide additional insight into disorder perceptions. Hanging out with teens and engaging in protective neighborhood activities, like watching neighbors’ property, have a strong positive influence on disorder perceptions. This study concludes by discussing alternative explanations for disorder perception bias and their impact on disorder theory as a whole.

Trust in the Police: The Influence of Procedural Justice and Perceived Collective Efficacy
Justin Nix, Scott E. Wolfe, Jeff Rojek, and Robert J. Kaminski

Tyler’s process-based model of policing suggests that the police can enhance their perceived legitimacy and trustworthiness in the eyes of the public when they exercise their authority in a procedurally fair manner. To date, most process-based research has focused on the sources of legitimacy while largely overlooking trust in the police. The present study extends this line of literature by examining the sources of trust in the police. In particular, emerging research has revealed that neighborhood context influences attitudes toward the police but much less attention has been given to exploring the role individuals’ perceptions of their neighborhood play in shaping such evaluations. Therefore, the present study considers whether individuals’ perceptions of collective efficacy serve as a social-psychological cognitive orientation that influences levels of trust in the police. Using data from a recently conducted mail survey of a random sample of 1,681 residents from a metropolitan city, we find that procedural justice evaluations are a primary source of trust in the police. At the same time, however, level of perceived collective efficacy is positively associated with trust even after accounting for procedural justice. The findings suggest that police procedural fairness is vitally important to establishing trust from the public but peoples’ cognitive orientation toward their neighborhood context partially shapes the level of trustworthiness they afford to the police.