Using multiple data sources and methods, this book involves a micro-historical analysis of the nature of change and stability in homicide situations over time. It focuses on the homicide situation as the unit of analysis, and explores similarities and differences in the context of homicide for different social groups. For example, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we investigate whether various social groups (e.g., men vs women, teenagers vs adults, strangers vs intimates, Blacks vs Whites) kill under qualitatively different circumstances and, if so, what are the characteristics of these unique profiles. The analysis of over 400,000 US homicides is supplemented with qualitative analysis of narrative accounts of homicide events to more fully investigate the structure and process underlying these lethal situations. Our findings of unique and common homicide situations across different time periods and social groups are then discussed in terms of their implications for
Third party policing represents a major shift in contemporary crime control practices. As the lines blur between criminal and civil law, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies but is shared between a wide range of organisations, institutions or individuals. The first comprehensive book of its kind, Third Party Policing examines this growing phenomenon, arguing that it is the legal basis of third party policing that defines it as a unique strategy. Opening up the debate surrounding this controversial topic, the authors examine civil and regulatory controls necessary to this strategy and explore the historical, legal, political and organizational environment that shape its adoption. This innovative book combines original research with a theoretical framework that reaches far beyond criminology into politics and economics. It offers an important addition to the world-wide debate about the nature and future of policing and will prove invaluable to scholars
Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991, after which something unprecedented occurred. The crime level declined to a level not seen since the 1960s. This revised edition of The Crime Drop in America focuses first on the dramatic drop in crime rates in America in the 1990s, and then, in a new epilogue, on the patterns since 2000. The separate chapters written by distinguished experts cover the many factors affecting crime rates: policing, incarceration, drug markets, gun control, economics, and demographics. Detailed analyses emphasize the mutual effects of changes in crack markets, a major focus of youth violence, and the drop in rates of violence following decline in demand for crack. The contrasts between the crime-drop period of the 1990s and the period since 2000 are explored in the new epilogue, which also reviews major new developments in thinking about the causes and control of crime.
Using multiple data sources and methods, this book involves a micro-historical analysis of the nature of change and stability in homicide situations over time. It focuses on the homicide situation as the unit of analysis, and explores similarities and differences in the context of homicide for different social groups. For example, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we investigate whether various social groups (e.g., men vs women, teenagers vs adults, strangers vs intimates, Blacks vs Whites) kill under qualitatively different circumstances and, if so, what are the characteristics of these unique profiles. The analysis of over 400,000 US homicides is supplemented with qualitative analysis of narrative accounts of homicide events to more fully investigate the structure and process underlying these lethal situations. Our findings of unique and common homicide situations across different time periods and social groups are then discussed in terms of their implications for
What Works in Corrections, first published in 2006, examines the impact of correctional interventions, management policies, treatment and rehabilitation programs on the recidivism of offenders and delinquents. The book reviews different strategies for reducing recidivism and describes how the evidence for effectiveness is assessed. Thousands of studies were examined in order to identify those of sufficient scientific rigor to enable conclusions to be drawn about the impact of various interventions, policies and programs on recidivism. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were performed to further examine these results. This book assesses the relative effectiveness of rehabilitation programs (e.g., education, life skills, employment, cognitive behavioral), treatment for different types of offenders (e.g. sex offenders, batterers, juveniles), management and treatment of drug-involved offenders (e.g., drug courts, therapeutic communities, outpatient drug treatment) and punishment
This book examines the control of problem behaviour in prison from a situational crime prevention perspective. Following the success of situational crime prevention in community settings, Richard Wortley argues that the same principles can be used to help reduce the levels of assault, rape, self-harm, drug use, escape and collective violence in our prison systems. This pioneering new study proposes a two-stage model of situational prevention that moves beyond traditional opportunity-reduction: it attempts to reconcile the contradictory urges to control prison disorder by 'tightening-up' and hardening the prison environment on the one hand, and 'loosening-off' and normalising it on the other. Combining a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of existing research with original investigation and ground-breaking conclusions, Situational Prison Control will be of great interest to academics and practitioners both in the areas of correction and crime prevention more generally.
Why are females rarely antisocial and males antisocial so often? This key question is addressed in a fresh approach to sex differences in the causes, course and consequences of antisocial behaviour. The book presents findings from a landmark investigation of 1,000 males and females studied from ages 3 to 21 years. It shows that young people develop antisocial behaviour for two main reasons. One form of antisocial behaviour is a neurodevelopmental disorder afflicting males, with low prevalence in the population, early childhood onset and subsequent persistence. The other form of antisocial behaviour, afflicting females as well as males, is common and emerges in the context of social relationships. The book offers insights about diagnosis and measurement, the importance of puberty, the problem of partner violence and the nature of intergenerational transmission. It puts forward an agenda for research about both neurodevelopmental and social influences on antisocial behaviour.
This book presents a study of co-offering relations among youths under twenty-one suspected of criminal offences in Stockholm during 1991–5. In total, the study includes just over 22,000 individuals suspected of around 29,000 offences. Jerzy Sarnecki employs the methods of network analysis which makes it possible to study the ties, social bonds, interactions, differential associations and connections that are central to many of the sociologically oriented theories on the aetiology of crime. Up to now, network analysis has been used only rarely in the criminological context. The book discusses many aspects of Stockholm's delinquent networks such as the existence of delinquent gangs and a criminal underworld, the durability of delinquent relations, and the choice of co-offenders with respect to sex, age, residential location, ethnic background and earlier delinquent experience. It also considers the effects of societal intervention on criminal networks. This unique study will appeal to
Austin Lovegrove examines the sentencing of offenders appearing on multiple offences and how judges, having fixed a prison sentence for each offence, determine an overall sentence for each offender. Analysing judges' verbal protocols for sentencing problems and sentences for fictitious cases, he is able to offer, first, a model of judicial sentencing in the form of a decision strategy comprising working rules deduced from the given responses of judges as they attempted to apply sentencing law, and, second, a numerical guideline in the form of an algebraic model quantifying the application of the working rules. On the basis of this empirical data, Dr Lovegrove furthers understanding of the nature and place of intuition in sentencing and of how the cumulation of sentence can be integrated into a system of proportionality related to the seriousness of single offences.
This book examines the control of problem behaviour in prison from a situational crime prevention perspective. Following the success of situational crime prevention in community settings, Richard Wortley argues that the same principles can be used to help reduce the levels of assault, rape, self-harm, drug use, escape and collective violence in our prison systems. This pioneering new study proposes a two-stage model of situational prevention that moves beyond traditional opportunity-reduction: it attempts to reconcile the contradictory urges to control prison disorder by 'tightening-up' and hardening the prison environment on the one hand, and 'loosening-off' and normalising it on the other. Combining a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of existing research with original investigation and ground-breaking conclusions, Situational Prison Control will be of great interest to academics and practitioners both in the areas of correction and crime prevention more generally.
What Works in Corrections, first published in 2006, examines the impact of correctional interventions, management policies, treatment and rehabilitation programs on the recidivism of offenders and delinquents. The book reviews different strategies for reducing recidivism and describes how the evidence for effectiveness is assessed. Thousands of studies were examined in order to identify those of sufficient scientific rigor to enable conclusions to be drawn about the impact of various interventions, policies and programs on recidivism. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were performed to further examine these results. This book assesses the relative effectiveness of rehabilitation programs (e.g., education, life skills, employment, cognitive behavioral), treatment for different types of offenders (e.g. sex offenders, batterers, juveniles), management and treatment of drug-involved offenders (e.g., drug courts, therapeutic communities, outpatient drug treatment) and punishment
Third party policing represents a major shift in contemporary crime control practices. As the lines blur between criminal and civil law, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies but is shared between a wide range of organisations, institutions or individuals. The first comprehensive book of its kind, Third Party Policing examines this growing phenomenon, arguing that it is the legal basis of third party policing that defines it as a unique strategy. Opening up the debate surrounding this controversial topic, the authors examine civil and regulatory controls necessary to this strategy and explore the historical, legal, political and organizational environment that shape its adoption. This innovative book combines original research with a theoretical framework that reaches far beyond criminology into politics and economics. It offers an important addition to the world-wide debate about the nature and future of policing and will prove invaluable to scholars
This 2005 book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime in the burgeoning information society. Bringing together views from leading national and international authorities, Hedieh Nasheri explains the historical and theoretical background surrounding issues of economic espionage, trade secret theft and industrial spying and its impact on society. She looks at legislative history, the progression of electronic and corporate criminal behavior by introducing the concept of information theft and computer crimes, exploring its definition, its identification and its development within criminology. Nasheri presents an assessment of the state of economic espionage activities within a criminological context and based on that assessment addresses areas where additional action is required. The book also draws attention to a variety of issues raised by economic espionage and technological development. It draws on a variety of disciplines, including criminology
Whenever police officers come into contact with citizens there is a chance that the encounter will digress to one in which force is used on a suspect. Fortunately, most police activities do not involve the use of force. But those that do reflect important patterns of interaction between the officer and the citizen. This book examines those patterns. It begins with a brief survey of prior research, and then goes on to present data and findings. Among the data are the force factor applied - that is, the level of force used relative to suspect resistance - and data on the sequential order of incidents of force. The authors also examine police use of force from the suspect's perspective. In analyzing this data they put forward a conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.
Prisoner Reentry and Crime in America is intended to shed light on a question that fuels the public's concern about the number of returning prisoners. What are the public safety consequences of the fourfold increase in the number of individuals entering and leaving the nation's prisons each year? Many have speculated about the nexus between prisoner reentry and public safety. Journalistic accounts of the reentry phenomenon have painted a picture of a tidal wave of hardened criminals coming back home to resume their destructive lifestyles. Law enforcement officials have attributed increases in violence in their communities to the influx of returning prisoners. Politicians have recommended policies that keep former prisoners out of high crime neighborhoods in the belief that crime would be reduced. The chapters in this book address these issues and suggest policies that will keep released prisoners from committing new crimes.
Street criminals live in a dangerous world, but they cannot realistically rely on the criminal justice system to protect them from predation by fellow lawbreakers; they are on their own when it comes to dealing with crimes perpetrated against them and often use retaliation as a mechanism for deterring and responding to victimization. Although retaliation lies at the heart of much of the violence that plagues many inner-city neighborhoods across the United States, it has received scant attention from criminologists. As a result, the structure, process, and forms of retaliation in the real world setting of urban America remain poorly understood. Street Justice: Retaliation in the Criminal World, first published in 2006, explores the face of modern day retaliation from the perspective of currently active criminals who have experienced it first hand, as offenders, victims, or both.
Violent crime in America shot up sharply in the mid-1980s and continued to climb until 1991, after which something unprecedented occurred. The crime level declined to a level not seen since the 1960s. This revised edition of The Crime Drop in America focuses first on the dramatic drop in crime rates in America in the 1990s, and then, in a new epilogue, on the patterns since 2000. The separate chapters written by distinguished experts cover the many factors affecting crime rates: policing, incarceration, drug markets, gun control, economics, and demographics. Detailed analyses emphasize the mutual effects of changes in crack markets, a major focus of youth violence, and the drop in rates of violence following decline in demand for crack. The contrasts between the crime-drop period of the 1990s and the period since 2000 are explored in the new epilogue, which also reviews major new developments in thinking about the causes and control of crime.
The United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This 2006 book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.
Policing Gangs in America describes the assumptions, issues, problems, and events that characterize, shape, and define the police response to gangs in America today. The focus of this 2006 book is on the gang unit officers themselves and the environment in which they work. A discussion of research, statistical facts, theory, and policy with regard to gangs, gang members, and gang activity is used as a backdrop. The book is broadly focused on describing how gang units respond to community gang problems, and answers such questions as: why do police agencies organize their responses to gangs in certain ways? Who are the people who elect to police gangs? How do they make sense of gang members - individuals who spark fear in most citizens? What are their jobs really like? What characterizes their working environment? How do their responses to the gang problem fit with other policing strategies, such as community policing?
Race and Policing in America is about relations between police and citizens, with a focus on racial differences. It utilizes both the authors' own research and other studies to examine Americans' opinions, preferences, and personal experiences regarding the police. Guided by group-position theory and using both existing studies and the authors' own quantitative and qualitative data (from a nationally representative survey of whites, blacks, and Hispanics), this book examines the roles of personal experience, knowledge of others' experiences (vicarious experience), mass media reporting on the police, and neighborhood conditions (including crime and socioeconomic disadvantage) in structuring citizen views in four major areas: overall satisfaction with police in one's city and neighborhood, perceptions of several types of police misconduct, perceptions of police racial bias and discrimination, and evaluations of and support for a large number of reforms in policing.
