Asian Journal of Criminology最新文献

This research explores the structural connections between delinquent youth groups, youth gangs, and adult-based secret societies in an economically deprived neighbourhood in Singapore, using the concept of ‘triadization’ to analyze how youth gang members are socialized into a broader criminal subculture. Drawing on ethnographic research, the findings reveal a complex, symbiotic relationship between neighbourhood-based groups, youth gangs, and adult criminal organizations. This relationship enables youth members to gain social support, access learning structures for upward criminal mobility, and secure alternative pathways to status and material rewards. However, the progression from street-level delinquency to organized crime is not linear or straightforward; rather, it is mediated by structural inequalities, particularly along racial lines, during the transition from youth gangs to adult criminal networks. While race has been a key analytical variable in global gang research, its role within multi-ethnic secret societies remains underexplored. This research examines the dynamics of the uneven distribution of roles and risks within multi-ethnic secret societies and the implications for social mobility within criminal subcultures, highlighting the intersections of race, social capital, and criminal pathways in multi-ethnic contexts.

We extend scarce research on the age-crime relationship involving Global South countries by investigating age-arrest patterns in the African countries of Botswana and Namibia. Our analysis included comparisons of Botswana age-crime distributions with (a) the reverse J-shaped invariance curve proposed by Hirschi and Gottfredson; (b) US age-arrest curves; and (c) Taiwan and South Korea age-arrest curves. On the one hand, the findings revealed considerable divergence in Botswana age-crime patterns compared with the HG invariance projection. On the other hand, there was considerable similarity of Botswana age-arrest distributions with those observed in Taiwan and South Korea (i.e., collectivist countries) as reported recently by Steffensmeier and colleagues. Within all these nations, we find “older” age-crime curves yielded by low prevalence of adolescent and young-adult crime combined with higher midlife rates (30–49), as opposed to US age patterns and the HG invariance premise that display high adolescent rates in combination with smaller young-adult rates and shrinking midlife rates. Future directions for studying “why” societies differ in age-crime patterns entail going beyond the study of adolescence (only) to also address what happens in peoples’ lives past adolescence—i.e., what pressures, strains, temptations, circumstances, and crime opportunities are faced by peoples during the 30 s and 40 s, the midlife stage.

Research on how different workplace variables relate to perceptions of organizational justice for police officers is almost absent from the literature. To fill this void, the current study examined the impact of input into decision-making, formalization, instrumental communication, and organizational support on the distributive and procedural justice views of police officers from the Haryana State of India. Based on the social exchange theory’s principle of reciprocity, these variables should result in favorable views of the organization, and, in turn, should raise views of the police organization’s justice efforts. Measures of distributive justice, procedural justice for promotions, and procedural justice for evaluations were created. Input, formalization, support, and communication had significant associations with higher distributive justice and procedural justice for evaluation views. Formalization, communication, and support had significant associations with higher views of procedural justice for promotions, but input had a nonsignificant relationship. The findings from this study offer police administrators a low cost and practical solution for enhancing organizational justice views of officers by increasing the level of input, formalization, support, and communication.

Lynching is an act of assault in which a mob executes punishment of a suspect through physically attacking and torturing the suspect without trial and following legal procedures. As such acts of violence pose a serious threat to justice, human rights, and the rule of law. A couple of recent studies have explored the significance of anger, police legitimacy, and political encouragement in relation to support for vigilantism. This study also corroborates with these earlier findings. However, in addition, it contributes in finding moderating effect of police lawfulness in the relationship between righteous anger and support for lynching. A multistage random sampling procedure was employed to collect data from university students for the cross-sectional survey. Our moderation analysis shows that righteous anger, police lawfulness, and political encouragement significantly affect support for lynching. However, contrary to previous findings, trait anger does not affect such support. Moreover, only the moderating effect of police lawfulness turns out to be significant. Thus, our findings suggest that in order to prevent and reduce support for lynching, police need to be lawful and incorrupt, and religious-political leaders also need to be cooperative in de-escalating acts of lynching.

This study presents a comprehensive content analysis of comparative criminological research published in Social Sciences Citation Index journals, with a particular focus on Asian countries. It explores the integration of translational and transnational approaches, which emphasize the practical application of criminological findings across different national contexts. By analyzing research articles published over the past 5 years, this study identifies key patterns in how criminological theories and interventions are applied and adapted across various Asian countries, highlighting the diverse cultural, legal, and institutional frameworks within the region. The findings reveal the extent to which comparative studies incorporate global–local dynamics and address issues of generalizability versus context specificity in criminological research. Notably, this research underscores the growing need for updated data and more diverse cross-national comparisons beyond commonly studied countries like China, the USA, and the UK. This study contributes to ongoing discussions on the global applicability of criminological theories and interventions, advocating for future synthesis studies that will further elucidate the cultural and national factors influencing comparative criminological outcomes. By offering insights into both translational and transnational strategies, this study provides valuable recommendations for policymakers, practitioners, and scholars interested in advancing criminological research in a globalized world.

This study explores officers’ lived experiences during the pandemic across urban, suburban, and rural settings in the Philippines. It focuses on how the size of the community, personal stress generators, personal stress alleviators, and organizational stress alleviators relate to police officer stress. Our analyses of the answers provided by 5,752 police officers from the Philippines, collected in 2022, reveal a substantial degree of homogeneity with which police officers’ concern for family, emotional exhaustion, and use of alcohol correlate with perceived increases in stress across urban, suburban, and rural contexts. Officers report being less stressed when they participate in more spare-time activities (i.e., spending time with family, using electronic devices, and getting enough sleep). Some organizational stress alleviators (e.g., the perceived organizational success in dealing with the challenges of the pandemic and providing personal protective equipment), only contribute to perceived decreases in stress in rural contexts.

While studies have examined the correlates of institutional trust across Asian countries, few studies have analyzed public attitudes toward two major social control institutions, the police and courts, in the Philippines. This study fills this gap in the literature by exploring the connections between social trust, institutional performance, media exposure and consumption, and trust in the police and courts. Using recent survey data from the Asian Barometer Survey, regression models were employed to assess and compare whether these factors are predictive of police and court trustworthiness. Results reveal the importance of social trust and institutional performance in predicting Filipinos’ trust in the police and courts. However, media exposure and consumption were largely ineffective in predicting police and court trust. Given the Philippines’ unique historical and political context, these findings contribute to existing literature and provide implications for future research and policy.

This study proposes that police officers’ supervisors might be unfairly treated by their subordinates. Supervisors would respond in a forgiving or revengeful manner to unfair treatment by a subordinate, and their responses might influence their subordinates’ effectiveness. Thus, this study investigated the relationship between perceived unfair treatment by a subordinate (PUTS), supervisor forgiveness and revenge response, and subordinate effectiveness, and tested the moderating effect of supervisor affective organizational commitment. A group-based survey was conducted in a Taiwanese law enforcement organization, and 93 supervisors and 389 subordinates returned questionnaires. The multi-level analysis showed that (a) PUTS was negatively associated with supervisory forgiveness; (b) supervisory forgiveness was positively related to job performance, cooperative behavior, and proactive behavior; (c) supervisory forgiveness mediated the relationship between PUTS, job performance, and proactive behavior; and (d) supervisors with high affective organizational commitment were more likely to act revengefully toward PUTS than to those with low affective organizational commitment. The findings showed that PUTS is a meaningful construct and that supervisor forgiveness is critical to a positive social exchange between police officers and their supervisors.

This study examines the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fraud victimization in Hong Kong, providing valuable insights beyond the Western context. Drawing on general strain theory and routine activity theory, this research explores the influence of economic recession at the local and adjacent societal levels, as well as residential duration (refers to relative time spent at residences), on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. Utilizing 10 years (120 months) of monthly police-recorded victimization data, this study employs various methodologies, including ARIMA forecasting, single-group interrupted time series analysis (ITSA), and Poisson regression, to explore the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. The ARIMA framework reveals an unexpected and significant increase in fraud victimization during the COVID-19 period, surpassing the predicted levels. The ITSA results demonstrate that the pandemic had a short-term and long-term effect on fraud victimization in Hong Kong. To further understand the factors contributing to this change, a Poisson regression analysis is conducted. The findings highlight the positive and significant impact of residential duration and the unemployment rate in mainland China on fraud victimization, aligning with the propositions of routine activity theory and general strain theory. Limitations and policy implications at both the local and international levels are discussed.

Utilizing 336 documents of administrative punishment decisions on fabricating COVID-19 rumors in Zhejiang province between December 2019 and December 2022, this article explores the effects of three sets of factors on the severity of administrative punishment. Empirical results suggest that administrative punishment for COVID-19 rumors is an ad hoc administrative measure only utilized in a state of emergency when the Chinese government implemented the “dynamic zero-case” policy. While it did not directly contravene existing Chinese laws, such a type of punishment practice represented the expansive trend of administrative punishment power. It caused tension with the current legal system. The expansion of administrative power manifested through the broadened scope of punishable false speech, lowered criteria of public order disruption, and lowered punishable criteria of offenders’ intent. Given that the Chinese society (as any other societies) periodically enters a state of emergency, it is necessary to consider how to maintain a dynamic balance between the abnormal exercise of administrative power and the protection of individual’s basic rights when the emergency reappears. This article advances the understanding of the dynamics surrounding administrative punishment for rumors and furnishes policy and legal recommendations for employing administrative measures in rumor control during national emergencies.