Journal of Experimental Criminology最新文献

Objectives

To test whether news images from George Floyd protests and the Capitol insurrection affected feelings about the police differentially depending on respondents’ primary news environment.

Methods

This mixed-methods explanatory study combines national digital survey experiments and structural topic modeling of open-ended questions. Survey experiments were conducted on 990 respondents in June 2020 and 1,174 respondents in January 2021, at the heights of the events.

Results

Respondents who get their news primarily from conservative sources had substantially warmer feelings about the police after seeing Floyd protest images but not after seeing Capitol insurrection images. Topic modeling and qualitative analysis suggest this group distinctively perceived Floyd protesters as “looters” and “rioters,” discussing the Floyd protests but not the insurrection in terms of racialized chaos and anxiety.

Conclusions

Findings suggest asymmetric affective dynamics driven by the racialized anxiety of consumers of mainly conservative news when seeing images of racial justice protests.

Abstract

Objectives

Examine how crimes against person (CAP) calls are spatially patterned around the Spurs’ arena and city. Using data from 2019–2021, we investigate the geospatial clustering of CAP calls when fans are and are not present.

Methods

CAP calls are separated by Spurs game day or not, home or away games, and before or during COVID-19. ArcGIS Pro is used to run optimized hot spot analyses and hot spot comparisons with similarity values and spatial fuzzy kappa for each comparison.

Results

The largest hot spot is around the Riverwalk and downtown, and days with home games do not increase hot spots around the arena. There are significant changes in hot spots across the city on days with home versus away games and during COVID-19 versus before.

Conclusions

The location of stadiums/arenas and proximity to popular areas with micro-facilities should be considered in sports and crime research and crime prevention discussions.

Objectives

This study aimed to assess whether the receptivity of prison officers toward academy training differs based on their views of rehabilitation and punitiveness.

Methods

Using the potential outcomes framework, we quasi-experimentally examine the role of newly-hired officers’ (N = 519) rehabilitative and punitive attitudes on post-training self-efficacy in performing the occupational duties of a prison officer. Linear regression models are estimated to examine the effects of the two attitudes on the confidence to perform the job of a prison officer.

Results

Results indicate that officers espousing greater rehabilitative views leave academy training with greater confidence in completing all roles associated with the job, while officers holding stronger punitive views leave with substantially less confidence.

Conclusions

There are substantial differences in what rehabilitative-oriented prison officers get out of academy training versus punitively oriented officers.

Objectives

The police-mental health co-response model has garnered support from both police and healthcare workers. It is praised for its ability to enhance crisis de-escalation, increase in-service referrals, and reduce pressure on the criminal legal system, and its cost-effectiveness relative to hospitalization. This study examines whether the police-mental health co-response team actually achieves the proclaimed goals in a suburban-rural community.

Methods

A total of 2809 police shifts were randomized into treatment and control groups, with 140 participants recruited. The study analyzed and compared the numbers of police contacts and mental health calls for service among participants in treatment and control shifts over a 12-month follow-up period.

Results

The results revealed no significant difference in the number of subsequent police contacts between the treatment and control groups. The findings were further complemented by insights gathered from focus group interviews.

Conclusions

In summary, implementing a co-response team shows promise for assisting individuals experiencing a mental health crisis, especially for police departments and service providers in non-urban areas. However, to achieve long-term effectiveness, it is crucial to identify strategies that reduce treatment attrition and enhance subsequent outcomes.

Objective

To examine disparities in court fines between American Indian and White convicted persons before and after a South Dakota reform, which trained court personnel to only assess fines that could be reasonably paid by defendants.

Methods

A natural experiment design using criminal records for the universe of convictions for misdemeanor arrests between July 2011–June 2015 (N = 34,700) was employed to estimate the association between the reform and the likelihood of a fine using logistic regression.

Results

The reform was associated with reductions in fine assessments in urban (OR, 0.63; CI, 0.39–1.04); rural, no Indian Country (OR, 0.24; CI, 0.18–0.33); and rural, part-Indian Country counties (OR, 0.24; CI, 0.18–0.32). Both American Indian and White persons experienced these reductions, but the reductions were smaller for American Indians in urban counties.

Conclusions

A defendant’s race and features of local court structures may shape judicial behavior in response to monetary sanctioning reforms.

Abstract

Objectives

To study the effect of Conditional Release (C.R.) on recidivism. To compare this effect along different recidivism risk levels, to evaluate whether risk-assessment-based policies that prioritize people in lower risk categories for release maximally reduce recidivism.

Methods

We use a dataset of 22,726 incarcerated persons released from 87 prison centers in Spain. We apply multiple causal inference methods including Propensity Score Matching (PSM), Inverse Propensity score Weighting (IPW), and Augmented Inverse Propensity Weighting (AIPW) to determine Average Treatment Effect (ATE) of C.R. on recidivism.

Results

Granting C.R. significantly reduces violent and general recidivism risks.

Conclusions

The results suggest that C.R. can promote a safe and supervised return to the community while protecting public safety. ATEs obtained through causal inference methods suggest that granting C.R. exclusively to low-risk inmates does not lead to the maximum reduction of recidivism, and hence we propose alternatives to be studied further.

Objectives

A high number of street dealers operate in the Red Light District in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. To displace the dealers, the Municipality of Amsterdam installed text-based light projections in a street attracting a high number of dealers.

Methods

To evaluate the intervention, we did a pre-post analysis of video footage from two CCTV cameras located in the street. In total, we analyzed 765 one-minute segments of footage from before and after the implementation.

Results

The implementation was followed by a four percentage point reduction in street dealers. However, the estimated effect shows fragileness with wide confidence intervals and a p-value just below 0.05, and a Bayesian robustness analysis suggests that the intervention was not associated with the outcome.

Conclusions

Analyzing CCTV-footage offers a unique avenue for evaluating small scale interventions in open-air drug markets. While we observed a decrease in the presence of dealers, the intervention still needs further validation.

Abstract

Abstract