Criminology & Public Policy最新文献

This article explores the role of cognitive transformations in the process of desistance from crime. Based on our own and others’ subsequent research, clearly, some aspects of our initial theorizing warrant revisiting and adjustment. The discussion describes changes to ideas about the sequencing of various types of cognitive shifts, suggests the importance of emotional processes in tandem with changes in perspective, and highlights the need to move out of the comfort zone of crime itself when thinking about redefinitions that support desistance. Yet, a consistent notion remains that social and broader structural factors are deeply implicated—directly and indirectly—in all aspects of the change process. This includes the important area of “derailments” from a pattern of forward progress, where additional processual research is needed. The discussion concludes with the argument that individualistic policies and programs centered on cognitive deficits requiring correction are likely to be limited in their effectiveness.

Research Summary

The United States is at a turning point in the history of corrections. Suddenly and surprisingly, the era of mass incarceration ended around 2010. Since that time, prison populations, public punitiveness, and get-tough rhetoric have declined. A challenging question remains, however: Now what? Doing more of the same is foolish but likely. Prison reform is inhibited by the twin realities that states have limited budgets and have existing prisons that are rarely shuttered. New thinking is needed to move beyond these restrictions. One guide for a cognitive shift is Steven Pinker's Enlightenment Now in which he argues that sustained improvement in human well-being in the United States and across the globe is due to the Enlightenment principles of reason, science, humanism, and progress. In this context, an “enlightened corrections” is possible in which policies and practices are evaluated by the four ideals articulated by Pinker. As one example, mass imprisonment is shown to be irrational, unscientific, inhumane, and bereft of a future. By contrast, more promising policies seek to nourish offenders by offering redemption and by using community supervision to build quality relationships that provide a means for targeting risk factors for intervention.

Policy Implications

The key policy implication is the proposal to place prison reform within the Biden Administration's support for infrastructure improvement. Funded by the federal government, a “Build Back Better Prison Experiment” would be undertaken in which 10 experimental prisons—designed from a clean slate and selected through a competition—would be created and evaluated. The goal is to establish prisons that are rational in their planning, are evidence based, improve offenders’ lives, and foster a new era of progress in American corrections.

Research summary

There is growing evidence that some proactive policing strategies have shown promising results in reducing crime. Most of these strategies are generally applied separately to address specific components of criminal behavior, while the involvement in the crime itself may be caused by different factors. This raises the question of whether an integrative approach that addresses these factors could be an appropriate approach to reduce involvement in the crime. Furthermore, most of these policing strategies have been applied toward regular crime; this leaves us with the question of whether these strategies would show similar results when political offenses are involved as well. Our study focuses on the political offense of stone-throwing in East Jerusalem, usually by Palestinian teenage boys. We applied an integrative approach in one of the Palestinian neighborhoods in East Jerusalem, which included strategies such as focused deterrence, place-based policing, cognitive behavioral therapy, diversion to nonenforcement tracks, and interventions at the community level. We found a large and significant reduction in the targeted neighborhood compared to similar Palestinian neighborhoods. We have not found evidence of displacement, but rather evidence of significant diffusion of crime-control benefits.

Policy implications

The results of the study suggest that an integrative approach that addresses the risks and needs of minority youth can help reduce their future involvement in political offenses. Furthermore, the implementation of promising strategies in the wider context of policing regular crimes may also be effective in responding to political offenses.

Research Summary

Place-based conditions are well-established predictors of police behavior, but the literature lacks nuanced examinations of how place-based factors influence officer decision making, especially by citizen race/ethnicity and from officers’ perspectives. We investigate officers’ accounts regarding how they weigh place-based factors into their arrest decisions of Black, Hispanic, and White drug suspects in Newark, New Jersey from 2011 to 2016. Our analysis of 438 filed drug arrest reports revealed that most arrestees, especially Black Americans, became susceptible to heightened police scrutiny because of their presence in stigmatized, criminalized areas. Although place-based stigma and individualized prohibited behavior coalesced to guide police contacts with Hispanic and White residents, officers made contacts with Black Americans based on a lower legal basis, often irrespective of their individualized behavior in stigmatized places.

Policy Implications

Officers’ differential, racialized reliance on place-based conditions supports the need for effective, evidence-based, community-centered social services that reduce crime, overreliance on police, and opportunities for discriminatory policing.

Research Summary

Although broken windows theory has had strong influence on policy and practice in policing, there are still many questions and debates about the nature of disorder itself and, particularly, how people perceive and define it. The current study aims to examine whether Black and White residents living on the same street segments in Baltimore City, Maryland perceive similar levels of social and physical disorder. We find strong and significant differences between Black and White residents after controlling for key sociodemographic variables and street-level covariates.

Policy Implications

Our findings suggest that police efforts to reduce disorder are less likely to be noticed by Black residents and that any benefits from targeting disorder may vary across places depending on the racial composition of streets. In this context, police must recognize racial differences in perceptions of disorder when developing disorder policing interventions.

Research Summary

We use an altmetric aggregator, the Altmetric Attention Score (AAS), to rank the influence of articles published in Criminology & Public Policy from the journal's inception through July 31, 2022. We also rank articles based on specific AAS components, namely, Twitter, news, and policy document mentions. Last, we regress AASs on article-level predictors, including research category, funding, open access type, and time since publication. With few exceptions, policing scholarship far outweighs other categories of research in terms of AAS-measured societal impact.

Policy Implications

In contrast to bibliometrics (e.g., citation counts), altmetrics measure scholarship's societal impact, including its influence on policy. Since Criminology & Public Policy was initially created with the intention of influencing crime-related policy, it is important to gauge the extent to which that has occurred. Other policy-oriented (or perhaps all) criminal justice/criminology journals should evaluate their influence via altmetrics.

Research Summary

This study examines the extent to which citywide racial and ethnic disparities in arrests are driven by a subset of places within cities. Data are drawn from six U.S. cities from 2014 to 2019. Results indicate that arrests are strongly concentrated within a few block groups, for all race and ethnicities in all cities. Coupled with higher rates of arrests for Blacks and (in some cities) Hispanics compared to Whites and other racial groups, this means that a few places in every city are responsible for driving citywide racial and ethnic disparities in arrests. These arrest hot spots demonstrate very high year-to-year stability. There is a strong relationship between crime and arrest hot spots, making crime hot spots key drivers of citywide racial and ethnic disparities in arrests.

Policy Implications

Our results indicate that changes to arrest patterns in most parts of a city will have little impact on citywide racial and ethnic disparities in arrests. At the same time, an intense focus on reducing arrests in hot spots may yield outsized reductions in population-level racial and ethnic disparities, while being especially feasible due to their limited scope. Place-based and group-based interventions at these locations may entail the dual benefit of reduced racial disparities in arrests along with enhanced public safety.

Research Summary

Using data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study, we estimated associations between adolescent–police contact and several measures of school absenteeism. Adolescents self-reported absences due to health and due to truancy; police contact was linked to both. Youth reporting police contact were absent approximately 2.2 more days in total than those not reporting contact. Police contact was also associated with a 10 percentage point increase in the probability that absenteeism concerns precipitated a parent–teacher conversation.

Policy Implications

Extensive literature documents a “school to prison pipeline” in which aggressive school discipline exposes students to law enforcement. Less attention has been paid to how police contact outside of school shapes educational experiences. Recognizing and excusing absenteeism driven by police contact can provide students with flexibility needed to maintain educational progress. Such a policy may also signal to students stopped by police that school personnel can serve as sources of support and facilitate linkages to outside resources.

Research Summary

Research examining death penalty deterrence has been characterized as inconclusive and uninformative. The present analysis heeds a recommendation from prior research to examine single-state changes in death penalty policy using the synthetic control method. Data from the years 1979–2019 were used to construct synthetic controls and estimate the effects of death penalty moratoriums on homicide rates in Illinois, New Jersey, Washington, and Pennsylvania. Moratoriums on capital punishment resulted in nonsignificant homicide reductions in all four states.

Policy Implications

Inconsistent with a deterrence hypothesis, no evidence of a deterrent effect attributable to death penalty statutes was found. Given the gravity and finality of state-sanctioned execution, it is important that policy makers consider the weight of evidence of the death penalty's capacity to deter, as well as issues of equity, justice, and fairness, in their decision making about death penalty policy.

Research summary

For centuries and even millenia, street lighting has been among the most ubiquitous capital investments that societies have made in public safety. Recent research by Chalfin et al. (2021)—the first randomized experiment that studies the effect of street lighting on public safety—demonstrated that a tactical street lighting intervention in New York City's public housing developments led to a 36% reduction in serious criminal activity during nighttime hours in the 6 months after the new lights were rolled out. But do the effects endure? In this study, we examine the longer-term effects of the same street lighting intervention using 3 years of outcome data. We show that the effects of the lighting intervention persist over time. Critically, the intervention reduced crime without eventually leading to a larger number of arrests.

Policy implications

As street lighting requires a large up-front capital investment, the attractiveness of enhanced lighting to policy makers depends critically on whether its public safety benefits will be long lasting. These findings provide some assurance that the impact of street lighting can endure beyond their initial installation. Because the lighting intervention reduced crime without increasing the number of arrests, it did not reduce crime by widening the net of the criminal justice system.