Journal of Criminal Justice最新文献

Purpose

Identifying high-risk adolescents prone to homicidality, linked to serious criminal activities and homicide, offers vital avenues for homicide prevention.

Methods

This study analyzed data from 1596, 1596, and 1526 students at baseline, one-year, and two-year follow-ups, respectively, drawn from the Chinese Early Adolescent Cohort study. Based on Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory, predictors of adolescent homicidality were categorized into individual, family, and school and peer levels. Five machine learning methods were utilized to construct prediction models for homicidality risk and to pinpoint predictive factors.

Results

Logistic regression models using only significant features effectively predicted adolescent homicidality and new onsets in the short term, as well as homicidal trajectories throughout early adolescence. Key factors identified included suicidal ideation, emotional abuse, life satisfaction, physical violence, and verbal violence, with suicidal ideation and emotional abuse emerging as the most critical predictors.

Conclusions

This study successfully developed risk-predictive models for adolescent homicidality using machine learning, emphasizing suicidal ideation and emotional abuse as primary predictors. These findings highlight the importance of targeted interventions focused on these key variables for the early prevention of adolescent homicide.

Purpose

Individual and neighborhood level effects on distances separating offenders' residences from their crime locations were compared across property, personal, and drug crimes as well as all offenses combined.

Methods

Police and court data for 2529 felony arrestees referred to a County Prosecutor's Office in the northern mid-west were examined. Multilevel generalized least squares models were estimated with offenders nested within block groups.

Results

Residence/crime distances were generally shorter for rape, assault, and homicide relative to burglary, breaking and entering, theft, and robbery. Concentrated economic disadvantage was inversely related to distances for all crimes combined, and for drug crimes and assaults specifically. Significant individual level effects on distances for specific offenses included race (robbery, drugs, assault), prior arrests (theft), offense seriousness (thefts and drug crimes), and victim-related factors (robberies and assaults), but not always in expected directions.

Conclusions

Relative to offender demographics (age, sex, race), incorporating more proximate hypothesized effects on residence/crime distances in related studies (criminal priors, offense severity, acting alone versus in a group, neighborhood SES, etc.) will be useful for informing crime prevention strategies. More proximate effects on these distances might partially or fully mediate demographic effects.

Purpose: In this research, I investigated the link between collective mobility patterns—specifically inward population flow and residential mobility—and changes in reported gun violence incidents in Baltimore City. I also examined whether this relationship differs among various types of gun violence. Furthermore, I explored the potential moderating influence of collective mobility patterns on the relationship between neighborhood hotspot coverage and occurrences of gun violence.

Methods: The data were sourced from a blend of mobile device location data, Part 1 crime data from the Baltimore Police Department, the American Community Survey, and the zoning map of Baltimore. I used Poisson regression with Moran Eigenvector Spatial Filtering (MESF) for the analysis.

Results: Inward population flow consistently exhibited a positive relationship with gun violence regardless of its subtype, whereas residential mobility demonstrated significant influence primarily on firearm-related robbery incidents. Moderation analysis indicated that depending on the type of gun violence being assessed, either inward population flow or residential mobility could attenuate its association with neighborhoods' crime hotspot coverage.

Conclusions: Understanding collective mobility patterns is crucial for comprehending the spread of gun violence. Such insights can assist law enforcement agencies in refining hotspot policing strategies and adapting police tactics accordingly.

Purpose

Research into adolescent co-offending has predominantly focused on individual differences in co-offender selection, with less attention to diversity in offending behavior. Research suggests that offenders with a violent history may be less desirable as co-offenders, potentially leading to homophily based on offending behavior. This study aims to examine homophily based on violent offending behavior among co-offenders.

Methods

We applied social network analysis to a Belgian co-offending network (N = 33,815) using police data and introduced a measure of individual violence level based on offense types. We hypothesized that suspects tend to co-offend with suspects who share a similar violence level, and examined the relationship between network structure and the suspects' violence level.

Results

The results demonstrate a significant degree of homophily based on violence, with a more pronounced effect among non-violent suspects. This effect was consistent across different age groups.

Conclusions

Our findings reveal behavioral homophily in violent offending behavior and highlight the importance of including older suspects to fully understand network dynamics. Intervention strategies should consider the broader criminal social environment to prevent the escalation of violence. Future research should employ dynamic network analyses to better understand the influence of violent behavior in co-offending networks over time.

Purpose

To explore perceptions of court legitimacy and the correlates of these perceptions, as well as assess whether the correlates of court legitimacy vary by race and ethnicity.

Methods

Regression analysis of data from an online survey (N = 593) of U.S. adults, closely matching Census demographics with an overrepresentation of racial and ethnic minorities.

Results

Theoretical antecedents of legitimacy (procedural justice, distributive justice, and effectiveness) predict higher levels of perceived court legitimacy. There are few differences in the antecedents of legitimacy by respondents' race or ethnicity.

Conclusions

Key correlates of court legitimacy mirror those of police legitimacy and are also largely invariant across race and ethnicity. Black respondents reported the lowest levels of perceived court legitimacy in general. Future research should further explore the reasons for this difference.

Purpose

Longstanding debates in policing regard the optimal method of patrolling the community. One question that often gets raised is if patrol officers should be deployed in single-crewed (i.e., one-officer) or double-crewed (i.e., two-officer) units? As part of the present research, we empirically examine the call-related output of patrol units by crewed status in Oakland, California.

Methods

Drawing upon calls for service data from the Oakland Police Department, we retrospectively reconstructed the patrol environment to assess the call-related output of single- versus double-crewed units. We also explored potential variation in the output of double-crewed units as a function of pairing characteristics (e.g., regularly partnered versus not regularly partnered).

Results

Our results revealed that single- and double-crewed units handled similar numbers of calls for service, although sometimes of potentially different types, in similar amounts of time. Our results also revealed that the output of double-crewed units was similar regardless of the pairing characteristics examined.

Conclusions

Whereas many police agencies deploy their patrol officers in single-crewed units, other police agencies deploy their patrol officers in double-crewed units. Overall, we find limited variation among the output of patrol units by crewed status. We discuss our results in the context of research and practice.

Purpose

Due to instances of excessive use of force by police and in recognition of the importance of building positive police-community relationships, policymakers have urged police to become more guardian-oriented (i.e., prioritizing community safety and relationships) and less warrior-oriented (i.e., prioritizing physical control and fighting crime). The purpose of this study was to examine whether community members think police should be guardian- or warrior-oriented and how they view police in their community.

Methods

Young adult participants from Prolific Academic (N = 436) self-reported their perceptions of police in an online survey.

Results

Participants preferred police to have more of a guardian than warrior orientation and thought police are not as guardian-oriented as they should be. Further, if police did not meet guardian expectations, participants had more negative perceptions of police legitimacy.

Conclusions

Expectations for police behavior may influence police legitimation and, within the context of police reform, community members support the call for police to be more guardian-oriented by prioritizing community safety and building relationships. Fostering a guardian orientation in police is particularly important for police that are interested in promoting perceptions of legitimacy among the communities they serve.

Purpose

Examining the functional form of the relationships between arrest rate signal and perceptions of risk and reward among active young offenders previously adjudicated of a serious offense.

Methods

Generalized additive mixed models were used to analyze data from 745 individuals in the Pathways to Desistance study.

Results

Increasing arrest rate had a positive but diminishing nonlinear effect on risk and a negative but approximately linear effect on rewards. A saturation point was observed in the influence of arrest rate on perceptions of risk, where further increases in arrest rate did not correspond to appreciable changes in perceptions of risk.

Conclusions

The findings suggest a potential upper limit to the effectiveness of increased arrest rate in deterring crime through increasing risk perceptions and underscore the need for policy strategies beyond increasing experienced punishment certainty. However, the findings also highlight potential methodological concerns of using arrest rate as a predictor of perceptions, especially among a sample with large variation in offending frequencies. Research should account for the nonlinearity between punishment and perceived risk and reward, especially in samples with heterogeneous offending experience.

Purpose

Despite the acknowledged value of social support during reentry from prison, studies on the subject seldom use network-level instruments to provide more holistic policy solutions. This paper adopts a network approach that specifically defines social support as the resources exchanged through social ties. This definition expands the ways individuals can vary in the nature and scope of their social support.

Method

With a sample of 85 incarcerated men preparing for reentry, this study explored the key ways individuals can vary in their social support. Specifically, this study adopted a reentry specific name generator embedded in a semi-structured interview, wherein participants could delineate between different types of support. These interviews took place within prison and were administered with the software Network Canvas.

Results

Participants had a particularly challenging time anticipating transportation support upon release, especially when compared to other types of resources (e.g., having someone to vent to). The size and structure of their overall networks also varied considerably, with some anticipating all resources being provided by one person, whereas some could anticipate a variety of resources from a number of different people. Individual scores on resource diversity, counted as the number of unique resources in a network, varied considerable as well, and was not found to be a function of network size alone.

Conclusions

Existing measures of social support miss key areas of network-level variation in the nature and structure of social support. Adopting a network or resource-based approach could provide practitioners with the tools to effectively “take stock” of the resource network of those preparing to return home and more effectively funnel resources into those gaps.

Purpose

The study examines the associations between child maltreatment, including witnessing interparental violence and violence in the family of origin, and the timing of physical or sexual intimate partner violence (i.e., IPV) among married women in the Global South.

Methods

Data are drawn from Demographic and Health Surveys conducted in 46 nations. We consider if the experience of child maltreatment is associated with IPV that occurs before marriage among IPV victims (n = 66,693) and then among all married women (n = 255,607). Next, we estimate a multi-level survival analysis to ascertain the effect of child maltreatment on the time until the first incident of IPV in relation to when the woman married.

Results

Child maltreatment was not significantly associated with IPV occurring before marriage in the victim-only sample. Child maltreatment was associated with IPV before marriage among the full sample and a quicker time until the first incident (Witnessing interparental violence: Hazard Ratio = 2.01, p < 0.001; Experiencing violence: Hazard Ratio = 1.62, p < 0.001).

Conclusions

Early life experiences of maltreatment speed up the time until that consequential first incident of IPV occurs. Findings provide direction on early targeted intervention for high-risk women who experience child maltreatment.