Journal of Criminal Justice最新文献

Background

Methods

Results

Conclusion

Objective

The process-based model, which emphasizes enhancing procedural justice and police legitimacy, is regarded as a key approach to fostering community members' cooperation with police. Despite its prominence, research on how these perceptions influence actual cooperative behaviors remains scarce, particularly in the context of longitudinal data. This study aims to address these gaps.

Data/methods

Multilevel logistic regression modeling was applied to three waves of survey data, primarily collected from crime hot spots in Baltimore City, Maryland, to examine the longitudinal impacts of procedural justice and police legitimacy on the likelihood of reporting neighborhood problems to the police. KHB mediation analysis was used to assess the indirect effect of procedural justice on reporting behavior through legitimacy.

Results

The findings provide limited support for the process-based model, revealing that while police legitimacy significantly influenced reporting behavior, there was no evidence of either a direct or indirect effect of procedural justice on reporting neighborhood problems to the police.

Conclusions/implications

These results question the widely held belief that improvements in procedural justice will lead to public cooperation with law enforcement. Thus, if the goal is to foster long-term cooperation from community members, police strategies may need to extend beyond simply integrating procedural justice principles.

This study's purpose is to explore the factors which maximize willingness to change within people as they are released from prison. Using data from a panel of men in the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) study and a hybrid item response theory approach, a modified graded response model is used to estimate people's overall willingness to change. That estimate serves as the dependent variable in a series of regression models which examine which factors relate to a person's willingness to change. Results demonstrate that a variety of experiences prior to incarceration (e.g., prior employment, criminally-inclined peers) and during incarceration (e.g., religious support, family conflict) significantly relate to a person's willingness to change. Understanding the pre- and during-incarceration experiences of individuals can help inform policy and reentry programs tailored to increase the positive attitude of being willing to change and desist from crime.

Purpose

Bars have an established relationship to crime and are routinely operationalized as an important predictor of crime occurrence. However, despite this reputation, an interesting paradox exists in that most bars are not criminogenic. This study attempts to explain the variation in crime levels at bars by observing their environments over time.

Methods

Environmental features of bars in Denver were recorded using year-over-year Google Street View imagery from 2014 to 2022. Analyses then examined the presence, predictivity, and patterning of the observed environmental features to better explain the relationship between bars, bar environments, and crime over time.

Results

The results indicate that a high number of environmental features are present at bars but only a few features significantly predict crime occurrence. The variation in crime levels at bars may be best explained through specific, situational environmental features and place management tactics. Though, identifying the temporal patterning of environmental features as static or dynamic over time is critical to understanding crime occurrence at bars.

Conclusions

The results suggest that crime at bars may be attributable to unique combinations of environmental features and temporal considerations at individual bars. Explaining the variation in crime levels may require facility-by-facility nuance to better inform situational crime prevention efforts.

Purpose

This study examines the early criminal careers of organized crime offenders in Italy and the Netherlands and assess how these behaviors have evolved across generations. We (1) compare the early careers with the entire career in the two country samples and (2) assess the influence of generational shifts and social changes on these behaviors, particularly focusing on crime control policies.

Methods

Analyzing data on male offenders born between 1950 and 1986, we analyze criminal careers up to ages 23 and 30. Our analysis includes statistical assessments of differences between countries and among decades, employing multinomial logistic regressions to explore the associations between criminal career parameters and crime categories and the offenders' decade of birth.

Results

Significant differences were found between the Italian and Dutch samples, reflecting country-specific dynamics in organized crime involvement. Evidence suggests minimal generational shifts towards more serious offending, but notable impacts of social changes, especially in anti-drug and anti-organized crime policies, across individuals born in different decades.

Conclusions

Both the societal context (‘where we are’) and temporal influences (‘when we are’) are essential in understanding criminal careers. Changes in policies and social conditions differentially affected organized crime offenders in Italy and the Netherlands.

Purpose

The fentanyl crisis has received national attention. In the current context, this study sought to assess whether public perception of criminal culpability varies by who supplies fentanyl to an individual who later dies from an overdose.

Methods

An experimental vignette of fentanyl-induced death scenarios was implemented by randomizing the relationship of the drug suppliers to the victims as well as race of both the drug supplier and victim. In total, there were eight scenarios.

Results

OLS regressions on a sample of 4820, found that respondents assigned a scenario where a drug dealer was the fentanyl provider (compared to a friend as the provider) were significantly more likely to support punitive action. There were no significant differences when the race of the drug provider and/or victim were randomized. Robustness checks confirmed these punitive attitudes towards drug dealers.

Conclusions

The public views drug dealers as more culpable in fentanyl overdoses. However, the race of both the drug supplier and victim did not impact perceptions of criminal culpability. During a national fentanyl epidemic, the findings have implications for public attitudes towards drug suppliers, public policy, and future research.

Research paints discretion as a tool correctional officers (COs) use to navigate their work. Discretion helps COs gain compliance and resolve conflicts amicably, and officers sometimes use it to improve relationships with incarcerated people. However, research also suggest that COs' reliance on discretionary power may produce harmful complications, undermining institutional regulations and creating conditions for serious rule violations. Little quantitative analysis exists on how CO discretion impacts prison operations, making the broader impact of discretion unclear. To address this gap, we use open-access data collected between 2017 and 2018 (Griffin & Hepburn, 2020). We then test whether a CO's attitude toward discretion may correspond with attempts from incarcerated people to encourage boundary violations. Results show that COs with more liberal attitudes toward discretion correspond with higher odds of being approached by incarcerated people to violate boundaries. Black COs have lower odds of being approached for minor boundary violations, while women officers have higher odds of having incarcerated people try to initiate an inappropriate relationship. Findings show that liberal attitudes among COs toward discretion may encourage incarcerated people to violate the most consequential prison rules. We conclude by discussing the implications for future research.