Criminology最新文献

Community violence intervention and prevention (CVIP) initiatives aim to develop local infrastructures that inoculate communities from violence. The purpose of this mixed methods study was to evaluate an intervention designed to facilitate disengagement from gangs and desistance from crime. An impact evaluation, based on a preregistered randomized controlled trial, was paired with a process evaluation, based on field observations and interviews, of the Gang Reduction Initiative of Denver's centerpiece intervention that uses multidisciplinary teams (MDTs) and street outreach workers to construct and implement coordinated case plans for high-risk gang members. The results of the impact evaluation revealed that clients assigned to the intervention were less likely to self-report perpetrating violence, yet more likely to self-identify as gang members; judicial records revealed no differences in arrests, charges, or dispositions. The results of the process evaluation indicated that MDTs were effective in securing services for their clients. Despite their limited training and heterogeneous strategies, street outreach workers were viewed positively by their clients and were observed to prioritize behavioral over identity change. These findings are situated within long-standing tensions and disparate approaches in using outreach workers and targeting of gang behavior and/or involvement in violence reduction strategies, along with large-scale federal investment in CVIP.

This study examined firearm lethality and aggressors’ lethal intent on injurious fatal and nonfatal school shootings using data from The American School Shooting Study, which covers 329 school shootings in the United States from 1990 to 2016. We developed a new multidimensional construct for measuring shooters’ determination to kill and examined firearm characteristics while considering confounding factors. We identified 11 distinct categories of shooters’ intent, with most showing a strong desire to kill. Both intent and weapon lethality significantly impacted school shooting homicides. Overall, we recommend that prevention and theoretical models should address both factors.

The explanatory power of criminological theories may differ across decision-making stages because involvement decisions (the choice to become involved in crime) and event decisions (the choice between criminal opportunities) are theoretically distinct. Although our understanding of offender decision-making has advanced greatly in recent years, event decisions remain understudied. Rational choice theory (RCT) indicates that crime benefits, arrest risk, sanction severity, opportunity cost, and payout timeliness should drive event decisions. Other scholarship indicates that the presence of co-offenders and victim type may also matter. To test the causal effects of each of these factors, we conducted a paired-profile conjoint experiment with a national sample (N = 1,023), wherein participants collectively evaluated more than 10,000 criminal opportunities. Consistent with RCT, crime benefits, arrest risk, and sanction severity exerted sizable effects on event decisions. Victim type also mattered, such that participants preferred to target wealthy individuals and large corporations. Other factors (e.g., co-offenders and opportunity cost) had weaker effects. Event decision-making was mostly similar regardless of participants’ self-control or past offending. Our experiment suggests that RCT may be especially useful for explaining event decisions, even if other theories provide a stronger account of involvement decisions.

The criminalization of sex work continues to stigmatize people who sell sex. Nevertheless, people who sell sex are not a monolith. In this study, we draw from semistructured interviews with 50 active sex workers, most of whom were white and from middle-class backgrounds, to show how they experienced empowerment in their work. We use Zimmerman’s concept of psychological empowerment to unpack how empowerment was both a process and an outcome for the workers. Empowered processes included business acumen, soft skills, and risk management, allowing for empowered outcomes: money and autonomy, self-esteem and pride, and deeper meanings related to helping others. Access to digital platforms played a key role in facilitating this empowerment. The workers in our study were well aware of the prevailing stereotypes and stigma applied to their work, but they mitigated the risks associated with stigma through the use of digital technology to access helpful virtual communities. Although sex workers’ empowerment was largely enabled by their socioeconomic privilege, stigma played a key role in their sense of empowerment.

Drugs in prison can have serious consequences for prisoners, staff, and communities. In this study, we employed a natural experimental design to assess the systemic effects of the policy changes introduced by the Oregon Department of Corrections in March 2020 to slow the spread of coronavirus-2019 (COVID-19) on the measures of drug use and misconduct (e.g., suspended visits, precluded nonsecurity staff from entering facilities, stopped prisoner work release assignments). More specifically, we conducted interrupted time-series analyses to evaluate whether the policy changes corresponded to changes in the aggregate rates of positive urinalysis tests and drug-related misconduct. The results revealed statistically significant decreases in the rates of positive drug tests and misconduct system wide after the COVID-19 policy changes. Research and policy implications are discussed.

We test hypotheses that three significant events in the year 2020 impacted U.S. youths’ involvement in crime: (H1) less delinquency due to the coronavirus-19 (COVID-19) pandemic and associated constraints to youths’ routine activities and substance use; (H2) more delinquency due to the police killing of George Floyd and ensuing social unrest, particularly among Black youth from communities disproportionately affected by police violence; and (H3) more delinquency due to growing political disaffection, especially among White youth from areas where people were most dissatisfied with the presidential election. To test the countervailing impacts of these significant events on youth delinquency, we combined individual-level data on crime, routine activities, and political disaffection from a large sample of 12th-grade youth (n = 3648) collected in the Monitoring the Future (MTF) study, with community-level data on school closures, constraints to geographic mobility and social interaction, police killings of civilians, election-related protests, and perceptions of election fairness. Overall, delinquency declined by 29% from 2019 to 2021 in part because youth less often engaged in unstructured activities and less frequently used alcohol and other drugs. Youth crime, however, did not decline in communities with high levels of police violence.

Drawing on signaling theory, this study examines whether postsecondary correctional education (PSCE) credentials—particularly vocational certificates that comprise the majority of PSCE credentials conferred—improve postrelease employment outcomes. Despite renewed bipartisan policy interest in PSCE as a pathway to reduce labor market barriers, existing research has shown mixed and inconsistent economic returns to credentialing, with limited attention to how PSCE credentials interact with persistent racial discrimination to shape job prospects. Through a correspondence audit study of 1502 employers seeking heating, ventilation, and air conditioning (HVAC) workers, this article advances our understanding of the signaling value of PSCE in skilled trade labor markets. Results indicate that HVAC credentials improved callback chances for applicants with and without prison records, yet this advantage was not adequate for completely overcoming prison record stigma. Although HVAC credentials earned during incarceration operated similarly for Black and White men, the additive effects of racial discrimination and prison record stigma created compounded disadvantages. These findings demonstrate the promise and limitations of PSCE credentials for improving job opportunities and highlight the need for integrated policy solutions that address both prison record stigma and racism in skilled labor markets.

In 2020, the United States was gripped by three parallel social movements: an outrush of support for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement after the murder of George Floyd, discontent regarding state-mandated lockdowns to mitigate the coronavirus-19 pandemic, and allegations of voter fraud after the November elections. Together, these movements generated a historic spike in protest activity that garnered significant attention, leading some to argue that the police had behaved disparately at protests associated with BLM compared with the other two. A dense literature in the early 2000s developed protest policing theories that pointed to policing culture or to racial threat theory to account for variation in police behavior, but how these theories account for protest policing during 2020 is unclear. Drawing on quantitative and qualitative data and methods from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data set, I first examine allegations of racial discrimination in police behavior at protests. Then, I explore how on-the-ground interactions between police and protestors account for any seeming disparity. I demonstrate distinct patterns of police behavior shaped by different protestor behaviors across these social movements, as well as racial animus. These findings extend and clarify current theories of protest policing.

Research on gang disengagement has grown significantly within the past decade and has shed light on important aspects of this process, including the motivations for exit. Absent from these discussions, however, is how these motives gain prominence, are structured by social structures such as race and ethnicity, and the identity mechanisms that facilitate their emergence. To address these gaps, I analyze ethnographic observations and life-history interviews with 15 former Hmong gang members. In doing so, I introduce a symbolic interactionist framework that leverages identity theory and integrates the cultural and historical context of the Hmong to uncover why Hmong gang members leave and, more importantly, how these motives are generated, that is, the identity processes and cultural qualities that engender disillusionment, maturation, and familial concerns as motivations for gang exit.

This research note examines a finding that contradicts previously well-established knowledge in the field of organized crime, as well as studies of the effects of legalizing vice. Unlike research on the aftermath of Prohibition in the United States post-1933, decriminalization of casino gambling in Nevada post-1931, and legalization of cannabis, little is known about the effects of legalizing prostitution. Here, I offer a critique of some influential research that purports to find a relationship between legalization of prostitution and an increased magnitude of sex trafficking. After identifying serious flaws in these studies’ conception and execution, I briefly show that their problematic findings have become the conventional wisdom regarding the relationship between trafficking and legalized prostitution—as reflected in news reports, legislative debates, Google's topline assessment, and the outcome of a constitutional challenge to Canada's current prostitution law.