Criminology最新文献

After the 1994 genocide in Rwanda, hundreds of thousands of people were convicted and sentenced for genocide-related crimes. Many are now being released from prisons and community service camps. This study evaluates the mental health of 168 Rwandans nearing release and at two points after, focusing on the relative significance of the circumstances surrounding their crime, the procedures used in their conviction, the characteristics of their sentence, and the conditions tied to reentry and reintegration. Results indicate that the most important determinant of emotional well-being is acceptance of guilt for participating in genocide, a paradoxical finding given the otherwise strong positive association between guilt and depression. In our models, accepting guilt in genocide improves mental health more than factors related to the administration of justice, such as confession or perceived procedural fairness, the characteristics of the crime, and the conditions surrounding confinement. Additional analyses show that guilt enhances mental health in part through social acceptance and better relationships. Although the circumstances surrounding genocide and the transitional justice period that followed are unique, the results speak to the potentially important role of the meaning of conviction, culpability, and acceptance in understanding the long-term emotional consequences of crime and punishment.

Reentry from prison is a stressful life transition, which has consequences for recidivism, health, and well-being. Navigating poor and highly surveilled neighborhoods after prison is considered a primary stressor after release; however, it is methodologically challenging to document how poor places exert these invisible, day-to-day strains. Bringing together theories of stress with “activity space” research, we analyze nearly 300,000 GPS estimates and more than 5300 daily reports of emotions collected through mobile phones across 3 months among a cohort of men recently released from prison in Newark, New Jersey. Using a new approach to measure activity spaces, which we term “egocentric places,” combined with multilevel models that investigate within-person changes over time, we find that daily exposure to disadvantaged places is associated with increased negative emotions, specifically, stress. These associations are most evident when navigating commonly visited places (as opposed to rarely visited places) and are most concentrated among people who already live in highly disadvantaged residential areas. These findings illuminate a generally hidden process in which spending time in disadvantaged places exacerbates stress after prison.

A common concern in hiring individuals with criminal convictions is the stigma associated with the criminal record, which can include negative consumer reactions. We provide two novel tests of courtesy stigma, or the idea of transferring negative traits from one entity to another, through a nationwide survey. Using a conjoint experiment and a follow-up open-ended question, we first establish whether the public is less likely to select a restaurant if the business has a hiring initiative for people with conviction records. Using a vignette experiment, we then test whether the same factors driving personal stigma apply to courtesy stigma and whether hiring messaging frames influence courtesy stigma. We find evidence of criminal conviction courtesy stigma in the conjoint experiment. Respondents, however, typically reported the characteristics of the business itself as influential, and when the criminal record mattered, the underlying rationale was mainly instrumental: Avoiding a criminal record–friendly business was often due to safety concerns. We find similar instrumental results in the vignette experiment; the quality of service, rather than the characteristics of the criminal record or server's race, influenced restaurant recommendations. Perhaps for this reason, messaging strategies focusing on reducing criminal record stigma did not reduce courtesy stigma.

Nix, J., Huff, J., Wolfe, S. E., Pyrooz, D. C., & Mourtgos, S. M. (2024). When police pull back: Neighborhood-level effects of de-policing on violent and property crime, a research note. Criminology, 62(1), 156–171. https://doi.org/10.1111/1745-9125.12363

In the published version of this article (Nix et al., 2024), a coding error resulted in incorrect census data and spatial weights being matched to 54 of 78 neighborhoods (these data were used to create Level 2 controls for population, racial composition, immigration, and disadvantage, and a Level 1 control for spatial lags). Crime data was incorrectly matched to 2 of the 78 neighborhoods.

Upon correcting these errors, we identified two additional, albeit minor, mistakes. First, our AQI variable only captured daily levels of carbon monoxide. We have corrected this measure so that it includes particulate matter, NO₂, and ozone, which more closely reflects the way we described the variable in the article. Second, our weather data included Colorado weather stations outside of the City and County of Denver. In this correction, we have excluded those stations.

Our findings are substantively similar upon making these corrections (see Table 1 below). The relationship between pedestrian stop deviations and violent crime remains statistically significant (b = −0.009, SE = 0.002, p < 0.001). The relationship between vehicle stop deviations and violent crime is no longer statistically significant, but the magnitude of the coefficient is strikingly similar (b = −0.00175, SE = 0.001, p = 0.137; previously b = −0.00245, SE = 0.001, p = 0.042). The relationship between drug arrests and property crime is no longer statistically significant (b = −0.027, SE = 0.006, p < 0.001 in the original model, compared to b = −0.012, SE = 0.009, p = 0.181 in the corrected model). Finally, in the corrected model, the relationship between pedestrian stops and property crime is statistically significant (b = −0.005, SE = 0.001, p < 0.01; previously b = 0.002, SE = 0.003, p = 0.51).

One notable difference is that in the corrected analysis, we observe that the relationship between reduced pedestrian stops and property crime was more pronounced in neighborhoods with higher levels of disadvantage (see Table S14 and Figure S4).

We have updated our Harvard Dataverse and replication files to reflect these corrections. In addition to minor changes to the results presented in Table 1 of the article, there are also various small differences in the tables and figures included in the Supplemental Materials. Updated Supplemental Materials are available under the “Supporting Information” tab of the online version of the article.

Below is a revised results section with updated point estimates:

Panel 1 of Table 1 displays the results of four mixed effects models that regres

Based on a 2023 national YouGov survey (N = 800), we explored public support for universal second look sentencing—the view that all incarcerated individuals, not just those who committed their crimes before they were age 25, should be eligible to have lengthy sentences revisited by judges after serving 15 to 20 years in prison. A majority of Americans supported a universal policy, with only 1 in 5 respondents opposed. Multivariate analyses showed that redeemability is not static but dynamic. It can be earned if incarcerated people signal their reformation by completing rehabilitation programs and receiving a positive recommendation from the warden. Support from the victim (or their family) also matters. Given the public's endorsement, second look sentencing may be a viable policy to address mass incarceration and the problem of extreme prison terms.

The Montgomery vs. Louisiana ruling in 2016 on the unconstitutionality of mandatory juvenile life without the possibility of parole resulted in the resentencing of thousands of cases and the release of hundreds of individuals sentenced as youth to die in prison. Although a breadth of research has explored the consequences of long-term confinement as it relates to the effects on health, education, employment history, and familial relationships, no existing research has examined the impact of navigating and sustaining meaningful friendships during and after serving a juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentence. This novel qualitative study draws from semistructured life-history interviews (N = 30) with middle-aged men and women who served time (mean = 33 years incarcerated) under a mandatory JLWOP sentence and were later released. Using the temporal debt framework, findings reveal how the carceral setting forces temporal withdrawals from loved ones in the community, resulting in asynchrony and strain during reentry. Alternatively, the temporal deposits made to similarly situated incarcerated individuals eased the prison experience and reintegration process. The study has implications for parole policies prohibiting engagement among those with felony convictions.

After four decades of explosive growth, the US imprisonment rate began to inch downward in 2008. Despite fostering extensive public and policy debate, we know surprisingly little about why state imprisonment rates are declining. Although prior studies have examined correlates of decreases in imprisonment, it is currently unknown how much of the observed decrease in state prison populations can be attributed to decreases in the crime rate since its peak in the 1990s, as opposed to successful criminal sentencing reforms. This study uses new data on state sentencing reform policies in a decomposition of annual changes in state imprisonment rates between 1970 and 2019. Decreases in the property crime rate can account for 43%–60% of the observed decrease in the annual change in state imprisonment rates, whereas sentencing reforms account for another 12%–16%. Sentencing reforms have had their largest effects in the Midwest and South but have not contributed to decreases in the annual change in state imprisonment rates in the Northeast or West. These results uncover “varieties of decarceration” across the states and suggest that recent reform efforts—although effective—can only account for a portion of the observed decreases in state prison populations.

Despite extensive theorizing on the employment–crime link, little discussion has taken place on the mechanisms through which job gains and losses affect behavior. We draw on prospect theory and the loss aversion principle, which suggests people are more sensitive to losses than gains, to assess how individuals contend with transitions in employment and income. Using fixed-effects and asymmetrical fixed-effects models, we analyze 36 months of retrospective information for a sample of incarcerated males collected as part of the Second Nebraska Inmate Study. First, we assess whether job losses are more likely than job gains to generate financial stress and find support for the loss aversion principle. Second, we explore how people might compensate for changes in job and income status by engaging in risk-taking behaviors (illegal earnings, gun carrying, and offending versatility). We find the positive relationship between job and income loss on the probability of reporting illegal earnings and crime versatility is stronger than the negative relationship between job and income gain and these behaviors. Financial stress, however, does not attenuate the relationship between losses and risk-taking behaviors. We discuss the implications for theory and policy.

Anticipatory stress—or worries about the future that produce emotional distress—may explain some of the deleterious repercussions of incarceration for health. We use nearly 500 interviews with incarcerated men and their family members to describe anticipatory stress stemming from the stressor of jail incarceration, a commonly experienced but understudied type of confinement distinct from prison incarceration. We identify and explain how jail incarceration involves a powerful confluence of factors that give rise to anticipatory stress about adjudication, family relationships, the well-being of loved ones, and reintegration. We describe three types of anticipatory stress proliferation between incarcerated men and their families. First, anticipatory stress commonly proliferates from incarcerated men to their children's mothers and their own mothers, with anticipatory stress being particularly salient when it involves the possibility of major changes, system irrationality, and powerlessness. Second, family members can experience anticipatory stress regardless of whether their incarcerated loved one reports anticipatory stress, shaped in part by men's extensive criminal legal contact. Third, family members with weak relationships with incarcerated men generally do not experience anticipatory stress despite the anticipatory stress endured by their incarcerated loved ones. This study provides a framework for understanding how other stages of criminal legal contact contribute to health inequalities among incarcerated people and their families.

Did governments shift funding from their social welfare functions to their criminal justice functions after the 1980s? Studies investigating this possible “punitive turn” have been inconclusive and have been conducted at the state or national scale. Cities, however, are increasingly important as government responsibility devolves downward and social movements target municipal police budgets. This study contributes to ongoing academic and political debates about welfare-state retrenchment and police department funding using data on 390 U.S. cities between 1990 and 2019. In contrast to conventional explanations for budgetary restructuring that foreground across-the-board cuts or macroeconomic causes, this study proposes a fiscal crisis model that emphasizes localized budget deficits, beliefs about policing's primacy, and police agencies’ political power. Data reveal gradual and considerable municipal budgetary restructuring toward law enforcement between 1990 and 2019, with police funding growing 32% relative to social spending. Fixed-effects regression models with asymmetric predictors find that when municipal revenues fell by 10%, cities reduced police expenditures by an associated 1% and social service expenditures by 4%, with parks and housing seeing the biggest cuts. During austerity, municipalities cut police shallowly and temporarily while cutting social services deeply and enduringly, accelerating welfare-to-carceral realignment.