Criminology最新文献

Trait-state models aim to provide an encompassing view of offender decision-making processes by linking individual dispositions to proximal factors. In an experiment using an immersive virtual reality bar fight scenario, we propose and test a trait-state model that identifies the pathways through which robust personality correlates of aggressive behavior, that is, agreeableness, emotionality, and honesty-humility, result in intentions to aggress. Using structural equation modeling, we show how these personality traits relate to intentions to aggress via anger, fear, perceived risk, and anticipated guilt/shame. Additionally, we demonstrate superior validity of our virtual scenario over a written version of the same scenario by virtue of its ability to provide more contextual realism, to establish a stronger sense of presence, and to trigger more intense emotional states relevant to the decision situation. Implications for future decision-making research and theory are discussed.

Correctional scholarship has demonstrated concern over the dehumanizing implications of the carceral state for incarcerated people. This concern has been paralleled by an interest in understanding the work of prison staff and how correctional subculture may play an active role in prison dehumanization. By drawing from focus groups from all prisons in one state, we investigate how correctional staff construct and manage their identity through “us–them” ideologies. We find that staff leverage negative attitudes toward the incarcerated, and that these attitudes were underpinned by sensational cultural stories and epithets. Moreover, we find that staff use “othering” toward the incarcerated as a means to construct a warped badge of honor, which illustrates the burdens they bear from prison work and which frames themselves as heroes, guardians, and protectors. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of our findings, where we consider how dehumanization illustrates the mental coping work staff endure to carry out the symbolic violence and dehumanizing objectives of the carceral system.

We examine the influence of moral intuitions on Americans’ divergent attitudes toward Black Lives Matter (BLM) and police. Drawing on Moral Foundations Theory, we hypothesize that individualizing moral intuitions that put care and protection of the vulnerable at the center of moral concern (a social justice orientation) lead people to express positive feelings toward BLM and negative feelings toward police, whereas binding moral intuitions that put social stability at the center of moral concern (a social order orientation) lead people to express positive feelings toward police and negative feelings toward BLM. We find strong support for these hypotheses using data from a 2021 YouGov survey of 1,125 U.S. adults including a 100 percent oversample of Black respondents. We also find that belief in systemic racism as a cause of police use of excessive force mediates much of the effects of the moral intuitions measures, except for the association between binding moral intuitions and positive feelings toward police, which is largely direct. Our results provide compelling evidence that moral intuitions play an important role in explaining American's divergent attitudes toward BLM and police.

Collective efficacy is a prominent explanation for neighborhood crime concentrations. Just as crime is concentrated in particular neighborhoods, within-neighborhoods crime is concentrated in particular criminogenic locations. Research suggests criminogenic locations are determined by features of the built environment. This study links collective efficacy with situational opportunity to propose that collective efficacy facilitates the removal of criminogenic features of the built environment. I test this by examining associations 1) between past collective efficacy and present criminogenic features of the built environment, as well as 2) between those built environment features and crime, net of present collective efficacy. These are modeled using piecewise structural equations with generalized linear mixed-effect regressions on data from 1,641 blocks in 343 Chicago neighborhoods. Four types of police-reported crime are modeled using eight block-level built environment features in the 2003 Chicago Community Area Health Study (CCAHS; N = 3,074) and neighborhood collective efficacy from the CCAHS and the 1995 Project in Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) Community Survey (N = 7,672). Findings suggest neighborhoods with high collective efficacy maintain low rates of crime in part by limiting criminogenic built environment features, in particular, abandoned buildings. This crime control pathway is important because changes to the built environment are long lasting and reduce the need for future interventions against crime.

In this address I argue that large reductions in unproductive and unjust uses of imprisonment requires curtailment of the over use of life imprisonment. I go on to discuss how criminologists should engage the policy process to achieve material reductions in prison populations by the accumulation of many incremental reductions in the overuse of incarceration.

Recent developments in routine activities theory have sought to conceptualize the notion of capable guardianship, as well as to broaden the application of the theory to the corporate crime context. Building on this work with systematically collected qualitative data, we examine the mechanisms in which offenders commit corporate financial fraud and identify the failures in guardianship. In addition to the unique dimensions of corporate crime already identified (i.e., specialized access to targets), our work highlights the need to consider guardian–offender overlap, or instances in which those tasked with guardianship responsibilities become motivated offenders. Our findings suggest financial regulations focusing on adding layers of guardians may be insufficient. They also have broader implications for understanding guardian capability in other forms of crime—namely, the need to consider the costs and benefits of intervention, willingness and ability to intervene in differing contexts, and how these dimensions of guardianship shape offender risk perceptions.

The purpose of my Sutherland Address is to explore the potential utility of elaborating and adapting the analytic framework of Institutional Anomie Theory (IAT) to account for the macro-social dynamics of crime in contemporary China. To do so, I situate the institutional dynamics of crime in China in comparative historical context and put forth a newly adapted formulation of IAT. I then illustrate the ways in which this adapted formulation of IAT can enhance the coherence of a rich body of research on crime in China by incorporating some of the empirical findings and insightful interpretations within an overarching theoretical framework. In addition, interrogating the applicability of IAT to the Chinese context draws attention to important gaps in the theory, thereby facilitating its further elaboration as well as promoting the development of general macro-social theory in criminology.

The mission of policing is “to protect and serve,” but recent events suggest that many Americans, and especially Black Americans, do not feel protected from the police. Understanding police-related fear is important because it may impact civilians’ health, daily lives, and policy attitudes. To examine the prevalence, sources, and consequences of both personal and altruistic fear of the police, we surveyed a nationwide sample (N = 1,150), which included comparable numbers of Black (N = 517) and White (N = 492) respondents. Most White respondents felt safe, but most Black respondents lived in fear of the police killing them and hurting their family members. Approximately half of Black respondents preferred to be robbed or burglarized than to have unprovoked contact with officers. The racial divide in fear was mediated by past experiences with police mistreatment. In turn, fear mediated the effects of race and past mistreatment on support for defunding the police and intentions to have “the talk” with family youths about the need to distrust and avoid officers. The deep American racial divide in police-related fear represents a racially disparate health crisis and a primary obstacle to law enforcement's capacity to serve all communities equitably.

While many of the motives people provide for using drugs transcend gender, there are also notable gendered differences. These differences in motive talk aid in stigma management, shape gender performances, and can encourage or constrain behavior. Using data from a photoethnography with 52 people who use methamphetamine in rural Alabama, we find that men and women articulate their motives for drug use in distinctly gendered ways. Most notably, men emphasized the benefits of sex on meth while most of the women did not. Men's stories of meth as a sex drug shaped how they interacted with women often leading them to use violence and coercion to control when, where, and with whom women used meth. Women were less likely to say that increased sexual feelings was their primary motive for using meth. They drew on gendered themes of femininity (e.g., motherhood, home keeper) when explaining their drug use. They also sought ways to resist coercive control that were intertwined with their gendered narratives of drug use. The findings point to the importance of gendered narratives in shaping interactions, and significantly, how narratives can contribute to harm and reinforce gender inequality in drug markets.

White-collar crime and illegal political extremism share several characteristics with relevance to criminology. Neither is associated with lower socioeconomic status individuals, both involve perpetrators that rarely see themselves as criminal, and both face unique data challenges. Following Edwin Sutherland's influential research, the study of white-collar crime became a recognized specialization within criminology. Similarly, following the coordinated attacks of September 11, 2001, political extremism became increasingly accepted as a legitimate research topic in criminology. I explore several ways that the study of terrorism has influenced criminological research and how responses to terrorist attacks since 9/11 can help us understand policing. Terrorism research has vividly illustrated the socially constructed nature of crime, has encouraged researchers to see not only the deterrence potential of punishment but also its capacity to produce backlash, has accelerated cross-national criminology research, and has hastened the embrace of open sources as an important form of criminal justice data. Changes in policing following 9/11 and the resulting war on terror also provide critical insights into the extent to which policing depends on community trust and legitimacy. As with the embrace of white-collar crime nearly a century ago, mainstream criminology has been enriched by widening its scope to include political extremism.