During the last decades of the twentieth century American police reconsidered their fundamental mission, the nature of the core strategies of policing, and the character of their relationships with th
This book addresses how and why criminal offenders repeat their actions after being released from prison. It is part of an attempt to explain criminal behavior within the context of a contemporary psychological understanding of behavior, rather than more traditional theories of crime. Over 300 serious male criminal offenders were interviewed and tested after they returned to prison for new crimes. The results indicate that their new offenses may be the result of something like a 'breakdown'. From this, it can be argued that we could monitor released prisoners to predict or even to prevent their return to crime. This report, written for a general audience, has some important implications for release supervision, rehabilitation programs, and the prediction of recidivism.
What Works in Corrections, first published in 2006, examines the impact of correctional interventions, management policies, treatment and rehabilitation programs on the recidivism of offenders and delinquents. The book reviews different strategies for reducing recidivism and describes how the evidence for effectiveness is assessed. Thousands of studies were examined in order to identify those of sufficient scientific rigor to enable conclusions to be drawn about the impact of various interventions, policies and programs on recidivism. Systematic reviews and meta-analyses were performed to further examine these results. This book assesses the relative effectiveness of rehabilitation programs (e.g., education, life skills, employment, cognitive behavioral), treatment for different types of offenders (e.g. sex offenders, batterers, juveniles), management and treatment of drug-involved offenders (e.g., drug courts, therapeutic communities, outpatient drug treatment) and punishment
This book examines the control of problem behaviour in prison from a situational crime prevention perspective. Following the success of situational crime prevention in community settings, Richard Wortley argues that the same principles can be used to help reduce the levels of assault, rape, self-harm, drug use, escape and collective violence in our prison systems. This pioneering new study proposes a two-stage model of situational prevention that moves beyond traditional opportunity-reduction: it attempts to reconcile the contradictory urges to control prison disorder by 'tightening-up' and hardening the prison environment on the one hand, and 'loosening-off' and normalising it on the other. Combining a comprehensive synthesis and evaluation of existing research with original investigation and ground-breaking conclusions, Situational Prison Control will be of great interest to academics and practitioners both in the areas of correction and crime prevention more generally.
Third party policing represents a major shift in contemporary crime control practices. As the lines blur between criminal and civil law, responsibility for crime control no longer rests with state agencies but is shared between a wide range of organisations, institutions or individuals. The first comprehensive book of its kind, Third Party Policing examines this growing phenomenon, arguing that it is the legal basis of third party policing that defines it as a unique strategy. Opening up the debate surrounding this controversial topic, the authors examine civil and regulatory controls necessary to this strategy and explore the historical, legal, political and organizational environment that shape its adoption. This innovative book combines original research with a theoretical framework that reaches far beyond criminology into politics and economics. It offers an important addition to the world-wide debate about the nature and future of policing and will prove invaluable to scholars
Whenever police officers come into contact with citizens there is a chance that the encounter will digress to one in which force is used on a suspect. Fortunately, most police activities do not involve the use of force. But those that do reflect important patterns of interaction between the officer and the citizen. This book examines those patterns. It begins with a brief survey of prior research, and then goes on to present data and findings. Among the data are the force factor applied - that is, the level of force used relative to suspect resistance - and data on the sequential order of incidents of force. The authors also examine police use of force from the suspect's perspective. In analyzing this data they put forward a conceptual framework, the Authority Maintenance Theory, for examining and assessing police use of force.
This 2005 book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime in the burgeoning information society. Bringing together views from leading national and international authorities, Hedieh Nasheri explains the historical and theoretical background surrounding issues of economic espionage, trade secret theft and industrial spying and its impact on society. She looks at legislative history, the progression of electronic and corporate criminal behavior by introducing the concept of information theft and computer crimes, exploring its definition, its identification and its development within criminology. Nasheri presents an assessment of the state of economic espionage activities within a criminological context and based on that assessment addresses areas where additional action is required. The book also draws attention to a variety of issues raised by economic espionage and technological development. It draws on a variety of disciplines, including criminology
Using multiple data sources and methods, this book involves a micro-historical analysis of the nature of change and stability in homicide situations over time. It focuses on the homicide situation as the unit of analysis, and explores similarities and differences in the context of homicide for different social groups. For example, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis, we investigate whether various social groups (e.g., men vs women, teenagers vs adults, strangers vs intimates, Blacks vs Whites) kill under qualitatively different circumstances and, if so, what are the characteristics of these unique profiles. The analysis of over 400,000 US homicides is supplemented with qualitative analysis of narrative accounts of homicide events to more fully investigate the structure and process underlying these lethal situations. Our findings of unique and common homicide situations across different time periods and social groups are then discussed in terms of their implications for
Criminologists often allude to 'peer influence' in explanations of crime and delinquency, but the meaning of that concept rarely receives careful attention. Companions in Crime organizes the extensive literature on peer influence and group delinquency into a coherent form for the first time. Chapters focus on the role of peers over the life course, the group nature of delinquent behavior, and the applicability of peer influence for explaining the major features of delinquent behavior. The most extensive chapter of the book examines possible mechanisms of peer influence and the evidence in favor of each. The principal thesis of Companions in Crime is that deviant behavior is predominantly social behavior, and criminologists must eventually determine the significance of that fact.
Despite a century of effort, criminologists do not yet fully understand the relationship between disadvantage and crime. The balance of evidence suggests that economic and social stress increase the risk of involvement in crime by increasing the motivation to offend. But there are a number of empirical anomalies that cannot easily be reconciled with this interpretation of the evidence. Weatherburn and Lind argue that the transmission mechanism linking economic and social stress to crime is not offender motivation but disruption to the parenting process. They put forward an epidemic model of the genesis of delinquent-prone communities and show how this model resolves the empirical anomalies facing conventional interpretations of the disadvantage/crime relationship. This book offers compelling evidence which will stimulate debate in this area of criminology and will also interest academics, policy makers and practitioners in the field.
The United States has built a carceral state that is unprecedented among Western countries and in US history. Nearly one in 50 people, excluding children and the elderly, is incarcerated today, a rate unsurpassed anywhere else in the world. What are some of the main political forces that explain this unprecedented reliance on mass imprisonment? Throughout American history, crime and punishment have been central features of American political development. This 2006 book examines the development of four key movements that mediated the construction of the carceral state in important ways: the victims' movement, the women's movement, the prisoners' rights movement, and opponents of the death penalty. This book argues that punitive penal policies were forged by particular social movements and interest groups within the constraints of larger institutional structures and historical developments that distinguish the United States from other Western countries.
In Understanding Crime Statistics, Lynch and Addington draw on the work of leading experts on U.S. crime statistics to provide much-needed research on appropriate use of this data. Specifically, the contributors explore the issues surrounding divergence in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which have been the two major indicators of the level and of the change in level of crime in the United States for the past 30 years. This book examines recent changes in the UCR and the NCVS and assesses the effect these have had on divergence. By focusing on divergence, the authors encourage readers to think about how these data systems filter the reality of crime. Understanding Crime Statistics builds on this discussion of divergence to explain how the two data systems can be used as they were intended - in complementary rather than competitive ways.
Studies of the criminal career to date have focused on common criminals and street crime; criminologists have overlooked the careers of white-collar offenders. David Weisburd and Elin Waring offer here the first detailed examination of the criminal careers of people convicted of white-collar crimes. Weisburd and Waring uncover some surprising findings, which upset common wisdom about white-collar criminals. Many scholars have assumed that white-collar criminals are unlikely to have multiple or long records or repeat offenses. As the authors demonstrate, a significant number of white-collar criminals have numerous brushes with the law and their careers show marked similarities to the circumstances and life patterns of street criminals. Their findings illustrate the misplaced emphasis of previous scholarship in focusing on the categorical distinctions between criminals and non-criminals. Rather, their data suggest the importance of the immediate context of crime and its role in leading
Studies of the criminal career to date have focused on common criminals and street crime; criminologists have overlooked the careers of white-collar offenders. David Weisburd and Elin Waring offer here the first detailed examination of the criminal careers of people convicted of white-collar crimes. Weisburd and Waring uncover some surprising findings, which upset common wisdom about white-collar criminals. Many scholars have assumed that white-collar criminals are unlikely to have multiple or long records or repeat offenses. As the authors demonstrate, a significant number of white-collar criminals have numerous brushes with the law and their careers show marked similarities to the circumstances and life patterns of street criminals. Their findings illustrate the misplaced emphasis of previous scholarship in focusing on the categorical distinctions between criminals and non-criminals. Rather, their data suggest the importance of the immediate context of crime and its role in leading
Why is crime persistent over generations, within families and within certain individuals? Is crime the manifestation of an inherited latent trait or the result of a failure of socialization and norm-setting processes? Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer these and other questions by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The authors' views on crime causation go beyond traditional criminological theories of strain, cultural deviance, social control, differential association and social learning to present emerging and integrated models of the origins of crime, including antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants. Each essay explores the practical implication of the authors' theoretical work for crime prevention and control.
Why is crime persistent over generations, within families and within certain individuals? Is crime the manifestation of an inherited latent trait or the result of a failure of socialization and norm-setting processes? Why do youths commit crimes? Delinquency and Crime contains essays by nine leading criminologists that seek to answer these and other questions by describing current theories of crime and the research evidence that supports them. The authors' views on crime causation go beyond traditional criminological theories of strain, cultural deviance, social control, differential association and social learning to present emerging and integrated models of the origins of crime, including antisocial peer socialization, social development, interactional theory, behavior genetics, and community determinants. Each essay explores the practical implication of the authors' theoretical work for crime prevention and control.
Mean Streets is a field study of young people who have left home and school and are living on the streets of Toronto and Vancouver. This book includes the personal narratives and explanatory accounts, in their own words, of some of the more than four hundred young people who participated in the summer-long study, which featured intensive personal interviews. The study examines why youth take to the streets, their struggles to survive on the street, their victimization and involvement in crime, their associations with other street youth, especially within 'street families', their contacts with the police, and their efforts to leave the street and rejoin conventional society. Major theories of youth crime are analyzed and reappraised in the context of a new social capital theory of crime.
The last twenty-five years have seen dramatic rises in the prison populations of most industrialised nations. Unable to keep up with increased numbers of convicted offenders, governments and criminal justice systems have been seeking new ways to control and punish offenders. One sanction adopted in Canada and some parts of Europe and the US is community custody which attempts to recreate the punitive nature of prison but without incarceration. This book analyses the effectiveness of this approach and explores its implications for offenders and society as a whole. It demonstrates that if properly conceived and administered, community custody can reduce the number of prison admissions and at the same time promote multiple goals of sentencing. So that offenders given community custody orders are punished yet also given the opportunity to change their lives in ways that would be impossible if they were in prison.
In recent decades, the nature of criminal punishment has undergone change in the United States. This case study of women serving time in California in the 1960s and 1990s examines key points in this recent history. In this 2005 book, the authors begin with a look at imprisonment at the California Institution for Women in the early 1960s, when the rehabilitative model dominated official discourse. They compare women's experiences in the 1990s, at the California Institution for Women and the Valley State Prison, when the recent 'get tough' era was near its peak. Drawing on archival data, interviews, and surveys, their analysis considers the relationships among official philosophies and practices of imprisonment, women's responses to the prison regime, and relations between women prisoners. The experiences of women prisoners reflected the transformations Americans have witnessed in punishment over recent decades, but they also mirrored the deprivations and restrictions of imprisonment.
This study is based on three years of field work with 99 active gang members and 24 family members. The book describes the attractiveness of gangs, the process of joining, their chaotic and loose organisation, and their members' predominant activities - mostly hanging out, drinking, and using drugs. The authors also discuss gang members' rather slapdash involvement in major property crime and their disorganised participation in drug traffic, as well as the often fatal consequences of their violent life-style. Although the book focuses on the individual, organisational, and institutional aspects of gang membership, it also explores gang members' involvement with other school and neighborhood structures. Extensive interviews with family members provide groundbreaking insights into the gang members' lives. As much as possible, however, the story is told in the gang members' own words.
