This paper draws upon an empirical comparative study of policy-making in England & Wales and the Netherlands. Recent changes in cannabis policy prima facie indicate some convergence towards a toughening of approaches, thereby suggesting commonalities in control cultures. However, analysis of findings illuminate significant differences in the policy process between these jurisdictions which contribute towards continued divergence towards small-scale supply and consumption of cannabis. It is argued that this can be understood and explained through an understanding of differences in both political institutions and cultures, and in organizational responsibilities and relations of power. Consequentially, this further supports the notion that comparative research and theorizing needs to take account of mechanisms and features which lead to variegated control cultures.
This article examines the identification of human trafficking crimes in Norway. By combining two different sources of police registry data that contain the total set of human trafficking cases reported to the Norwegian police between 2003 and 2013, the study examines the role of the police in the creation of human trafficking complaints, the characteristics of the complaints and their outcomes. Findings suggest that, despite a growing number of reported human trafficking complaints, the police seem to play a decreasing part in the identification of human trafficking crimes. The potential under-representation of police initiatives and its consequences for case outcomes is discussed in light of a theory of discretionary decision-making among police officials.
This study describes the criminal careers of offenders convicted of fraud, distinguishing different career dimensions such as intermittency, versatility and specialization. Results indicate that most fraud offenders are versatile in the sense that they also have significant criminal records for other serious offending (that is, not fraud). At the same time they are also specialized in fraud. When we examine developmental trajectories of serious offending and next explore patterns of fraud for the groups identified, we find that offenders in our sample represent a heterogeneous group and that the classic divide between typical financial (for example, white-collar) offenders and common criminals does not apply to the majority of our sample.
This article aims at analysing the differences between European countries in the obstacles ex-offenders face due to having a criminal record. First, a comparative analytical framework is introduced that takes into account all the different elements that can lead to exclusion from the labour market by the dissemination of criminal record information. This model brings together social norms (macro level), social actors (meso level) and individual choices (micro level) in the same framework. Secondly, this model is used to compare the different impact of having a criminal record in Spain and the Netherlands. This comparison highlights three important findings: (1) the difference between norms of transparency/privacy and inclusive/exclusive ideals, (2) the significant role of social control agents, such as probation agencies and the ex-offenders’ social network, in shaping the opportunities that they have, and (3) self-exclusion seems to be a key mechanism for understanding unsuccessful re-entry into the labour market.
Social control theory links being employed with reduced criminal behaviour. In particular, the indirect social control generated by the perceived benefits of the current job are expected to underlie the work–crime association. Features specific to the emerging adult period, however, call into question the strength of the work–crime association during this new life stage. This study uses data from the Utrecht Study of Adolescent Development (USAD), a longitudinal self-report study among 669 men and women aged 18 to 24 at the start of the study to examine the extent to which working a paid job is associated with reduced levels of delinquency and crime, and the extent to which this association is conditional on individual job perceptions. We also test for gender differences in these associations. Results indicate that for men – but not for women – paid work is associated with lower levels of delinquency and crime, but only from age 24 onwards.
Deterrence theory states that fear of sanctions secures compliance with the law. Empirical research on the deterrent effect of legal sanctions has remained inconclusive though. This applies especially to perceptual deterrence studies. Most of them are cross-sectional in nature and rely on measures of self-reported previous offending, which implies that they actually explain past criminal behaviour from current perceptions of risk. However, such a temporal ordering of the concepts is more congruent with experiential effects according to which previous criminal involvement lowers subsequent risk perceptions rather than depicting deterrent relationships. The few longitudinal studies that have attempted to disentangle experiential and deterrent effects are based on samples from North America. Their common finding is that experiential effects exist and that they are substantially larger than the deterrent effect. Most of them reject the notion of deterrence. This work contributes to the discussion by for the first time addressing the experience–deterrence issue with panel data collected in the UK. Results show that associations between current risk estimates and prior offending found in cross-sectional studies reflect chiefly experiential effects. Evidence in support of deterrence remains very limited.
Women commit fewer homicides than men, yet recent research has suggested that the nature of female-perpetrated homicides has started to resemble that of male perpetration. This study examines gender differences and changes in the nature of female and male homicides, and aims to demonstrate how developments in Finnish society, such as the formation of the welfare state, are reflected in the gendered nature of homicide offending. Data consist of samples from the early 20th and 21st centuries. Comparisons in frequencies are made concerning the profiles of the victim and the offender, as well as the context of the crime. Results indicate that female offending is more similar to male offending in the 21st century than it was in the early 20th century.
Much is now known about public trust and confidence in the police, especially regarding the important role of procedural justice in police–citizen engagements. However, less is known about perceptions of the police amongst young people and how their views are formed. We use survey data from more than 1500 young people aged 10–15 years whose parents were also interviewed in the Crime Survey for England and Wales (2010–12) to explore the extent that children’s views of the police correspond with those of their parents. We find a strong and consistent link between the views of children and their parents – a relationship moderated by perceptions of police visibility, experience of victimization and the age of the child.
This article analyses the finances for and the finances from corporate bribery in international business transactions and how they are organized. Transnational corporate bribery involves non-criminal commercial enterprises that operate in licit markets but that use corrupt means to win or maintain business contracts in foreign jurisdictions. This article first considers what needs to be financed, how much finance is needed, and how the bribes can be generated and distributed. Second, the article considers the different forms of proceeds that emerge out of the bribery, how offenders must conceal the derivation of funds from these crimes while also retaining control over them, and how they must overcome particular obstacles. Finally, the article discusses responses to the proceeds of bribery and related anti-money laundering provisions, before analysing actual and potential mechanisms for intervening with the finances for and from transnational corporate corruption.
Several studies on burglary concern the psychological impact on victims of burglary. However, little research exists on changes in behavior with regard to burglary experiences. The present analysis focuses on choice behavior after a burglary by differentiating moving and safety precaution behavior as well as passivity. Here, a sample of N = 1329 victims of burglary from five big cities in Germany is used. The main findings indicate that psychological strain, age, housing condition, household income, social cohesion, and social disorganization are relevant predictors of choice behavior after a burglary. As such, different cost and benefit aspects will be considered as explanations for behavioral reactions.
Since the 1970s theoretical and empirical work on public violence has mainly focused on the context in which public violence takes place, assuming that public violence offenders are ordinary people acting in extraordinary circumstances. Recent studies however indicate that ‘hooligans’ share many characteristics with other violent offenders, which has (re)fuelled the notion that individual propensity is important in explaining public violence, and that public violence offenders generally fit the small group of serious and persistent offenders identified by Moffitt. Based on Dutch police data on 438 individuals involved in public violence, we examined the criminal careers of public violence offenders leading up to the date of registration as a public violence offender. Using group-based models, we distinguished three criminal career trajectories in our sample. Although we found many public violence offenders had no criminal records whatsoever, we also found a small group of public violence offenders who exhibited a high frequency of offending, displayed both solo and group violence, and acted violently across different settings. Our results leave us to take a middle ground in the context-propensity debate, because we argue that different categories of public violence offenders may exist whose behaviour is triggered by different processes. Incorporating the notion of different types of public violence offenders helps explain the seemingly contradictory findings of prior studies, and suggests new avenues for future research into the intra- and intergroup dynamics of public violence.
Countries that rely on natural resource rents (that is, the revenue generated from the sale of natural resources) may suffer from a variety of social problems. This exploratory study reviews the natural resource extraction literature to derive a ‘natural resource rents–homicide’ hypothesis. Data for 173 countries for the years 2000 to 2012 are examined to determine if there is a correlation between natural resource rents and homicide rates. Multilevel growth models suggest that natural resource rents are positively correlated with homicide rates within countries (level 1) but not between them (level 2). Importantly, the correlation between natural resource rents and homicide is strongest when natural resource rents are lagged. We conclude by suggesting that increasing natural resource rents may be counterproductive over the long run and sow the seeds for a future increase in homicide.
Understanding of the potential ‘rewards’ that residential burglars gain through their offences has largely been confined to monetary return, thus overlooking the possibility that offenders obtain other ‘goods’ from their criminal activities. By illustrating how burglars could be attending to various lifestyle deficits through crime, the article reveals indicators for case management, rehabilitation and desistance. The Good Lives Model (GLM) is employed as a framework to explore the ‘primary human goods’ attained through residential burglary. The article concludes with suggestions to encourage desistance by challenging the authenticity of the goods burglars seek to fulfil or remedy through criminal behaviour.
The act of user-dealing has largely been explored within criminology in conjunction with the ‘drug–crime’ link or with a focus on ethnography and subculture. Whereas it is known that many users of drugs such as heroin and crack cocaine engage in small-scale supply as a way of generating revenue, less is known about the particular interplay of social context and choice that leads them to pick this income-generating activity over other potential options. Contributing to a burgeoning literature, this article explores the constrained choices of user-dealers with reference to Bourdieu’s ‘theory of practice’ (1977). Through locating stories of failure in user-dealer narratives, we utilize this novel approach in criminology, illuminating the importance of working with all of the interrelated concepts of habitus, field and capital in appreciating user-dealing as ‘practice’. It is argued that application of this framework affords the previously unharnessed opportunity to use Bourdieusian theory to understand notions of culpability when sentencing this group.
This article focuses on the relationship between crime and social disadvantages by applying Situational Action Theory (Wikström 2006, 2009; Wikström et al., 2012) to explain the delinquent behaviour of adolescents. According to Situational Action Theory, criminal acts are the result of a perception-choice process that is guided by the interaction of a person’s crime propensity and the criminogenic conditions of the environment. Social disadvantages are not causes of criminal behaviour but rather causes of the causes. Social disadvantages affect the emergence of crime propensity and criminogenic exposure of individuals. This relationship between crime and disadvantages in the context of Situational Action Theory will be empirically tested by applying structural equation modelling and testing for indirect effects of several structural heterogeneities. The results show that the relationship between heterogeneity features and delinquency for the most part is mediated by the theoretical assumptions of SAT.
In this study we examine to what extent within-individual changes in parental monitoring, bonds with parents and school, and rule-breaking peers can explain within-individual changes in morality. We distinguish between three key dimensions of morality: moral values, anticipated shame, and anticipated guilt. We use data from the SPAN project, a two-wave panel study among 616 adolescents (ages 12–19) from secondary schools in The Hague, The Netherlands. Employing a fixed-effects model, we found that within-individual changes in parental monitoring, bonds with parents and school, and rule-breaking peers are significantly related to within-individual changes in moral values, anticipated shame, and anticipated guilt. These findings emphasize the important role of family, school, and the peer group in the development of morality during adolescence. Implications of these findings are discussed.
This paper aims to take a holistic approach to studying fear of crime by testing predictors at multiple levels of analyses. Data from the European Social Survey (N = 56,752 from 29 countries) were used to test and extend the Income Inequality and Sense of Vulnerability Hypotheses. The findings confirm that (1) individuals in societies with greater income inequalities are more fearful of crime, and (2) older or disabled people as well as women report greater fear of crime. Contrary to the hypotheses, ethnic majority and not ethnic minority members report greater fear of crime, if they reside in high income inequality countries. It is further demonstrated that fear of crime explains the inverse association between income inequality and subjective well-being in this particular subsample.
Despite the devastating short- and long-term consequences of resource-related environmental crimes, rampant illegal soil and sand mining continues worldwide. In countries such as India and Italy, organized crime groups have emerged as prominent illegal suppliers of soil and sand. The proposed study focuses on an understudied research area at the intersection between organized crime and environmental crimes, and offers a trans-comparative study of illegal soil and sand mining conducted by Indian and Italian organized crime groups with two main objectives. First, a comparative analysis of the organizational mechanisms, operational practices, threat management, and supporting cultural, regulatory, and policing factors is conducted. Second, a discussion of how these groups reflect mainstream models and theories of organized crime is offered.
People’s reactions to offenders and victims of crime follow different rationales. Whereas the punishment of the offender is primarily determined by the severity of the crime (which includes its foreseeable harmful consequences), the actual harm that is experienced by the victim drives the need for his or her support and assistance. With the introduction of the Victim Impact Statement (VIS), in which victims are allowed to express the (harmful) consequences of the crime on their lives, the question is raised whether allowing such victim input during criminal proceedings would influence the offender’s sentence. The main goal of the current research is to disentangle how a crime’s wrongfulness and harmfulness influence people’s reactions to offenders and victims. We show that, whereas people’s perceptions of the offender (and the outcome of the trial) are influenced by the severity of the crime, people’s judgements related to the victim are more likely to be influenced by an interaction between the severity of the crime and the experienced harm of the crime. That is, in this study no support was found for the argument that the delivery of a VIS would lead to a violation of the proportionality principle.
This paper presents the results of a 2007 survey of victims of war crimes and crimes against humanity from Bosnia and Herzegovina. We study the level of diffuse and specific support for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) among its constituency by exploring the respondents’ views about the ICTY and the local courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, and Serbia. Our results show that, whereas the ICTY was the preferred decision-maker for war crimes and crimes against humanity for the majority of the respondents, ethnicity plays a strong role in the perceptions of the ICTY’s legitimacy. Compared with Croat and Serb respondents, who typically expressed little confidence in the ICTY, the Bosniak/Muslim respondents seemed to show the greatest degree of support for the ICTY. Although the majority of the respondents evaluated the ICTY as fair, the level of support for the ICTY was sharply divided across ethnic lines as well and was related to evaluations of the ICTY’s distributive fairness and procedural fairness, and to perceptions about the judges’ (lack of) political independence. The majority of the respondents evaluated only one domestic court – the Court of Bosnia and Herzegovina – as fair.
Police use of force is at the forefront of public awareness in many countries. Body-worn videos (BWVs) have been proposed as a new way of reducing police use of force, as well as assaults against officers. To date, only a handful of peer-reviewed randomised trials have looked at the effectiveness of BWVs, primarily focusing on use of force and complaints. We sought to replicate these studies, adding assaults against police officers as an additional outcome. Using a prospective meta-analysis of multi-site, multi-national randomised controlled trials from 10 discrete tests with a total population of +2 million, and 2.2 million police officer-hours, we assess the effect of BWVs on the rates of (i) police use of force and (ii) assaults against officers. Averaged over 10 trials, BWVs had no effect on police use of force (d = 0.021; SE = 0.056; 95% CI: –0.089–0.130), but led to an increased rate of assaults against officers wearing cameras (d = 0.176; SE = 0.058; 95% CI: 0.061–0.290). As there is evidence that cameras may increase the risk of assaults against officers, more attention should be paid to how these devices are implemented. Likewise, since other public-facing organisations are considering equipping their staff with BWVs (e.g. firefighters, private security, traffic wardens), the findings on risks associated with BWVs are transferrable to those occupations as well.
Inmate-on-inmate violence is a serious problem in prisons and young offender institutions. However, most studies on predictors of violent misconduct have focussed on adult inmates. This study examines the perpetration of violence in multiple young offender institutions, using the self-report data of 865 male inmates. Prevalence rates indicate that violence occurs to a high extent in the institutions. Regression analyses show that both importation and deprivation variables significantly predict the perpetration of physical and sexual violence. Specifically, drug use during imprisonment, violent beliefs, and a negative inmate–staff relationship were found to increase the risk of violent misconduct. The implications of these findings are discussed.
Homicide–suicides are the term for homicides followed by the suicide of the offender. This study utilized police statistics, information from the penal files and an online search of news reports to establish the prevalence of homicide–suicides in Romania. We compare characteristics of homicide–suicides among current or former Romanian emigrants and Romanians who never emigrated. The estimated homicide–suicide rate was 0.005–0.146 per 100,000 inhabitants in Romania between 2002 and 2013. Intimate partners committed significantly more homicide–suicides among emigrants than non-emigrants. Emigrant homicide–suicides also had significantly more reports of prior abuse than non-emigrant homicide–suicides. The findings of this study call for improvements in intimate partner violence prevention in Romania and among Romanian migrant communities abroad.
The aim of this article is to investigate the relationship between values and white-collar crime. The analyses draw on pooled survey data covering 14 European countries. The value constructs are derived on the basis of the theory of basic human values and seven value constructs are tested in relation to three types of white-collar crime: tax evasion, insurance fraud and bribery. The results show that a majority of the value constructs are statistically significantly related to white-collar crime in the expected direction. The relationships between values and white-collar crime are particularly clear-cut regarding tax evasion and insurance fraud but more mixed regarding bribery. The value constructs ‘universalism/benevolence’, ‘power/achievement’ and ‘stimulation’ yield consistent results across all three crime types. ‘Universalism/benevolence’ levels are negatively associated, while ‘power/achievement’ and ‘stimulation’ levels are positively associated, with odds of having committed white-collar crime. The results suggest that values are relevant predictors when trying to account for variation in white-collar offending.
It is assumed that the public holds negative attitudes towards sex offenders, yet an increasing number of European volunteers are involved in sex offender rehabilitation programmes through Circles of Support and Accountability (CoSA). Public attitudes and their correlates have been mainly studied in Anglo-Saxon countries; research in European countries other than the UK is scarce. To fill this gap, a web-based survey was held among web-panels in nine European countries (n = 200 per country). Measures included awareness and knowledge about sex offenders, community attitudes towards sex offenders in the community (CATSO), attitudes towards the treatment of sex offenders (ATTSO), public attitudes towards sex offender rehabilitation (PATSOR), support for CoSA, and attitudes towards volunteers working with sex offenders. Results indicated that clear misperceptions were held by a minority. Attitudes tended to be negative, but not extremely, and differences between countries were significant. The amount of support for CoSA was considerable and mean attitudes towards volunteers working with sex offenders were positive. The lower educated held more negative attitudes. Since web-panels were probably not representative on key demographic markers, the results are only indicative. Professionals should especially address the lower educated, correct key misperceptions about recidivism of sex offenders, and provide information about processes of change in convicted sex offenders.
Anabolic-androgenic steroids are performance and image enhancing drugs (PIED) that can improve endurance and athletic performance, reduce body fat and stimulate muscle growth. The use of steroids has been studied extensively in the medical and psychological literature, as well as in the sociology of sport, health and masculinity. From the late 2000s, the worldwide trade in steroids increased significantly. However, trafficking in steroids remains a largely under-researched criminological phenomenon with a few notable exceptions. Currently in the UK there are only small and fragmented pieces of information available relating to steroids trafficking in autobiographical accounts of professional criminals. Drawing on original empirical data, the purpose of this article is to provide an account of the social organization of the steroids trafficking business in the UK. The trade in steroids is decentralized, highly flexible with no hierarchies, and open to anyone willing to either order the merchandise online or travel to producing countries and obtain steroids in bulk from legitimate manufacturers. The patterns of trafficking of this specific type of substance are patently conditioned by its embeddedness in the gym/bodybuilding scene and this greatly affects relations between actors in the business. In the steroids market, one typically encounters a multitude of individuals likely to drift between legality and illegality, online and offline, use and supply.
In this article, we provide insight into a common but scarcely researched problem in the process of confiscating criminal earnings: attrition, that is, the gap between estimated criminal profits on the one hand and the actually recovered amount of money on the other. We investigate the practice and results of financial investigation and asset recovery in organized crime cases in the Netherlands by using empirical data from the Dutch Organized Crime Monitor, confiscation order court files, and the Central Fine Collection Agency. The data shed light on financial investigation in practice and give a complete picture of the confiscation order court procedures as well as the execution of those orders for 102 convicted offenders – from public prosecutors’ claims and rulings of the initial, appeal and the Supreme Court, to what offenders actually pay. The phenomenon of attrition can be explained by several factors, but an important factor turns out to be how ‘criminal profit’ is defined (determined) in law and practice.
This study investigates the effect of being an outlaw biker on criminal involvement in Denmark. Using a unique dataset, 297 outlaw bikers are matched on various background characteristics with 181,931 control individuals and effects are estimated in difference-in-difference regressions. This approach reduces the risk of selection bias and helps isolate the effect of affiliation on criminal involvement. The results suggest that affiliation with an outlaw motorcycle club may increase involvement in overall crime, specifically property crime, drug crime, and weapons crime. Results regarding violent crimes are inconclusive. It is concluded that an outlaw biker affiliation may increase criminal involvement.
Research has shown that punitive attitudes are influenced by denominational affiliation, religious participation and images of God. However, most of the research so far has been conducted in the United States, which is very different compared with most European states with respect to the importance of religion. The paper analyses the relationship between religion and punitiveness outside the United States in a European context based on a German-wide representative survey (N = 2265). Respondents who perceive God as loving are less punitive and support the death penalty less. The same holds for the frequency of praying and church attendance. Protestants and Catholics are also less supportive of the death penalty compared with non-affiliated individuals.
This study complements existing literature on the mobility of criminal groups (mainly based on country case studies) with the first systematic assessment of the worldwide activities of the four main types of Italian mafias (Cosa Nostra, Camorra, ’Ndrangheta and Apulian mafias) from 2000 to 2012. Drawing from publicly available reports, a specific multiple correspondence analysis identifies the most important associations among mafias, activities, and countries. The results show that the mafias concentrate in a few countries; drug trafficking is the most frequent activity, whereas money laundering appears less important than expected; a stable mafia presence is reported in a few developed countries (mainly Germany, Canada, Australia, and the United States). The mafias show significant differences: the ’Ndrangheta tends to establish structured groups abroad, whereas the other mafias mainly participate in illicit trades.
High crime rates among second-generation immigrants are usually attributed to the ethnic group’s weak socioeconomic position in the host society. The causes of crime can, however, also be sought in their native countries or regions. Owing to a lack of empirical data, this has rarely been tested. The Netherlands is an exception: small-scale ethnographic case studies among young Moroccan men in Dutch cities suggest that their regional background and culture, particularly if they are from the less developed Rif Mountains area, may explain their high crime rates. In this article we examine whether this applies to the results of a quantitative study on all the Moroccan male juveniles in the Netherlands. At the individual level, our unique dataset is a combination of their native regions, criminal records (ever suspected of a crime) and demographic and socioeconomic characteristics. Logistic regression analysis shows that current socioeconomic position is a strong predictor of ever having been suspected of a criminal offence, and the impact of geographical descent, directly or indirectly via socioeconomic position in the Netherlands, is negligible. Accordingly, our findings on Moroccans in the Netherlands do not warrant our questioning the common explanation of the immigrant–crime connection in criminology and suggest further research to determine the specific host society’s features that explain the overrepresentation of ethnic groups in crime statistics.
Situational Action Theory (SAT), a recently developed explanation of criminal conduct, is becoming increasingly studied. Hitherto, however, nearly all tests of the theory and its hypotheses have been based on samples of adolescents or young adults. Studies drawing on the older population have been missing so far. This work addresses the interplay of moral beliefs and the ability to exercise self-control in crime causation among respondents aged 50 years and over. In line with SAT and the results obtained previously for young people, our analyses show that self-control ability affects offending among older adults too, particularly when personal morality is weak.
Not all crimes are reported to the police. The same is true for employee offences experienced by firms. Indeed, companies that are victims of white- or blue-collar crime do not systematically report the incidents to the police or to other official authorities. Victim studies and victimization surveys are recent attempts to provide an insight into the amount of unreported crime. Drawing on the most recent business crime survey conducted in Switzerland, this article focuses on victim reporting of acts committed by employees such as fraud, theft, and unfair competition and examines for the first time for this country the variables associated with firms’ reporting behaviours. The analysis reveals that several factors might influence the reporting behaviour of firms. The decision to report a crime or not varies and depends on the type of business, the type of crime, its severity or the amount of damage resulting from the crime, the fear of reputational damage, or trust in the police.
In recent years, theorization and research on citizens’ trust in the police have expanded enormously. Compared with citizens’ trust, police officers’ trust – both in citizens and in supervisors – has attracted very little attention. Further, it is striking that, although scholars have pointed to police officers’ procedural justice as a key factor for building public trust in the police, the question of how trustworthy police behavior can be achieved has hardly been theorized. To help fill in these gaps and understand police officers’ functioning, I offer a work relations framework. The building blocks for this approach come from different scientific disciplines: criminology, psychology, management, and political science/public administration. Theoretical elements and empirical indications from different fields are combined into a framework that aims at widening the scope of police research. More specifically, it identifies origins and consequences of police officers’ trust and origins of officers’ trustworthy behavior.
In this paper, we examine the similarity between friends with respect to experiences with crime among a sample of Dutch individuals. We investigate the extent to which offenders, victims and victim-offenders (de)select friends differently and, subsequently, who (de)selects whom and why. We use data from the annual Dutch panel survey CrimeNL, which includes ego-centered network measures at each wave for more than 500 participants, ranging from 16 to 45 years old. Results show that offenders terminate friendships more often than non-offenders, and they have a higher likelihood of selecting new friends, regardless of prior victimization experiences. Furthermore, homophily with respect to crime involvement exists; both offenders and victims are more likely to select new friends who are similarly involved in crime. Risky lifestyles to a large extent explain why people select offenders as friends, whereas third parties (that is, parents and the pre-existing network of individuals) influence people’s decision to engage in friendships with victims of crime. Nevertheless, after taking individual preferences, meeting opportunities and third parties into account, offenders and victims are still more likely to select friends with similar crime experiences.
This article problematizes the common assertion that policies purported to counter prostitution and prostitution-related human trafficking effectively reduce such crime. The paradigm of Cyprus is employed for illustrating that legal action against prostitution (and sex trafficking), intended to reduce the opportunities for purchasing sex on the island, has given rise to the displacement of crime. To affirm this, police intelligence (n = 1103) gathered over the course of 11 years is analysed. If anything, the findings presented here complement the (small) corpus of quantitative studies that address the effectiveness of anti-trafficking policies.
Criminology has an incomplete and imprecise understanding of the qualitative aspects of juvenile co-offending. This article explores one type of juvenile crime, namely arson. Using publicly available judicial records, it analyses 60 cases of fire-setting in Sweden in which there were two or more perpetrators aged under 21 acting jointly. The resulting categorization shows the social organization of juvenile fire-setting to be centred around nine different positions that a young person can take during the planning, preparation and commission phase of an arson offence. The findings highlight the usefulness of bringing together criminological research on co-offending and juvenile fire-setting to better understand the dynamics driving and facilitating youth arson and group aspects of youth delinquency and crime more generally.
Correctional literature on determinants of prisoner misconduct is largely focused on the situation in the USA or West European countries. This study expands the research in this field by presenting findings from Romania, an East European country whose prison system faces severe problems, among which overcrowding and poor confinement conditions are of the utmost concern. Therefore a survey was conducted on a sample of 280 adult male inmates in four large Romanian prisons. These exceptional data were supplemented with information from official records drawn from the prison administration’s databases. A unique combination of importation and deprivation factors, with a particular focus on several prison deprivations perceived by inmates as problematic, is examined in relation to the prevalence of four types of inmate misbehaviour: total misconduct, contraband infractions, violence and defiance. The findings show a clear relationship between importation and deprivation characteristics and prison misconduct. Also a differential impact of these characteristics is shown, depending on the type of prison infraction examined. The study concludes by advancing a set of policy recommendations to reduce the incidence of institutional misconduct in Romanian prisons.
This study is a content analysis of wiretapped conversations and police interviews concerning the criminal case of ‘Operation Koolvis’: an investigation into a Nigerian human trafficking ring for sexual exploitation in Western Europe. The criminal network traffics women from Nigeria, via the Netherlands as a transit country, to become street prostitutes in Italy. The aim is to explore the role of ‘voodoo’ in the functioning of the organization, applying transaction cost economics and rational choice theory. Four main categories of voodoo use were found. Firstly, voodoo is a coercive mechanism. Secondly, it is used cynically in cooperation between traffickers. Thirdly, there is non-cynical mention of voodoo as a belief system. A fourth category concerns voodoo priests as independent enforcers of contracts.
This article draws upon two different ethnographic studies – one based in Sweden, the other in the United Kingdom – to explore how private security officers working in a stigmatized industry construct and repair their self-esteem. Whereas the concept of ‘dirty work’ (Hughes, 1951) has been applied to public police officers, an examination of private security officers as dirty workers remains undeveloped. Along with describing instances of taint designation and management, we find that the occupational culture of security officers enhances self-esteem by infusing security work with a sense of purpose. As members of a tainted occupation, security officers employ a range of strategies to deflect scorn and reframe their work as important and necessary.
Violent media consumption is often thought to lead to more aggression and violence, especially in juveniles. Social cognitive theories assume a pivotal role for cognitive functions, such as normative beliefs, in the explanation of human behaviour (including violence) and see violent media as a possible and potent learning environment. Although many studies have analysed the relationship between violent media consumption and violence, only a few are longitudinal and apparently no study has analysed mediator effects of violence-approving normative beliefs with data from a Western country at more than two points in time. Some researchers assume that violent media consumption can only aggravate an already existing disposition for violence due to other experiences such as parental maltreatment (double-dose or intensifier effect, which is methodologically described as a moderator effect). Both assumptions – mediation and moderation – are tested with structural equation models using cross-sectional and longitudinal data from a German panel study. Results show that interaction effects between parental behaviour and violent media consumption are surprisingly weak, whereas both influence the approval of violence to a remarkable extent and mediated by this eventually, to a smaller extent, violent behaviour.
This article addresses the strongest variables related to bullying, taking into account personal background, personality characteristics and social context. A survey of self-reported juvenile delinquency among more than 4500 pupils in the 8th and 9th grades was conducted in a French-speaking part of Switzerland. Offenders are more often boys, and boys score higher than girls for all the considered behaviours. The multivariate analyses showed that youths with a low level of self-control are more likely to bully others. Moreover, adopting a positive attitude towards violence and spending time with peers also increase the risk of bullying. The importance of environmental variables was also shown; youths are less likely to bully with increased supervision and monitoring by adults, and when schools participate in social control by impartially intervening to increase respect for the rules. Furthermore, when the school climate is considered in a positive light by the pupils, then their risk of committing bullying decreases. Finally, it appears that school absenteeism is a good indicator for detecting at-risk youths. The identification of these risk factors can be used to define appropriate intervention strategies.
Because the gendered pathways perspective was developed and tested primarily in the United States, the applicability of the model in European contexts remains questionable. Also, it is unclear how adult-onset female offenders fit the pathways perspective. In this article we explore the life histories and the pathways to crime and prison of female prisoners in Belgium. Because many participants were late starters, our findings are particularly informative for female adult-onset pathways. These adult-onset pathways show both similarities to and differences from the US gendered pathways perspective. Hence, this pathway might be considered as another gendered pathway to crime and prison, alongside those put forward in mainly US research.
Knowledge on both the prevalence of and the risk factors for juvenile delinquency rely almost exclusively on data generated by self-report research. However, several errors can occur during the process of data gathering, all of which may have an impact on the validity and reliability of the results. This has become more apparent as self-report data on (juvenile) delinquency are increasingly being used to assess the prevalence of delinquency in society. In this article we try to determine how different administration modes may result in different results with regard to the prevalence of juvenile delinquency being reported as well as the predictors of delinquent behaviour. In order to decide whether these differences can be seen as mode effects, the possible influence of selection effects – or differences in the sample population – must be controlled for. For this aim, the technique of case-control matching is used to match the samples of a mail survey and a school survey, both administered on a representative sample of Flemish youth attending secondary education. Using the technique of case-control matching, we aim to control for differences in non-response error, in order to disentangle non-response effects from effects related to administration mode.
We examined how parenting is directly and indirectly associated with adolescent delinquency. We derived four possible mechanisms from major criminological theories and examined their relative contribution to explaining the relationship between parenting and delinquency: self-control theory (that is, self-control), differential association theory (that is, delinquent attitudes and peer delinquency), and routine activity theory (that is, time spent in criminogenic settings). In addition, we examined how changes in different aspects of parenting during adolescence were directly and indirectly related to changes in delinquency. Results of multilevel structural equation modeling on two waves of panel data on 603 adolescents indicated that parenting was indirectly related to delinquency through self-control, delinquent attitudes, peer delinquency, and time spent in criminogenic settings. However, only when examined together these variables, derived from major criminological theories, almost fully mediate the effects of parenting. Furthermore, changes in parenting during adolescence were indirectly related to changes in delinquency through changes in delinquent attitudes and in peer delinquency.
This study examines the subjective processes of introspection of three groups of adolescents at risk and in distress and analyzes their perceived impact on the development of resilience and, consequently, the abstention and desistence from criminal conduct or, alternatively, the intensification of delinquent behavior. The three groups are: stable normal adolescents with neither past nor current involvement in criminal behavior; persistent criminal adolescents with past and current involvement in criminal activities; adolescents limited to temporary delinquent behavior with a criminal past but no current involvement in delinquent behavior. Our main findings are that (a) the processes of introspection and self-exploration of risk and distress factors have a perceived positive impact on current and future modes of thought and behavior among stable normal adolescents and juveniles limited to temporary delinquent behavior; (b) processes of introspection have a positive impact on the development of resilience and internal change among adolescents limited to temporary delinquent behavior. We conclude that, first, processes of introspection assist in the development of resilience among various groups of adolescents at risk and, consequently, in the desistence and abstention from crime; second, periods of crises and distress among adolescents at risk may serve as opportunities for introspection and possible shift from a criminal lifestyle to a normal one; and, third, failure to assume responsibility for their involvement in delinquent behavior may lead criminal adolescents at risk to develop deterministic attitudes toward numerous distress and risk factors in their lives and, consequently, continue with their criminal lifestyles.
Financial crime in the form of misconduct, fraud and corruption is widely seen as having triggered the financial crisis that has pushed the Western world into an economic crisis. This paper explores possible relations between conditions that might trigger financial crime (criminogenic conditions) in the years preceding the 2008 crisis, the level of bribery in a country in 2007 and the severity of the economic crisis in the European Union in the period 2008–12 at a macro level. The results suggest that the presence of a number of criminogenic conditions such as banks that are too big to fail, a high level of inequality and free market principles is positively related to the severity of the crisis in the European Union, whereas mixed evidence is found for high levels of bribery.
Research on legal and extralegal disparity in criminal sentencing has been conducted primarily in the United States, and, to a lesser extent, in select European nations. Largely separate research literatures have developed around juvenile and adult sentencing decisions, and few studies examine both prosecutorial and judicial punishment outcomes. This study examines the effects of diverse legal and socio-demographic characteristics on both prosecutorial and judicial punishments, for both juveniles and adults. It assesses the broad generalizability of prior research and theorizing, analyzing punishment outcomes for all criminal suspects registered by the Public Prosecutor’s Office in the Netherlands in 2007. Results indicate that offense, case-processing and criminal history characteristics weigh heavily in prosecutorial and judicial decision-making. There are also direct effects of age, gender and nationality on both prosecutorial and sentencing decisions, for both juvenile and adult offenders, in the Dutch justice system. These findings are discussed in relation to the broad discretion exercised by Dutch court actors and the paper concludes with recommendations for future sentencing research in international contexts.
To examine whether, and if so how, male-based theories of desistance also apply to female offenders, this article reviews 44 studies on female desistance. Where available, gender differences in desistance are considered. Having children and supportive relationships is found to be important for females, in addition to economic independence, the absence of drugs and individual agency. Gender differences are found for the influence of children, supportive relationships, employment and the absence of criminal peers. This review shows that male-based theories of desistance seem applicable to females as well. Furthermore, results underscore the importance of considering how individual and social factors interact during the process of desistance. Implications for future research and for strategies for promoting desistance are discussed.
As one of the primary agents of socialization during adolescence, schools have become an important place for crime prevention. Many programmes have been developed but many of them lack a theoretical basis. Therefore criminological learning theories are examined for possible starting points for successful school-based crime prevention. Theses derived from these theories concerning the direct and indirect impact of student–teacher relationships on students’ attitudes and later self-reported delinquency are analysed with the first four waves (ages 13 to 16) from the German prospective panel study Crime in the Modern City. The findings suggest that the quality of the student–teacher relationship is a causal link in the generation of adolescent delinquent behaviour and hence a promising starting point for crime prevention measures.
Research consistently reveals that public perceptions of procedural justice and police performance are important for fostering citizens’ willingness to cooperate with police, with procedural justice being more important than police performance. Identifying factors that motivate people’s intentions to cooperate with police is the focus of the present study. Of particular interest will be how people’s affiliations with different groups in society moderate their responses to questions about their willingness to cooperate with police. The study utilizes survey data from 10,148 Australian residents and demonstrates that procedural justice, police performance, and identity each predict people’s intentions to cooperate with police. The findings also reveal that identity can moderate citizens’ concerns about procedural justice and police performance when predicting cooperation.
This study explores the question of whether response decision and situation-dependent emotions, concepts of the Social Information Processing model of Crick and Dodge (1994), are useful in explaining differences involving the victimization of police officers. Officers from five regional police forces in the Netherlands completed a digital questionnaire, based partially on the Social Information Processing Interview. Results indicated that victimization involving verbal violence, threats, and physical violence were associated with response decision but not with negative emotions. Police officers who had more negative outcome expectations of aggressive or assertive responses, or who selected an aggressive rather than a passive or assertive response, were more likely to report being a victim of violence than were other police officers. Not all results were as hypothesized, and associations were discussed in the context of police officers’ work situations, protocols, and training.
The present study, as part of a large-scale victim survey, examines the prevalence and nature of stalking in a representative German quota sample (N = 5779). Applying a broad definition of stalking, the lifetime prevalence added up to 15 percent, depending on respondents’ age, gender, and immigrant background, as well as household size and relationship status. Conditional inference trees revealed that gender, relationship status, and household size were key factors in identifying victims of stalking. Offenders mostly committed stalking against the opposite gender. This pertains especially to female (vs. male) victims. In most cases the offender and victim knew each other prior to the stalking. The results are compared with national and international findings. Implications and potential limitations are discussed.
Differences in the crime involvement of immigrants and the native population have been a major topic in criminology for decades. This interest stems from the fact that immigrants are overrepresented in the crime statistics of many European countries. Our study compares delinquency among native and immigrant youth in Finland. The analysis is based on the 2012 sweep of the Finnish Self-Report Delinquency Study (N = 8914). The results show that several forms of delinquency were more prevalent among immigrants than among native youth. Multivariate analyses indicate that routine activities and parental control were related to the immigrant youths’ higher risk of active delinquency. After adjusting for a wide range of background variables, the immigrants’ higher risk of delinquency decreased, but remained significant.
This article presents an integrated self-control/life-course theory of criminal behavior. Coming in the form of 10 propositions, the broad message is that these two seemingly incompatible theoretical traditions can be successfully linked together when: (1) self-control is viewed as dynamic and subject to considerable change both situationally and over time, and (2) self-control is seen as an important cause of selection into the kinds of significant life events (both positive and negative ‘turning points’) that are assumed to, in turn, influence offending. The implications for testing this integrated model and for continued theoretical development are discussed.
One of the most influential considerations in the courts’ attitude towards penal fines is their affordability for low-income offenders. European literature devoted much energy to addressing the use of imprisonment as a substitute penalty in default of payment and the subsequent overcrowding of prisons with poor people who could not paid their fines. These two problems became central focuses in the European criminal systems during the 19th century. This paper aims to investigate more closely the reasons why these phenomena became such a focal issue and the measures taken to manage them. It does so by reviewing historical material from a variety of West European countries.
For over 30 years, the criminal career paradigm in criminology has raised important theoretical and policy questions as well as research on the ‘dimensions’ of the criminal career (for example, onset, duration, lambda, persistence, chronicity, desistance). Yet few studies have examined criminal career dimensions using a cross-national comparative approach. In this paper, we use an international sample of students (aged 12–15 years) from 30 countries (International Self-Report Delinquency Study-2): (1) to determine the extent of cross-national variation in the prevalence and correlates of high-frequency, serious offenders; and (2) to explore cross-national variation in offending patterns and selected correlates of offense specialization (for example, gender, self-control, delinquent peer association). Although we find several factors are correlated with criminal career dimensions across context, important differences emerged as well that have implications for developing context-specific theories of crime and effective offender programming.
This study scrutinizes gender differences in adolescent problem behaviour and its potential determinants, simultaneously taking into account the individual and contextual level, including personality, family and country characteristics. Using the 2010 EU Kids Online Survey, we estimate multilevel models on 18,027 individuals from 24 European countries. In line with earlier research, we find that boys engage more in adolescent problem behaviour than girls. The gender gap is largely explained by personality traits, such as self-control. Whereas the influence of self-control does not differ between boys and girls, the association between conduct problems and problem behaviour is stronger for boys than for girls. Family factors are relevant but not gender specific in their impact on problem behaviour. European countries differ with respect to the gender gap in adolescent problem behaviour, which is partly explained by the societal level of gender inequality.
The punishment of terrorist offenders remains a relatively unexplored topic. Research is especially needed in the United Kingdom in light of the continued criminalization of terrorism-specific offences and the July 2005 bombings. Using a sample of terrorist offenders convicted in the United Kingdom (n = 156), the current study examines the impact of legislative and incident-based contextual factors on sentencing outcomes. The findings indicate that changing contextual environments significantly affect sentencing outcomes, and that the effects of being adjudicated at different time points have unique implications for offenders motivated by an Islamic extremist ideology. Further, evidence of a temporal effect is uncovered, and the potential of a lingering 9/11 effect is addressed.
Self-report surveys are among the most widely used methods of collecting data on delinquent behaviour, despite persistent concerns over systematic bias. Further investigation into this area is necessary, because the increasing difficulty of obtaining detailed official criminal records is making researchers increasingly reliant on self-reports. Therefore, this analysis investigates the validity of self-reported conviction data in a community sample of young adults who are the offspring of the original male participants in the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development. The analysis revealed a high level of concurrent validity, although those who had several convictions or convictions for serious offences were more likely to under-report them, whereas older offenders were less likely to over-report. Those living with their parents were less likely to under-report and more likely to over-report their offences. The predictive validity analyses demonstrated that self-reports significantly predicted subsequent convictions for property, violent, drug and driving offences. Users of self-report data need to take these results into consideration.
The fight against organized crime is a very fertile ground for policymaking at various levels. On one side, because of the perceived transnationality of the phenomenon, national states are inclined to develop harmonized responses within the European or international law frameworks. On the other side, national conceptualizations and manifestations of organized crime often make these harmonizations quite challenging.
This paper shares the findings of a socio-legal investigation carried out in England and in Italy through interviews and document analysis, comparing the two national models against organized crime. The paper presents these two models – the Italian Structure Model and the English Activity Model, which are very different in many ways – in order to identify divergences and convergences of policies and practices. This comparative exercise not only improves our understanding of national approaches, beyond cultural, linguistic and legal boundaries, but also improves the dialogue towards concerted efforts at the international level.
Nevertheless, the globalization of criminal markets and the internationalization of policies have influenced perceptions of organized crime and related policing tactics at national levels too. This paper will briefly look at international perspectives to assess to what extent divergent and convergent areas between the two models are also areas of interest and focus at the international level, in order to conclude with an enhanced understanding of both models before drawing conclusions.
Although researchers acknowledge the importance of replication in building scientific knowledge, replication studies seem to be published infrequently. The present study examines the extent to which replications are conducted in criminology. We conduct a content analysis of the five most influential journals in criminology. We also compare the replication rate in criminology with that in the social sciences and natural sciences. The results show that replication research is rarely published in these disciplines. In criminology journals in particular, replication studies constitute just over 2 percent of the articles published between 2006 and 2010. Further, those replication studies that were published in criminology journals in that period tended to conflict with the original studies. These findings call into question the utility of empirical results published in criminology journals for developing theory and policy. Strategies for promoting replication research in criminology are suggested.
This paper presents cross-cultural research using data from the Second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2) to evaluate the strength and characteristics of the relationship between different kinds of juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, and to investigate whether, and how, different drinking cultures may influence this relationship. The setting is a school-based survey with a self-report questionnaire in a sample of 7th, 8th and 9th grade students (comprising 12–16 year olds) from 25 European countries. After recording data on alcohol consumption among young people in different European countries, we assessed the degree to which property offences, violent offences and gang membership were associated with the use of alcohol. In addition, a multilevel analysis (MLA) was carried out to ascertain whether the association between delinquency and alcohol use was influenced by variations in drinking cultures. Different drinking patterns were observed in Mediterranean and non-Mediterranean countries. Alcohol consumption was more closely related to involvement in violent crimes than to property offences, and correlated with the frequency and seriousness of delinquent behaviour everywhere. MLA showed that gang membership increased the probability of alcohol abuse to a greater degree in non-Mediterranean countries, while involvement in delinquency proved to be associated with alcohol abuse to a similar degree in the different cultural contexts considered. With regard to cultural influences on the relationships between juvenile delinquency and alcohol use, we ascertained that cultural attitudes towards alcohol influence the delinquency–alcohol relationship at the group level rather than the individual level.
Crime policy is increasingly legitimized by reference to the public sense of justice. A research project has therefore been conducted in all five Scandinavian countries in order to examine the public’s views on punishment. These views have been examined by means of simple questions in telephone interviews, by vignettes in postal questionnaires, and by focus groups having seen a film of a mock trial. The results show that, when asked simple questions, the public want stiffer sentences. In their assessments of the vignette crimes, the public demands on average lower prison sentences than judges, and this tendency becomes stronger in the focus group study. The propensities towards punitiveness seem to diminish with more information and increasing proximity to the parties involved.
The UK has one of the lowest conviction rates for rape in Europe. This article presents unique evidence on the factors that influence the attrition of rape allegations in the English criminal justice system. The study is based on a large, representative sample of rape allegations reported to the London Metropolitan Police, the UK’s biggest police force. The dataset contains unprecedented detail on the incident, the victim, the suspect and the police investigation. The results lend support to the influence of some rape myths and stereotypes on attrition. These findings suggest that further central factors include the ethnicity of the suspect as well as what police officers and prosecutors perceive as evidence against the truthfulness of the allegation: police records noting a previous false allegation by the victim, inconsistencies in the victim’s account of the alleged rape, and evidence or police opinion casting doubt on the allegation.
There is widespread agreement that the Internet is a primary market for counterfeit pharmaceuticals, but this issue has been under-investigated by criminologists. In order to effectively control this dangerous trade, considerably more knowledge about it must be assembled. This study contributes to this domain by looking at how the Internet is used to facilitate the trade in counterfeit pharmaceuticals. Based on interviews and investigative cases analysed through a crime script, this study pinpoints the criminal opportunities made available by the specificities of the Internet, identifies what specific phases of the trafficking activity they facilitate, investigates how such opportunities are exploited, provides updated insights into how actors involved in the online market in counterfeit pharmaceuticals behave, and offers a reflection on the main challenges that have to be met to respond to this criminal phenomenon.
On the basis of Article 1F of the Refugee Convention, alleged perpetrators of international crimes can be excluded from refugee protection. This paper explains why the Netherlands – which is among the countries that apply Article 1F most actively – has, despite administrative commitment, so far successfully prosecuted only 4 out of approximately 800 excluded individuals. On the basis of an analysis of 1F files and interviews with policy makers, representatives from the National Prosecution Office and investigators, we identify the most relevant legal and practical challenges. Although domestic prosecution of suspects of international crimes is already complicated in itself, this article presents a number of additional factors that make prosecuting excluded persons even more challenging.
Using data from a representative sample of the Dutch population (n = 656), we examined to what extent confidence in the criminal justice system, punitive penal attitudes and political orientation relate to public support for suspended sentences. Mediation and moderation analyses were done to further explore the dynamics behind public support for suspended sentences. Results showed that confidence in the criminal justice system, punitive penal attitudes and political orientation were related to public support for suspended sentences. In addition, support was found for our mediation and moderation hypothesis. In our conclusion we illustrate the importance of examining these factors in determining public support for suspended sentences.
Policymakers and researchers have long been interested in the punitive attitudes of police and correctional officers. This research examined the punitive attitudes of 206 police and correctional officers at the beginning and towards the end of academic studies. The results indicate that (a) the police officers held more punitive attitudes compared with the correctional officers; (b) the correctional officers, but not the police officers, held less punitive attitudes in the last year than in the first year of studies; (c) male police officers generally held more punitive attitudes than their female counterparts; (d) belief in classical theories, which was found to be the strongest predictor of harsher punitive attitudes, was greater among police than correctional officers. The implications of the results are discussed.
The international literature contains very few empirical tests of Tyler’s (2011) claim that in Europe, as in the United States, procedural justice plays a larger part than police performance in accounting for citizens’ trust in the police. With regard to procedural justice, there has also been little research on the distinct effects of responsiveness and fair treatment. This study is a step towards filling in these gaps. We used quantitative data collected in Belgium to examine to what extent citizens’ trust in the police is determined by being a victim of crime, perceptions of disorder, feelings of insecurity, perceptions of the way the police treat people and perceptions of police responsiveness. The results indicate the relevance of procedural justice for explaining police trustworthiness in European countries. In Belgium, perceived responsiveness seems to be the cornerstone of a strong trust relationship.
Strict safe storage regulations are a cornerstone of the Swedish gun control legislation. The rationale is that, by limiting the number of guns a licensed gun owner may own and requiring them to have their guns locked up in gun safes when not in use, legal guns may be prevented from ending up in the hands of criminals through theft. This study, the first full population data study of gun thefts in Sweden, investigated all reported gun thefts in Sweden from 2003 and 2010 and in the county of Stockholm from 1995 to 2010. The analysis revealed that actual thefts from legal gun owners are very rare both in absolute terms and when compared with the number of gun owners, with legal guns and with burglaries. Most firearms that were stolen were properly stored in gun safes, a proportion that also increased to almost 100 percent during the period. The most common method of theft is to steal the entire gun safe. Further, the analysis revealed that official reports on gun thefts have serious errors; 16 percent of police reports on gun thefts referred to cases in which no modern firearm requiring a licence had been stolen.
This study explores how gang membership transitions among adolescents are related to changes with regard to peers, conventional social bonds and problem behaviour. The data come from two longitudinal studies, one conducted in the United States (the Rochester Youth Development Study) and one in the Netherlands (the NSCR School Study). In both countries, gang membership appears to be relatively short-lived, with one year as the modal length of gang membership. Also, in both countries, the results show a consistent pattern in which joining a gang is related to an increasing exposure to negative peer influences, a weakening of conventional bonds and increasing levels of delinquency and substance use. Leaving a gang is associated with the opposite pattern of change.
Although the delivery of a Victim Impact Statement (VIS) in court is assumed to contribute to the healing and recovery process of victims of violent crimes, its effectiveness to facilitate emotional recovery is widely debated. The current longitudinal study is the first to empirically examine the psychological effects of delivering a VIS in terms of the two most important emotional reactions after crime: anger and anxiety. It extends previous findings by showing that the debate concerning the effectiveness of delivering a VIS is not a ‘black and white’ matter. In this article, we argue that the question should not be whether delivering a VIS ‘works’ or ‘doesn’t work’ for the victim, but for whom, and under which conditions. We show that delivering a VIS does not give rise to direct ‘therapeutic’ effects. However, we found that feelings of anger and anxiety decrease for victims who experience more control over their recovery process and higher levels of procedural justice.
This paper presents the results of a study that links information from the prison system with information from the Spanish Social Security System in order to study the employability of former inmates of prisons in Catalonia, Spain. Few studies of this type have been carried out in the world and this is the first in Spain. The results show that 43.6 percent of ex-prisoners find a job after serving their sentence, but their integration in the labour market tends to be fragile, confirming that it is a very vulnerable group. It was also found that prison work has a favourable effect on employability and that vocational training has a lesser or no effect.
Family bonding is a mainstay in theories of crime and delinquency. Recently, it has also been extended to explain exposure to victimization in the US and abroad. Although research reveals that there are differences between countries in their views about the importance of family, scholarship has not yet considered how and why the protective features of family bonding might vary across the country context according to how the family is valued. This study, using data from the second International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD-2), reveals that both individual levels of family bonding and macro levels of the perceived importance of the family are negatively related to victimization. Analyses suggest that exposure to victimization and the effects of family bonding vary across contexts where the effect of family bonding on victimization is stronger in countries that view the family as more important. We conclude that these results contribute insight into the operationalization of victimization theories across the country context and that policies at the country level may prove useful in reducing victimization risk.
Little is yet known about which factors influence the trust in the police of different ethnic minorities in European countries. This article is a step towards filling in that gap. To assess differences and similarities in the explanation of minority groups’ trust, we replicated a recent study on Turkish and Moroccan minority group members’ trust in the Belgian police (Van Craen, 2013). The study on which we report here shifted the focus from traditional minority groups in Belgium to a new immigrant group: Polish immigrants. We anticipated that our findings would depart in two ways. We hypothesized that social capital and perceptions of discrimination would not play an important role in the explanation of Polish immigrants’ trust in the Belgian police. Regression analyses on data gathered in the city of Antwerp (N = 418) suggest that there is no correlation between Polish immigrants’ social capital and their trust in law enforcement. However, perceptions of discrimination are a key explanatory factor for this minority group too. Implications for theorization and research are discussed.
Although several empirical studies on punitivity have appeared in the last few decades, this body of research stays under-theorized and rather vague because of the lack of a clear definition of the concept of punitivity and the different methodologies used to measure it. Focusing on individual punitivity (punitive attitudes), this literature review article presents some important substantive and methodological achievements of and challenges to this body of research. Despite existing knowledge and the already extensive literature on the topic, this article aims to add an innovative element by (a) providing a clear, thorough and multidimensional operationalization of the concept of punitive attitudes that can be used in future research, by (b) not only reviewing the existing literature, but also being critical of and nuancing some of the main research findings, and by (c) making concrete suggestions to advance research in this area.
Research indicates individual pathways towards school attacks and inconsistent offender profiles. Thus, several authors have classified offenders according to mental disorders, motives, or number/kinds of victims. We assumed differences between single and multiple victim offenders (intending to kill one or more than one victim). In qualitative and quantitative analyses of data from qualitative content analyses of case files on seven school attacks in Germany, we found differences between the offender groups in seriousness, patterns, characteristics, and classes of leaking (announcements of offences), offence-related behaviour, and offence characteristics. There were only minor differences in risk factors. Our research thus adds to the understanding of school attacks and leaking. Differences between offender groups require consideration in the planning of effective preventive approaches.
The current study investigates the effects of structured risk-based pre-sentence reports on sentencing outcomes in the Netherlands by means of a quasi-natural experiment. Defendants with such a report are compared with similar defendants without such a report, based on propensity score matching and synchronization on nine additional criteria relevant to penal decision-making (N = 6118). Although structured risk-based pre-sentence reports are a textbook example of ‘new penological’ accounts, high-risk defendants with such a report are not sentenced to more ‘controlling’ and less ‘diverting’ sentencing outcomes than are high-risk defendants without such a report. Instead, these reports overall relate to less ‘controlling’ and more ‘diverting’ sentencing outcomes, indicating that the penal welfarism account is still prevalent in penal decision-making in the Netherlands.
Differential association and social learning theory assume delinquent peers to be instigators and reinforcers of delinquent behaviour and norms favourable of delinquency. Control theory, on the other hand, assumes that delinquents will group together with peers that share a common normative and behavioural background. Interactional theory as an integrative paradigm argues that both – influence and selection – processes might be active simultaneously and are embedded in a reciprocal causal relationship. This paper tests the reciprocity between the association with delinquent peer groups, the acceptance of pro-violent norms and violent delinquency during adolescence with data from a German longitudinal panel study in a longitudinal structural equation model. Results indicate that peers, norms and violence are interactionally related and that influence and selection processes are active simultaneously. Moreover, further structural dimensions are able to explain delinquent peer group association, the acceptance of pro-violent norms and violence in early adolescence.
This article discusses findings from a project funded by the European Commission’s DAPHNE III programme that sought to enhance the provision of relationship education and domestic abuse prevention in European schools and other educational facilities: the REaDAPt (Relationship Education and Domestic Abuse Prevention tuition) project. It summarizes what is known about effective prevention from the research literature before explaining what the REaDAPt project revealed about changing attitudes, about implementing and evaluating domestic abuse prevention programmes in educational settings, and about being responsive to young people’s perspectives in the delivery of interventions. The article concludes by highlighting the iterative nature of the research needed to help develop relationship education and domestic abuse prevention tuition on a Europe-wide scale.
Some scholars question whether procedural justice is the key driver in promoting support for the police across all cultural contexts. In this study we examine the relationship between procedural justice, police performance, trust in the police and the willingness to cooperate with the police, and we compare Vietnamese and Indian ancestral groups with the general population in Australia. We find that procedural justice is less effective in encouraging cooperation with the police among Vietnamese and Indian ancestral groups when compared with a general population group. Procedural justice is also found to be less effective in promoting trust among Vietnamese participants, compared with the general population group. Instead, police performance is found to be more effective in promoting trust in the police among Vietnamese participants. We set out to explain these observed differences and describe why some ethnic minority groups may judge process-based factors to be less important when it comes to trusting the police or being willing to cooperate with the police.
Previous research shows that a disadvantaged school setting is associated with increased risk of adolescent delinquency. However, there is limited research on individual differences in such contextual effects. In this study, we investigated whether the association between impulsive and sensation-seeking traits and delinquency is modified by the school setting, focusing on schools’ socioeconomic and ethnic composition and average school performance. We also examined whether the association between gender and delinquency varies by school context. Participants were adolescents in ninth grade from the Stockholm School Survey (5619 pupils in 89 schools). The findings showed an attenuating effect of school advantage on adolescents’ individual risk of delinquency. Impulsive and sensation-seeking adolescents, and boys in particular, committed less crime if they attended more advantaged schools.
The literature on risk factors for joining street gangs has relied mainly on surveys of US youth. This article addresses the consistency of correlates of street gang involvement in several European countries. We utilize self-report surveys of middle school students in 19 European countries. We employ the Eurogang definition of gang membership and address the degree to which risk indicators from multiple ecological domains surface with some regularity across these different country contexts. Delinquent offending and negative peer behaviours emerge as the most influential and consistent correlates of gang involvement. We consider the implications of our findings for revealing a generalizable pattern of gang participation among European youth as well as the theoretical implications of the significant gang correlates.
This study aims to identify the locations where unstructured socializing is related to adolescent offending. ‘Locations’ refer to private, semi-public and public spaces, which are further categorized into public entertainment, public transportation, other semi-public settings, streets, shopping centres and open spaces. Detailed longitudinal data, derived from space–time budget interviews among 615 respondents in the age range 11–20 years, about hourly activities and the whereabouts of adolescents are analysed. A random intercept panel model is used to control for selection effects that occur when crime-prone individuals prefer crime-conducive locations to other locations. Findings indicate that unstructured socializing is positively related to offending and that this relationship strongly depends on the location in which it occurs.
Transitional justice has an expectation management problem. International law imposes a right to justice and an obligation to defeat impunity from crimes against humanity. Yet there has not been a war where a substantial proportion of criminals against humanity have been convicted. Nor is one likely. The theoretical solution considered in this paper is to broaden, deepen, and lengthen our conception of justice so that more survivors might be vindicated by some kind of justice, even if a partial kind of justice. We broaden justice with a more holistic, yet multidimensional conception of what justice means, so that, for example, restorative justice, Islamic justice and indigenous justice can be embraced among many alternatives to impunity. Deepening justice means deeper survivor and citizen opportunities to shape a more responsive justice and to shape remedies through participation. Lengthening justice means giving less priority to speedy trial and closure as transitional justice values. It might mean a permanent Truth and Reconciliation Commission that keeps its doors open to victims decades on.
In the crime policy field, the crime victim is usually described as the direct opposite of the offender in terms of characteristics and needs. This article analyses crime policy descriptions of crime victims and offenders, with a special focus on how politicians address the issue of the victim–offender overlap. The material comprises a sample of legislative crime policy bills submitted by members of the Swedish parliament during 2005–10. In the bills, crime victims are described as good, innocent and in need of help, whereas the offender is seen as a bad, ruthless scoundrel. In between stands a group of victim-offenders; pitiable poor things. However, when responses to offenders are discussed, both poor things and scoundrels are to be punished severely.
This paper presents the results of a study of probation staff skills and characteristics. It first explores the skills and attributes employed by Romanian probation counsellors in the process of one-to-one supervision. It then advances a theory of how these skills and characteristics might be developed in the organizational context. The concepts of ‘habitus’ and professional socialization play an important role in this process.
The fact that young people report disproportionately high levels of offending has resulted in substantial criminological attention to the topic of young people as offenders. However, we tend to forget that victims of those young delinquents are largely young people as well. Moreover, not only are young people overrepresented in both offender and victim populations, there are equally remarkable similarities between the two populations. Despite the generally accepted homogeneity in victim and offender characteristics and their respective risk factors, little theory-driven empirical research has been conducted in an attempt to further explain this overlap. This study tries to fill this gap by focusing on the relationship between offending and victimization in a large sample of young people in the Brussels Capital Region (N = 2070). More specifically, the influence of risky lifestyles on the relationship between offending and victimization is studied in order to test the assumption that the offending–victimization overlap is in reality the result of the convergence in time and space of (groups of potential) offenders and victims.
Using a sample of males and females at high risk of offending, this study examines associations in criminal behaviour for married partners, over and above pre-existing levels of assortative mating in offending, as well as other individual and family characteristics. Interactions between partner’s criminal offending were analysed during first marriage using a longitudinal prospective design. Cox proportional hazard regression analysis for multiple failure-time data showed that both males and females have an immediate increased likelihood of committing an offence when the partner offends. Prolonged associations in offending were observed only for females up until the third month after their partner offended. For both males and females, results showed no long-term associations in partner’s offending.
Most studies about legal decision-making have been approached from a quantitative perspective and in the context of the Anglo-Saxon judicial tradition. Our study consists of a qualitative analysis of judges’ sentence pronouncements in Portuguese courts. Sentence pronouncements are the moment when the decision is made public and, therefore, judges have to select which elements must be highlighted to the defendant. This trial moment is not clearly defined by the law, which gives judges the opportunity to develop it as they consider appropriate. Our results show that judges mainly transmit legal explanations and judges’ viewpoints to offenders. The results also show that the structure and content of these oral presentations of sentencing show great variation among judges, panels of judges and situations.
This article reports findings from a study investigating if, how and why concerns regarding risk are impacting on probation work in England and Wales from the practitioner perspective. It begins with a review of key debates regarding how ‘the rise of risk’ has come about and with what effects. I then briefly explain what the study entailed – its aims and objectives, methods and theoretical framework (governmentality). Findings from the study are then presented. These are at odds with the ‘critical consensus’ that risk has dramatically altered the nature of practice. The article concludes with discussion of the implications of these findings for ongoing debates regarding the significance of risk in probation practice.
The aim of this study was to examine the role of psychopathic traits in the crime onset age of male juvenile delinquents. A group of early crime onset (n = 102), a group of late crime onset (n = 102), and a non-delinquent group (n = 102) were formed from a sample of 306 male youths from Portuguese juvenile detention centres and schools. Results showed that early crime onset participants scored higher on psychopathic measures, self-reported delinquency, crime seriousness and conduct disorder than late crime onset participants, and the non-delinquent participants. Psychopathic-traits scores showed significant associations with age of crime onset, age at first encounter with the law, age of first incarceration, self-reported delinquency, seriousness of crime and conduct disorder.
The aim of this paper is to examine how the legal framework for the custody of children in Northern Ireland has developed historically. Drawing upon legislation and literature, it explores the conceptual and historical development of institutions and provisions for the custodial disposal of children, within a broad overview of the wider social and political context. This, it is argued, shows how custodial provision for children remains significantly influenced by nineteenth century philosophies and institutional practices, and that in effect the custodial disposal of children remains ‘locked in the past’.
The article explores two prospective fields within the burgeoning history of crime: the various responses of early modern legal systems in Europe to violent political crimes such as assassination and regicide and their representation in popular print media, notably in illustrated broadsheets and pamphlets. The early modern era can be characterised as an incubation period of ‘modern’ political crime with regard to its phenomenology and its manifestations as well as concerning the conceptualisation in penal law and the actual practice of criminal justice. The case study of assassination attempts and their representation in illustrated broadsheets demonstrates that the developments of political crime, legal responses and popular print are strongly interconnected and created the modern narrative and image of political crime, which evolved from a national issue to a transnational European discourse. Hence, public punishment and popular print media constituted an integral part of the legal responses to political violence and dissidence by communicating the states interpretation of political crime, the damnatio memoriae and obliteration of the perpetrator and his motivation as well the appropriate just legal responses of the legal authorities.
As an increasingly popular alternative to prison sentences, electronic monitoring is assumed to generate fewer side effects and to be more humane than imprisonment. While most research on electronic monitoring focuses on its financial or technical implications for penal policy, or on numbers and recidivism, this article analyses the experiences of 27 Belgian convicted offenders with electronic monitoring. Overall, most preferred electronic monitoring to prison, but this was not the case for all the offenders and every circumstance. These findings show that electronic monitoring cannot necessarily be considered a ‘softer’ alternative to imprisonment. The results imply that, as well as reducing over-population in prisons, electronic monitoring may contribute to a decrease in risks for society and the positive empowerment of offenders. Such empowerment can increase their chances of living a crime-free life, which means electronic monitoring can be considered an important step forward for offenders in regaining control over their own lives.
This paper analyses four historical time series on homicide, assault, robbery and theft from Finnish and Swedish vital and conviction (judicial) statistics. It is suggested that long-term criminal justice statistics – at least in Finland and Sweden – are highly usable and that they add relevant basic knowledge to important current criminological and crime policy issues. It is concluded that law reforms are greatly influential in terms of changes in the sanctioning system (strong evidence of policy impact); but law reforms do not contribute to lasting changes in the development of crime as measured by conviction statistics (no substantiated evidence of crime impact). In the long run, crime seems to persistently evade the manifold legislative efforts to ‘combat’ it.
The aim of this article is to address the two strictest forms of immigration control in Italy: penal and administrative detention. The first core section of the article discusses key trends in the use of penal detention against foreigners and immigrants, whilst the second and longest core section of the article explores key trends in the administrative detention of irregular migrants. As concerns penal detention, it is shown that the significant growth of Italy’s prison population over time has been because of a rapid rise in the number of foreign prisoners, which has outpaced the decline observed in the number of their Italian counterparts. As regards administrative detention, which was first introduced in Italy in 1998 for irregular migrants who cannot immediately be deported, the article demonstrates that only a proportion of irregular migrants transit through a CIE (Centro di Identificazione e di Espulsione, or Identification and Deportation Centre). This is because of the high selectivity that is exhibited by Italy’s administrative detention system, itself based on a range of considerations, from the availability of beds and the likelihood of repatriation for apprehended migrants to public opinion. The findings of this article also imply that there has been an impressive degree of consistency in the immigration control policies adopted by governments of different party-political orientation.
This paper examines two attempted 18th century cases of regicide: those of Robert François Damiens against Louis XV and Margaret Nicholson against George III, which have similar circumstances yet, on the face of it, strikingly different outcomes. For both assailants were seemingly unremarkable individuals, employed for much of their working lives as domestic servants, the attacks were relatively minor and both were diagnosed as ‘mad’. However, Margaret Nicholson was to be confined for life in Bethlem Royal Hospital for the insane, whereas Robert François Damiens was tortured and torn apart by horses at the Place de Grève. The name of Damiens resonates today amongst scholars of criminology through the utilization of his execution by Michel Foucault in the opening to his seminal work Discipline and Punish: the Birth of the Prison (1975); Margaret Nicholson is less widely known. By analyzing the considerable amount of media and literary coverage devoted to these attempted regicides at the time this paper concludes by locating these crimes as symptomatic of the ‘spirit of the times’.
Three Essex women were accused of poisoning their family members in the mid-19th century. While their crimes were not out of the ordinary, the legal responses to these three women were irregular and highlight how female deviance was a concern to the legal system in England during the 19th century. Historians have embraced the possibility of studying crime and violence in order to better understand how societies and their legal systems responded to deviance (real or perceived). This paper presents the cases of the three Essex poisoners, as well as the narratives created in the courtroom to explain their deviance, and illustrates how and why criminologists should turn to historical criminal cases in order to further criminological understandings of crime and violence.
Before 1974 controls over Turkey’s opium production were ineffective and provided opportunities for large-scale diversion, making it one of the world’s largest sources of illicit opium. The state monopoly was limited by a lack of authority over opium producing areas, laissez faire controls and poor state procurement practices. Policies administered between 1933 and 1971 did, however, represent a period of organisational learning which led to the establishment of a highly successful drug control policy. A secondary finding of this paper, revealed whilst analysing diversion estimates, suggests that there may be inaccuracies in assumptions of geographical displacement from Turkey. While these assumptions have been reproduced in much of the literature, the data suggests that the Turkish opium ban of 1971 had either minimal impact on global or regional production levels, or that displacement occurred during the 1960s rather than the mid-1970.
How can police officers be encouraged to commit to changing organizational and personal practice? In this paper we test organizational justice theories that suggest that fair processes and procedures enhance rule compliance and commitment to the organization and its goals. We pay particular attention to (a) tensions between the role of group identity in organizational justice models and classic concerns about ‘cop culture’; and (b) the danger of over-identification with the organization and the counterproductive types of compliance this may engender. Results suggest that organizational justice enhances identification with the police organization, encourages officers to take on new roles, increases positive views of community policing, and is associated with greater self-reported compliance. Identification with the organization has generally positive implications; however, there is some danger that process fairness may encourage unthinking compliance with orders and instructions.
Selection, opportunity and learning have been proposed as possible mechanisms linking adolescents’ offending to that of their peers. This study tests competing hypotheses derived from these theoretical accounts, focusing on the so far unresolved question of the context specificity of peer effects. I investigate whether offending behaviour by the peer group of adolescents shown in one context is related only to adolescents’ own offending in the same context or also to offending in other contexts. Using data from the Edinburgh Study of Youth Transitions and Crime and applying random intercepts logistic regression models, I find evidence for context-specific peer effects of theft in different contexts. Peers’ self-reported theft in any context is related to adolescents’ self-reported theft in the same context but, with one exception, not to adolescents’ theft in other contexts. These results support learning as an important mechanism explaining peer similarity in offending, possibly alongside opportunity, while contradicting selection as an alternative explanation. Theoretically, the article argues for complementing learning theories with situational theories of action to obtain a more comprehensive picture of what adolescents learn from their peer group.
This paper explores if, and to what extent, crime affects happiness, using data from the Swiss Crime Survey 2011. Given the lack of research on the relationship between victimization and quality of life, it attempts to close an important gap in the existing literature. Results show negative effects on life satisfaction of theft, attempted burglary and consumer fraud, as well as of crimes against the person. Contrary to expectations, detrimental effects on quality of life do not decline consistently over time.
This paper offers a rare insight into women’s experiences dealing crack cocaine. Drawing on interviews with eight women, this research finds that, although the retail-level crack trade is male dominated, it is not simply a man’s world. This paper examines the strategies that successful female dealers employed, demonstrating that women reflexively took their gender into account to made cognizant choices about what, when and how to deal. Dealing strategies were a response not solely to the gendered nature of the drug market but also to women’s gendered social positions, relationships and identities. Performing respectable femininity was a key strategy for keeping dealing hidden and keeping out of trouble. This paper is underpinned by the concept of ‘doing gender’.
The literature on the effects of fear of crime has investigated a number of the nuances of this phenomenon; however, how the fear of different types of crime influences communities has yet to be investigated. We hypothesize that the fear–decline model, which argues fear leads to a decrease in solidarity, applies to "routine" street crimes; however, fearing crimes that attack the collective, such as school shootings, will increase community solidarity. Using two datasets collected in Finnish communities after they experienced tragic school shootings, our results indicate that the fear–decline model receives strong support but the fear–solidarity model does not.
This study examines the effect of marriage on the conditional probability of different types of serious offending (violent, property and drug offences) over the life course for a group of high-risk males and females. Using the Trend Vector Model, results suggest that over time, marriage is linked to decreases in the likelihood of property offending in males relative to violent and drug offending, and to increases in the likelihood of property offending in females relative to the likelihoods of violent and drug offending. These findings demonstrate that the relationship between marriage and offending not only is dynamic in nature but also differs between types of offences.
The paper assesses the consequences of victimization experience and the crime rate on fear of crime and life satisfaction. It extends the classical fear of crime model by incorporating media use in the link between the crime rate and fear of crime. Based on a nationwide German survey conducted in 2010 it is shown that fear of crime and victimization experiences lower respondents’ life satisfaction. The county crime rate has no significant impact. However, the local crime rate increases fear of crime. This relationship is mediated by the consumption of local newspapers. Readers of such newspapers are more affected by the crime rate, because they have more information on crime trends within their county.
Almost all research on juvenile sex offending pertains to adolescent males. This study comprises all female juveniles convicted for sexual offences in the Netherlands between 1993 and 2008 (N = 66). From analysis of their court files and their criminal records, these female offenders are described in terms of demographics, family background, (psychiatric) disorders, victim characteristics and co-offending patterns. Heterogeneity in offending patterns and offending motives are studied, by using a reconstruction of the sexual offences. Almost 60% of the juvenile female sex offenders committed the abuse with someone else. Summarizing the offender motives as they emerged from offender and victim statements, five offender subtypes are identified. The findings are discussed in terms of implications for research and treatment.
This article examines ‘real-world’ implications of offender neutralizations. Drawing on empirical evidence derived from a study of the operation of community-based cognitive-behavioural programmes for perpetrators of domestic violence, it focuses on the implications, for offenders, of displaying neutralizations in correctional treatment settings. This article draws attention to the complex relationship between neutralization and correctional group work practice. First, it demonstrates that neutralization of offending does not always have the negative implications for offenders that have been assumed by some commentators. Neutralization may not preclude enrolment on to a correctional programme, is not always challenged in a confrontational way by practitioners and does not automatically result in suspension and the application of more punitive criminal sanctions. Second, the article demonstrates the difficulties that practitioners and participants face in tackling neutralizations in this context. Our findings suggest a need to rethink the central role that neutralizations play in aspects of contemporary criminal justice practice.
The article discusses findings from first study in Europe to track domestic violence cases over six years through the criminal justice system and compare cases involving male and female perpetrators. Ninety-six cases involving men and women recorded by the police in England as intimate domestic violence perpetrators were tracked to provide detailed narratives and progression of cases, establishing samples with a single male or female perpetrator or where both partners were recorded as perpetrators. Domestic violence involves a pattern of abusive behaviour over time and the in-depth longitudinal approach allowed similarities and differences in violent and abusive behaviours used by men and women, as recorded by the police, to be explored. Gender differences were found relating to the nature of cases, forms of violence recorded, frequency of incidents and levels of arrest.
This paper examines the conceptual and empirical adequacy of the Eurogang Network’s survey measurement of gang membership. Using data from a nationally representative survey of young people in England and Wales, we employed a latent class analysis to model variation in the characteristics of peer groups. We found that while Eurogang survey items identified a distinct group of young people involved in more frequent and serious offending, this definition also extended to a separate group whose only ‘vice’ was recreational drug use. We discuss the conceptual validity of extending the ‘gang’ label to this latter group, together with the pressing need for more developmentally sensitive measures of peer networks in adolescence.
The Finnish educational system streams students to academic or vocational tracks at the transition to upper secondary school. Organized as specialized training programs, vocational schools in Finland are highly segregated by gender and tend to attract significant concentrations of poorly motivated students with behavioral problems. Drawing on differential association theory, we hypothesize that these settings facilitate criminal involvement. Evidence from longitudinal data suggests that participation in vocational education is criminogenic for males but not females. Moreover, supporting the cumulative disadvantage hypothesis, participation in the vocational track mediates the association between low academic performance and the risk of criminal conviction. These findings raise concerns about a system of tracking prevalent in many European countries.
This paper argues that in Italy the notion of urban security is being used to shift sovereignty from national to local authorities. This has been made possible thanks to the political and legislative processes taking place in the country in the past decade, which have opened up a space of autonomy where local authorities could play a proactive role in the provision of security to citizens. This is exemplified by the flows of public funding that have been made available for security-related projects throughout the country. Finally, the article concludes by arguing that the spread of concerns over the security of Italian cities has not automatically led to the securitization of urban space in Italian cities.