Understanding bystander decision‐making: Experimental evidence on when and how people respond to crime

ABSTRACTCompared to the offline world, the online environment is more anonymous and therefore less easily controlled. Criminological theories generally show that people are more likely to commit crime when they experience or perceive less formal or informal social control. Consequently, one might assume that people are more likely to commit crime online than offline. As formal social control is lacking, informal social control and peer-offending may be important predictors of online offending. In this paper, we examine to what extent differences in perceived formal and informal online control are related to the likelihood that a person will commit a system-trespassing offense (i.e. malicious hacking). Additionally, we examine peer system-trespassing, and how this may interact with perceptions of formal and informal social control. In the logistic regression analyses we employ eight different measures for perceptions of formal and informal social control, in addition to peer-offending, and control variables. Both direct effects and interaction effects are examined. Our results show that peer-offending is an important predictor of system-trespassing and interaction effects show that perceived formal and informal online social control are related to this type of offending but only for specific groups. Implications will be discussed.

Applying Procedural Justice Theory to Law Enforcement's Response to Persons With Mental Illness

Journal Article The Role of Perceptions of the Police in Informal Social Control: Implications for the Racial Stratification of Crime and Control Get access Kevin M. Drakulich, Kevin M. Drakulich Direct correspondence to: Kevin Drakulich, School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115. E-mail: k.drakulich@neu.edu Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Robert D. Crutchfield Robert D. Crutchfield Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 60, Issue 3, 1 August 2013, Pages 383–407, https://doi.org/10.1525/sp.2013.60.3.383 Published: 30 July 2014

Most chapters include Reading Objectives, Introduction, Summary, Integration: Questions and Topics for Study and Discussion, and References. Preface. I. CONFORMITY, DEVIANCE, AND JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. Introduction: The Sociological Perspective and Focus on Juvenile Delinquency. 1. Juvenile Delinquency: The Act, Actor, and Audience. What Is Juvenile Delinquency? Synthesized Definition of Delinquency. 2. Sociological Overview: Society, Norms, Conformity, and Deviant Behavior. The Sociological Perspective. The Social Nature of Humans. Norms. Sources of Norms. Folkways and Mores. Normative Behavior: Conformity. Deviant Behavior: Nonconformity. Negative Aspects of Deviance. Positive Aspects of Deviance. Juvenile Delinquency. 3. The Dimensions of the Delinquency Problem. Juvenile Delinquency Data. Official Sources of Delinquency Information. The Composite Delinquent Profile: Typical or Stereotypical? Unofficial Sources of Delinquency Information. The Magnitude and Trends of Juvenile Delinquency: Demographic Analysis. Addendum: A Balanced Perspective of American Youth. II. CAUSES OF JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. Introduction: Theory and the Etiology of Juvenile Delinquency. 4. Biological Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency. The Link between Biology and Behavior: Myths and Folklore. The Classical School of Criminological Thought. The Positive School of Criminology. Twentieth-Century Constitutional Typologies. The Continuing Search for the Biological Connection. Sociobiological Explanations. 5. Psychogenic Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency. The Psychogenic Approach. The Discovery of the Unconscious. The Formation of Personality. Freudian Theory as an Explanation of and Delinquency. Psychoanalysis. Projective Tests. Delinquent Acts as Symptoms. Other Psychogenic Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency. Psychological Typology of Delinquency. Criticisms and Limitations of the Psychogenic Approach. 6. Sociological Explanations of Delinquency: Social Strain and Cultural Transmission Theories. Theory. Social Strain Theories. Cultural Transmission Theories. 7. Sociological Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency: Social Learning and Social Control Theories. Social Learning Theories. Social Control Theories. 8. Sociological Explanations of Juvenile Delinquency: Labeling and Radical Theories. Labeling Theories. Radical Theories. An Overview of the Sociological Explanations. 9. The Future for Causal Explanations of Delinquency: The Ongoing Process of Theory-Building. Introduction: Review of Past Theory-Building for Explaining Juvenile Delinquency. Renewed Examination of Delinquency Motivation: Crime is Fun! Making Decisions for Delinquency: Rational Choice Theory. The Punishment Response: Deterrence Theory. Back to the Future: The Prospects and Direction for New Theory-Building. Concept Integration: Questions and Topics for Study and Discussion. III. JUVENILE DELINQUENCY IN SOCIAL CONTEXT. Introduction: Collective Behavior and Social Groupings. 10. The Family and Juvenile Delinquency. The Changing Role of the Family. Increasing Importance of the Nuclear Family and the Creation of Adolescence. The Family as an Agent of Socialization. Working Mothers and Juvenile Delinquency. Other Family Variables and Juvenile Delinquency. Broken Homes and Delinquency. The Family and Delinquency Prevention. 11. Schools and Delinquency. The School as an Arena. Schools and the Socialization Process. Juvenile Delinquency and the School Experience. Schools as a Screening Device. Schools as Combat Zones. School as Bureaucracy. Schools and Delinquency Prevention. 12. The Youth Subculture. Culture, Subcultures, and Countercultures. The Creation of a Youth Subculture. Role of the Youth Subculture. Distinctive Elements of the Youth Subculture. The Youth Subculture and Juvenile Delinquency. Youth Countercultures and Delinquency. The Youth Subculture and Delinquency Prevention. 13. Juvenile Gangs and Delinquent Behavior. The Solitary Delinquent. Group Delinquency. The Play Group. The Juvenile Gang. Contemporary Youth Gangs in the United States. The Motives for Gang Membership. Gang Organization. Composition of Gang Membership. Gang Violence. Dyads and Triads. Explanatory Theories of Gang Formation and Behavior: Summary and Synthesis. IV. SOCIAL CONTROL: THE JUVENILE JUSTICE SYSTEM. Introduction: Elements of Social Control. 14. Juveniles and the Police. Juvenile Encounters with Police. Policing Juveniles. Police Discretion in Handling Juveniles. Police and Due Process. Police, Community Policing, and Delinquency Prevention. 15. Juvenile Courts. Historical Background of the Juvenile Courts. The Child Savers' Movement. The Juvenile Court. The Juvenile Court and Due Process. Juvenile Court Procedures. The Role of Attorneys in Juvenile Court. Criticisms of the Juvenile Court. The Multifaceted Juvenile Court. The Future of the Juvenile Court. 16. Juvenile Corrections. Social Control and Deterrence Theory. Voluntary Social Control. Informal Social Control. Formal Social Control. Deinstitutionalization, Community Corrections, and Diversion. Evaluation of Deinstitutionalization, Community Corrections, and Diversion. V. STRATEGIES FOR DEALING WITH JUVENILE DELINQUENCY. Introduction: Approaching Treatment and Prevention in a Social Context. 17. Treatment and Prevention Strategies. Treatment Ideology and Delinquency Treatment Programs. Prevention Ideology and Delinquency Prevention Programs. Sociological Approaches to Delinquency Treatment and Prevention. Mobilizing the Community to Prevent Delinquency. Evaluation of Delinquency Treatment and Prevention Strategies. 18. Rethinking the Delinquency Problem. The Social Nature of Juvenile Delinquency. Eliminating the Marginal Status of Juveniles. Standardization or Elimination of Juvenile Codes. Decriminalization of Status Offenses. Revision of the Juvenile Court. Modification of Juvenile Corrections. Strengthening the Family. Changing the Educational System. Redefining Juvenile Delinquency. Glossary. Name Index. Subject Index.

The changing composition of race and ethnic group size has been noted for Western nations over the last 15 years. Analysis of this change has linked fear of crime and attitudes toward immigrants and prejudice. Changes in ethnic composition are associated with movement of White residents out of traditionally White communities, rising ethnic tension as the ethnic mix shifts, and a heightened sense of injustice regarding the justice system. (Mis)perceptions of ethnic groups size shape attitudes toward minority groups, as well as policy, practice, and individual behavior in the context of the community. This study seeks to understand the extent of such misperceptions in the Australian context and whether misperceptions of race and ethnic composition are associated with beliefs and attitudes toward formal and informal social control. Utilizing Blalock’s racial threat hypothesis, this study analyzes whether perceived relative ethnic group size is associated with self-reported willingness to cooperate with police as a way to minimize perceived threat. Findings suggest that respondents overestimate the size of minority populations while underestimating the majority White composition and that these misperceived distortions in ethnic group size have consequences for informal and formal social control.

Crime rates are increasing across the Indian society. Normally, such crimes are attributed to two broad categories of factors: (a) psychological factors like individual or mob fury and (b) administrative factors like the failure of law and order machinery. These explanations, however, do not account for the increasing rates of such demeaning instances. This article, attempting to explain the increasing crime rates, focuses on the social control theory. The main argument of the article is that the rapidly declining informal social control causes the phenomenal rise of decadent behaviour in the contemporary Indian society. Due to modernising forces, traditional social institutions and structures such as family, kinship, caste system and village community have become weak. As a result, the traditional informal social control based on shame has gradually diminished. And the sense of guilt, the functional alternative to shame, as an informal mechanism of social control, has not yet been fully institutionalised. This seems to be the major factor giving rise to widespread deviant behaviour in India. Although formal mechanisms of social control like police and judiciary do exist, they cannot be very effective without being reinforced with the informal social control.

ABSTRACTSocial control and procedural justice theories indicate that informal social control reduces problem behaviors. However, many schools have implemented formal control mechanisms such as school security measures. This study examines the association between school security measures (security personnel, metal detectors, and surveillance cameras) and students’ perceptions of informal social control (relationships with teachers, other school adults, and the fairness and consistency of school rules). We used structural equation modeling to examine these relationships in a nationally representative sample of 6,547 secondary students surveyed as part of the School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey (M age = 14.94; 51% male, 60% White non-Hispanic, 14% Black non-Hispanic, 20% Hispanic). The results indicated that the presence of security personnel in schools was associated with poorer student relationships with teachers. Findings for the other school security measures were nonsignificant or inconsistent across models. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.

The purpose of the study is to identify the role of informal social control in achieving community security in the South Sinai Governorate by recognizing the role of customs, customs and traditions in achieving community security and recognizing the extent to which Bedouins respect tribal leaders and obey their orders. The descriptive study was based on a number of research methods, namely the social survey method in the sample, including a representative sample of all the nine governorates and villages, valleys and Bedouin communities. The study used the appropriate tool. The questionnaire contains 77 closed questions, including two open questions. A sample of 300 persons was easy for the respondents. The illiteracy rate was 28%, and the study used social control theory. The study reached several results, including a statistically significant role for informal social control in achieving community security. The results also indicate that the Bedouins like to live in groups, and that their social relations are distinct in their interdependence and compliment each other in joy and joy and enjoy and enjoy security, where they have no incidents of killing or theft or cutting roads. The results also indicated their keenness to participate in the elections. Informal social control mechanisms were not an impediment to women's participation in elections. They respect the elders and obey their orders, although the degree of respect among young people now and the elderly has declined. They also prefer customary justice to the formal elimination of the speed of adjudication in disputes and their sense that customary law is a preventive security, despite their knowledge of official security rules. In view of the results, it is possible to recommend the following: • Strengthening community security in the governorate by establishing industrial projects to attract the largest number of Bedouin residents to work in it, since tourism often needs specializations that are not available in the Bedouin. • Construction of factories next to the quarries instead of manufacturing them outside the Sinai and thus will not deprive Badawi from working. • The need to codify informal social control rules and incorporate them through scientific studies because they are all oral, and technological advances in communications can expose them to extinction.

Increasing attention is being given to the issue of desistance or cessation in adult criminal careers. We contribute to this research by considering how informal and formal social controls affect recidivism among 556 sex offenders placed on probation in 1992. We conduct an event history analysis of reoffense, based on the predictions of Sampson and Laub's and Gottfredson and Hirschi's control theories. We build on these perspectives by examining how informal social controls condition the effects of formal social controls generally and across offense types. We find less recidivism among offenders with stable job histories, particularly among those in court-ordered sex offender treatment. The results add both to theoretical formulations concerning desistance and recidivism and to policy formulations directed at growing prison populations.

Social control is such a widely recognized concept that one would suspect that a consensual definition of it exists. That is not the case. While one can generally define social control as the formal and informal processes that socialize, sanction, and/or reward individuals for conformity, and produce social regularity, specific definitions of social control vary widely (see Meier's 1982 discussion on this point and his fascinating history of the concept). In its broadest definition, childhood socialization plays an important role in social control, ongoing social influence processes such as shaming rituals play critical roles in informal social control, and law enforcement and the legal system play critical roles in formal social control. Moreover, social control can involve fairly innocent creations of conformity that generally bring great social good (i.e., driving on the same side of the street and acknowledging and abiding by common rules of the road) or can involve a dark side where conformity is achieved through the loss of liberty, individuality, and free expression. Perhaps because of this breadth and dimensionality, Sutton (1996) has argued that the concept goes too far and is too imprecise; he recommends abandoning the term altogether and using a more precise term such as sanctioning instead.

The theory of procedural justice, which was transplanted to China in the 1990s, has undergone theoretical development and has had a profound impact on China's civil litigation procedures and judicial practices. However, it has also encountered challenges such as procedural instrumentalism and judicial centrism. The overall value orientation of our society is developing towards diversification, which has also led to the diversification of civil disputes and people's demand for justice in China. The theory of procedural justice in civil litigation not only needs to break the closed nature of research fields, but also needs to break the closed nature of justice theories in other fields. The inclusiveness of civil litigation procedures also requires the concept of sharing and co governance to resolve disputes. This article systematically constructs a program based on the theory of dialogue mechanism, aiming to open up channels for all forces that can assist in resolving civil disputes to enter the civil litigation process and help resolve disputes; On the other hand, based on the theory of open procedural justice, the connection and inclusiveness between civil litigation procedures and other dispute resolution mechanisms have been constructed at the theoretical and institutional levels, thus forming an inclusive theory of procedural justice.

Many studies have examined gender bias within juvenile court processing of delinquents, but few have examined the theoretical relationship between informal and formal social controls and a juvenile offender's disposition. This thesis integrates Black's theory of social control and feminist theory to hypothesize that a breakdown in informal controls will be more consequential for female status offenders than for male status offenders. Additionally, an offender's “disrespectability” is expected to result in harsher disposition outcomes for female status offenders. All status offenders from a midwestern state between the years 1975 and 1987 will be analyzed to determine the validity of these hypotheses.

Punishment, Deterrence and Social Control: The Paradox of Punishment in Minority Communities

In social disorganisation theory and the later systemic reformulations of this approach, informal social control is the most important neighbourhood mechanism for preventing and/or discouraging local incidents of crime and disorder. Yet criminology offers a ‘wide ranging and eclectic’ conceptualisation of informal social control (Bellair & Browning, 2010, p. 500). For the most part, informal social control is conceptualised as a behaviour or an action such as surveillance, working with others to solve a local problem, calling the police or levering other formal social control mechanisms (Bellair & Browning, 2010; Warner, 2007); however, many studies focus on perceived informal social control rather than actual informal social control actions. Drawing on our survey and in-depth interview data, this chapter compares and contrasts the individual, household and community-level drivers of perceptual and behavioural informal social control. We also specifically test whether or not shared expectations for informal social control lead to actual behaviours associated with problems of crime and disorder. And we consider what it means to intervene. We qualitatively explore the different ways people respond to problems and whether informal social control responses vary by problem type. Here we ask if actions associated with the control of drug use or public drinking differ from those used to prevent or control graffiti and further whether different informal social control networks (private, parochial and public) are leveraged when responding to these problems.

Urgency to save species from extinction has prompted increased investment in law enforcement in protected areas. To date, such law enforcement has largely focused on increasing costs and reducing opportunities for offending. However, these resource-intensive approaches are not always effective and can contribute to conflict between people and conservation authorities, undermining human well-being and conservation goals. Drawing on criminal justice research, we considered how procedural justice theory—which examines how fair process and the perceived legitimacy of rules and enforcers influence behavior— could enhance understanding of compliance dynamics and complement existing law enforcement approaches, particularly in addressing low-level noncompliance in protected areas. We also explored how principles of procedural justice have been incorporated in general policing and outlined challenges and opportunities to integrating this approach into conservation law enforcement. We considered key opportunity-based (e.g., routine activity theory) and actor-based frameworks (e.g., deterrence theory) underpinning most protected areaenforcement. We then focused on procedural justice theory and the role of legitimacy in encouraging compliance. Evidence from general policing shows that when enforcers treat citizens fairly, listen, and make decisions objectively, they gain trust and legitimacy. In turn, people are more inclined to comply with laws and cooperate with enforcers. Procedural fairness can be implemented during encounters by embracing 4 pillars: neutrality, voice, respect, and trustworthiness. Outlining challenges of integrating this approach in conservation law enforcement, we highlight the need to address limited public trust in state authority and other factors including working conditions of enforcers. Alongside ensuring the integrity and accountability of conservation law enforcement, we argue that embedding principles of procedural fairness into interactions between enforcers and citizens could reduce low-level noncompliance. Success, however, requires conservation law enforcement to be reconceptualized by placing procedural fairness and legitimacy on a more equal footing with deterrence in research and practice.