Causes Of Crime Research Articles

Captive Habits of Criminalization

The 19th century proved to be an important moment for a discursive capture through which—as Foucault (1995) has famously described—diverse disciplinary powers expanded omnisciently to form modern, “carceral” societies. Included here was a regulatory focus on crime, capturing (identifying) criminals, and correcting them. The following paper examines specifically how Patrick Colquhoun approached such regulation by emphasizing “immoral habits” as a cause of crime that could be regulated, in concert, by civil society and criminal law. He called for the development of effective discipline-based policing to capture and control criminals in civil society, and to enable their subsequent arrogation by criminal law. Alongside Bentham’s panoptic surveillance, Colquhoun’s views on criminal habits called for expanding disciplined criminalization that tied social and legal governance. Two aspects of Colquhoun’s influential ideas are highlighted; namely, the social formation of immoral habits as the cause of crime, and the need for “energetic” systems of policing to embrace habits of criminalization. Together, these approaches to habit fostered massive, costly, and unequal criminal justice institutions that today form tenacious, marginalizing, and unequal relations of captivity. The scope of such enduring captivities might be curtailed by recalling their contingent emergence through historically distant trends, and by questioning their costly collective effects.

Knife crime in London, UK: a youth perspective

BackgroundFrom 2016 to 2017, the UK saw a 22% increase in crime with knives and sharp weapons. Admission to hospitals with stabbing injuries is now at its highest rate for 7 years with a shift towards younger victims, the youngest victim being just 13 years old. We aimed to explore young people's knowledge and consequences of knife crime to inform public health interventions. MethodsAs a team of doctors running health workshops with refugee children in London we have access to this marginalised cohort of teenagers. Our study draws from a workshop that focused on knife crime. Participants were recruited voluntarily to join a first-aid session and discussion exploring perceptions of knife crime in an informal setting. 16 boys aged 12–17 years took part. Semi-structured interviews were used to explore ideas and knowledge. Field notes were taken throughout and thematic content analysed to extract the most commonly vocalised ideas. FindingsWe identified three key themes: distrust of public services, a lack of knowledge of the justice system, and differing perspectives on the underlying causes of crime. Anxieties around the role of the police were heightened because of the children's experience within the asylum system. Like previous work, we found common misconceptions around the consequences of knife violence. InterpretationOur study highlights gaps in knowledge, areas of vulnerability, and the need for targeted public health interventions to support these teenagers. FundingNone.

THE CRIMINOLOGICAL HERITAGE OF THE FACULTY OF LAW, UNIVERSITY OF NIŠ

Crime has always attracted the public attention. Criminology, as a science on the forms and causes of crime, has been studied at the Faculty of Law, University of Niš, since its establishment in 1960. In the past 56 years, the Law Faculty in Nis has published numerous publications (textbooks and monograps) on criminology. The aim of this paper is to provide a a brief overview of the most important criminological literature published by the Faculty of Law, University of Niš, which contributed to casting more light on the multifaceted criminological issues. The author also recognizes and commends the dedicated work of Law Faculty teaching staff and the exerted efforts to present these complex issues in a comprehensible way, adapted to the needs of junior and senior law students and the needs of the wider academic, professional and social communities.

Eefects Of Occupational Strain Among Police Officers To The General Security Of A Community: A Case Of Murang’a Town, Murang’a County, Kenya.

Strain at work in any profession negatively affects the people working and overall performance of employees. This in turn has a negative impact on production or quality of services being offered. This applies to police officers especially those working in major towns in Kenya where crime rate is too high and cost of living is unimaginably high. According to GOK crime report of 2014, Murang’a town being one of the Kenyan major towns has been rated as having highest crime levels culminated by illegal groupings like Mungiki and Gaza boys. Among the major crimes recorded in Murang’a include violent robberies, theft of motor vehicles, house breakings and burglary, kidnapping, bank robberies, homicides and gender violence among others. Reasons behind high crime rate in Murang’a town have not been clearly established so far. Many scholars have tried to establish causes of crime in Murang’a town and among the listed causes include poverty levels, population growth and proximity to Kenyan capital Nairobi among others but none has considered effects of occupational strain among police officers in the course of performance of their duties. Occupational strain among police officers could be having adverse effects on performance by police officers and in turn negatively affect services they render to the public and this may lead to high crime rate and general insecurity. Failure to address causes of occupational strain among police undermines effort to curb insecurity in our major towns in Kenya. Strained officers are poorly motivated and generally demoralized hence poor service delivery. The focus of this paper, therefore, is to build greater understanding of the causes of occupational strain among police officers in Murang’a town, effects of such strain to general security of Murang’a town and possible measures that can be undertaken to address the problem of occupational strain among police officers working in Murang’a town. The paper briefly presents findings of research conducted in Murang’a town over the same topic and recommendations thereto, in order to address the problem of occupational strain among police officers and improve their welfare and wellbeing. All this is aimed at motivating them to provide good services and to make them more effective which in turn will improve security of Murang’a town.

ETIOLOGY OF DOMESTIC VIOLENCE

The search for possible solutions and tools to fight domestic violence always ends up with searching for the causes of this negative phenomenon. To answer what causes domestic violence turns out to be a challenging issue. Knowing the causes of domestic violence could be the key to the elimination of domestic violence from our society. Aetiology is a partial component of criminology that focuses on the discovery and investigation of the causes of criminal behaviour in individuals. Knowing the causes of crime as such is in itself a very demanding process. The cause creates a causal relationship between the phenomena which are unchangeable. The causes of violent behaviour in domestic violence have never been accurately and unequivocally proven. For this reason, it is more appropriate to identify and investigate criminogenic factors of criminal behaviour. These are factors, which in themselves, or in a combination of them, support, enable, incite, facilitate the emergence or development of criminal behaviour. The determination of the exact causes of domestic violence is very difficult, nearly impossible, so the factors that can indicate violent behaviour in a family are the most important to analyse and deal with.

W poszukiwaniu skutecznych metod resocjalizacji sprawców pozbawionych wolności na przykładzie Stanów Zjednoczonych Ameryki

In its introduction, the article characterises - in a most comprehensible way - themain objectives of criminal sanctions and their role in preventing crime, according tothe most commonly expressed opinions on the subject from American scholars. It isfollowed by a brief history of assessing the risk of committing an offence in the UnitedStates in recent decades. The risk assessment process was developed before World WarII as a tool to predict possible recidivism in the case of inmates released on parole, butit has been in more common use since 1980s. While the “What works?” movementinitially emerged in the United States, one needs to remember the publication of Robert Martinso’s report that created the “Nothing works” (concerning prison rehabilitation)doctrine. It aided the justification of severe changes in punitive prison policies inthe 1970s that continued well into the 1990s, with the slogans “tough on crime, toughon the causes of crime” being more prominent. It took more than a decade to reestablishsome hope in prison rehabilitation programmes and allow the paradigm shiftsto happen – from the retribution “being tough on offenders” policy to more creativeapproaches towards offenders. By constructive approaches to working with offenders,one means the use of effective methods and techniques to alter criminal behaviourof inmates to prevent their possible relapse into crime (crime prevention).The main goal of the article is to present the most fundamental system in the UScriminal justice system that is most commonly applied nowadays: the Risk-Need-Responsivity (RNR) model and its principles to offender assessment. The aforementionedprinciples were laid down by Canadian scholars, Donald Arthur Andrews andJames Bonta. In that model, “risk” means the identification of specific factors thatare associated with recidivism (in general, depending on a specific crime, e.g. sexualoffenders or offenders who committed violent crimes). Andrews and Bonta argue thata number of factors need to be considered in any comprehensive theory of criminalbehaviour, including biological or neurological issues, inheritance, temperamentand social and cultural factors, while also noting that criminal behaviour is a multifactorialissue. “Need” assesses criminogenic needs and targets them in prison treatmentprogrammes for elimination, while “responsivity” intends to maximise the offender’sability to learn how to combat possible recidivism through rehabilitative intervention,providing cognitive behavioural treatment – with the said intervention being tailoredto the learning style, motivation, abilities and strengths of the offender.Risk assessment is applied during different stages of the criminal procedure: beforesentencing and during the period of time when the criminal sanction is executed, i.e.while serving a custodial sentence. It must be noted that, in the US justice system, judgesare not the only people obliged to assess the potential risk of an offender relapsinginto crime in the future. Prison officers are also tasked with such assessment. Throughthe application of the RNR model, it is possible for the prison staff to divide inmatesinto specific groups, depending on security levels and adequate treatment programmes.In that case, the assessment tools based on the RNR model not only allow a predictionof a possible relapse into crime, but also a proper allocation of convicts to rehabilitationprogrammes provided within prisons. A convict undergoes an evaluation before andafter the treatment. Such evaluations are imposed on most prisoners, so performingthem does have an impact on the financial and human resources of a given penitentiaryunit.The most important question, “What works in prison?” is answered by the majorityof scholars through propositions of providing cognitive and behavioural skill programmesto the convicts. They have clear criteria to ensure that objectives, methods andapplication of rehabilitation programmes correspond with the needs of criminaloffenders. The conclusion of the research is meant to prove that providing offenders with such treatment (based upon the RNR model) may have a positive effect on re -ducing the risk of relapse into crime in the future. However, the appropriate methodsof treatment are based not only on psychotherapy (or, sometimes, on pharmacologicaltreatment), but also on education, vocational training, personal development, strengtheningself-control mechanisms and improving interpersonal skills.

The Social Ecology of White-Collar Crime: Applying Situational Action Theory to White-Collar Offending

ABSTRACTThis article applies the integrated framework of situational action theory (SAT) to white-collar crime causation – previously unexamined in this perspective, drawing also on data from a small-scale study based on semi-structured interviews with white-collar offenders. The key arguments and findings are discussed around SAT’s categories, modified in accordance with white-collar crime particularities: criminogenic propensity, workplace environmental factors, and the individual-environment situational mechanisms. This initial SAT application shows that its constructs can be fruitfully deployed in explaining white-collar crime only to a moderate extent. The findings are not fully supportive of SAT’s “weak law-relevant morality” and deterrence arguments, while SAT’s moral correspondence situational mechanism provides a novel way to explain crimes within criminogenic workplace cultures.

The conditional effects of self-control in situational action theory. A preliminary test in a randomized scenario study

ABSTRACTThis study focuses on the perception-choice process in the Situational Action Theory of Crime Causation (SAT). The effect of self-control ability is studied in conditions of conflict or correspondence between personal morality and circumstantial characteristics. We demonstrate a conditional effect of self-control ability on choosing a violent response in two scenarios. While we demonstrate that self-control ability matters in cases of moral conflict, we demonstrate some findings that seem to be at odds with theoretical tenets of SAT. The impossibility to empirically distinguish processes of perception and choice, together with SAT’s current measure of self-control ability may partially be responsible for this empirical ambiguity.

Inseguridad subjetiva y representaciones sociales de la delincuencia

El presente trabajo analiza la inseguridad subjetiva y su relación con las dinámicas representacionales de la delincuencia en jóvenes universitarios de Venezuela (n = 305) y el País Vaco (n = 237). Siguiendo la metodología de Doise, Clèmence & Lorenzi-Cioldi (1993) se estudia el miedo y la inseguridad en los significados compartidos y diferenciales de la delincuencia, así como su anclaje en la percepción subjetiva del riesgo, experiencia de victimización y pertenencia al país. Los resultados muestran una representación más estereotipada de la delincuencia en los universitarios vascos asociando ciertos delitos a grupos y contextos criminógenos. Sin embargo, los venezolanos enfatizan las causas y consecuencias destructivas para la vida social y un estado de miedo e inseguridad, debido a una experiencia más cercana al delito. La percepción subjetiva del riesgo y la experiencia de victimización quedan asociadas a dichas representaciones. Se discute cómo el modelo propuesto permite definir nuevas prioridades y desafíos en los métodos utilizados para estudiar y combatir el miedo e inseguridad subjetiva.

Race, Crime, and Criminal Justice

AbstractFifty years ago, the U.S. President's Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Justice under President Johnson did not frequently mention race and ethnicity in its discussion of and recommendations for the criminal justice system, but it did have a lot to say about race and crime. Through the use of arrest rates to measure racial differentials in criminal involvement, the Commission concluded that Blacks commit more crime as a consequence of Black people living in greater numbers in criminogenic “slum” conditions. To address racial differences, the Commission favored the Great Society programs of Johnson's War on Poverty. Contemporary criminologists continue to debate the racial distribution of crime, the causes of crimes, and the best policies to reduce crime and racial differentials. The Commission did not anticipate the current debate among scholars regarding how much racial disproportionality exists in the criminal justice system and its causes and consequences. The policies that led to mass incarceration have been significant drivers of continued criminal justice racial disparity. Those policies are inconsistent with the recommendation in The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967), upending the pursuit of a more fair and just system.

A Preliminary Test of the Association between Agnew’s Social Concern and Criminal Behavior: Results from a Nationally Representative Sample of Adults

ABSTRACTIn his Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology, Agnew proposed a new theory of crime causation referring to the key independent variable as “social concern.” Social concern theory highlights the nuanced association between self-interest, altruistic behavior, and criminal behavior. Although there is considerable indirect evidence to support the theory—indeed, it is an example of inductive theory construction—there have been few direct tests of Agnew’s statements. As a result, the current study represents one of the first tests of social concern theory by examining the direct relationship between social concern and criminal behavior. We also test whether social concern mediates the effect of sex on criminal behavior, thereby offering insight into the gender gap in offending. Drawing on data from a nationally representative sample of American adults, we perform exploratory factor analysis to construct a measure of social concern. Results from negative binominal regression models reveal that social concern is negatively associated with criminal behavior even after controlling for a host of potential confounders. Additionally, findings indicate a portion of the gender gap in criminal offending may be attributable to females’ (generally) higher levels of social concern.

Crime prediction through urban metrics and statistical learning

Understanding the causes of crime is a longstanding issue in researcher’s agenda. While it is a hard task to extract causality from data, several linear models have been proposed to predict crime through the existing correlations between crime and urban metrics. However, because of non-Gaussian distributions and multicollinearity in urban indicators, it is common to find controversial conclusions about the influence of some urban indicators on crime. Machine learning ensemble-based algorithms can handle well such problems. Here, we use a random forest regressor to predict crime and quantify the influence of urban indicators on homicides. Our approach can have up to 97% of accuracy on crime prediction, and the importance of urban indicators is ranked and clustered in groups of equal influence, which are robust under slightly changes in the data sample analyzed. Our results determine the rank of importance of urban indicators to predict crime, unveiling that unemployment and illiteracy are the most important variables for describing homicides in Brazilian cities. We further believe that our approach helps in producing more robust conclusions regarding the effects of urban indicators on crime, having potential applications for guiding public policies for crime control.

Food Insecurity and the Rising Urbanisation in Africa: Can ICT Revolution Bridge the GAP?

The task of reducing food insecurity in Africa is very challenging. This is because of the changing conditions such as adverse climate change impacts. This study examined food insecurity, urbanisation and ICT in Africa. The paper employed a combination of both secondary and historical information obtained from different sources (UNHCR, FAO, Mo Ibrahim Foundation etc). Analytical method used include descriptive statistics such as charts. Food security indices in Africa is alarming and disturbing. One in four people in Africa do not have access to food in adequate quantities and one in five African children are underweight. African agriculture is rendered unattractive by low productivity hence the exodus of labour from rural to urban areas. Africa is the most rapidly urbanising continent in the world with enabling factors comprising of infrastructure deficits in rural areas, dearth of employment opportunities and glamour of city life. However, Africa’s urban centres are not immune to the challenges inducing rural-urban migration in the first place. In fact, youth unemployment in Africa is 6 times higher in urban areas than in rural areas. About 72percent of urban dwellers live in slums with the most of them having no access to basic amenities. These culminated in what is regarded in literature as ‘urbanisation of poverty’. Migrants are generally scapegoated as the causes of crimes, violence and even unemployment in urban areas. Therefore, they are subjected to sub-human living conditions. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is particularly critical to the achievement of food security in Africa. This is because of the huge gap between markets and farmers which it is capable of filling. The paper therefore recommends increased but monitored investments in infrastructure in Africa in order to make rural areas more attractive and discourage rural-urban migration. There is also the need to provide favourable micro and macro-environment for businesses to grow especially in rural Africa.

Food Insecurity and the Rising Urbanisation in Africa: Can ICT Revolution Bridge the GAP?

The task of reducing food insecurity in Africa is very challenging. This is because of the changing conditions such as adverse climate change impacts. This study examined food insecurity, urbanisation and ICT in Africa. The paper employed a combination of both secondary and historical information obtained from different sources (UNHCR, FAO, Mo Ibrahim Foundation etc). Analytical method used include descriptive statistics such as charts. Food security indices in Africa is alarming and disturbing. One in four people in Africa do not have access to food in adequate quantities and one in five African children are underweight. African agriculture is rendered unattractive by low productivity hence the exodus of labour from rural to urban areas. Africa is the most rapidly urbanising continent in the world with enabling factors comprising of infrastructure deficits in rural areas, dearth of employment opportunities and glamour of city life. However, Africa’s urban centres are not immune to the challenges inducing rural-urban migration in the first place. In fact, youth unemployment in Africa is 6 times higher in urban areas than in rural areas. About 72percent of urban dwellers live in slums with the most of them having no access to basic amenities. These culminated in what is regarded in literature as ‘urbanisation of poverty’. Migrants are generally scapegoated as the causes of crimes, violence and even unemployment in urban areas. Therefore, they are subjected to sub-human living conditions. Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is particularly critical to the achievement of food security in Africa. This is because of the huge gap between markets and farmers which it is capable of filling. The paper therefore recommends increased but monitored investments in infrastructure in Africa in order to make rural areas more attractive and discourage rural-urban migration. There is also the need to provide favourable micro and macro-environment for businesses to grow especially in rural Africa.

Genetics and Crime: Integrating New Genomic Discoveries Into Psychological Research About Antisocial Behavior

Drawing on psychological and sociological theories of crime causation, we tested the hypothesis that genetic risk for low educational attainment (assessed via a genome-wide polygenic score) is associated with criminal offending. We further tested hypotheses of how polygenic risk relates to the development of antisocial behavior from childhood through adulthood. Across the Dunedin and Environmental Risk (E-Risk) birth cohorts of individuals growing up 20 years and 20,000 kilometers apart, education polygenic scores predicted risk of a criminal record with modest effects. Polygenic risk manifested during primary schooling in lower cognitive abilities, lower self-control, academic difficulties, and truancy, and it was associated with a life-course-persistent pattern of antisocial behavior that onsets in childhood and persists into adulthood. Crime is central in the nature-nurture debate, and findings reported here demonstrate how molecular-genetic discoveries can be incorporated into established theories of antisocial behavior. They also suggest that improving school experiences might prevent genetic influences on crime from unfolding.

The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics. Lisa L. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press (2016). 272pp. £26.49hb ISBN 9780190228705

The Myth of Mob Rule: Violent Crime and Democratic Politics. Lisa L. Miller. New York: Oxford University Press (2016). 272pp. £26.49hb ISBN 9780190228705

English

The determinants of crime have been an area of numerous studies over time. In spite of this volume of work, interest in the causes of crime continues to persist. This paper investigates the determinants of variations in crime rates in the United States using cross-sectional state-level data. It explores the role of government spending and socio-economic variables and compares these determinants for the three years 1990, 2000, and 2010 to determine whether there have been changes in the impact of these variables in these years. State level data is used for the statistical analysis. The result shows that the determinants of crime varied by both the category of crime and the period of study. In addition, government spending on welfare and education were not significant in 1990, but become more significant for the 2000 and 2010 samples. Key words: crime rate, determinants of crime, government spending. &nbsp

The concentration of urban crime in space by race: evidence from South Africa

ABSTRACT Crime inequality in neighborhoods by race is blamed on social inequalities borne out of segregation and economic discrimination. South Africa is a country synonymous with racial-spatial segregation and discrimination as a result of legislatively enforced policies of the former apartheid government. This study examines whether urban crime inequalities by race exist in the city of Tshwane, South Africa and identifies the empirical causes of these crime inequalities. Violent and sexual crime was found to concentrate in Black African neighborhoods, while property crime was concentrated in neighborhoods classified as “Mixed”. The causes of crime in neighborhoods were found to vary across racial groups with results suggesting non-uniformity in the extent to which the various constructs impact crime based on race. The results challenge the notion that segregation and economic discrimination uniformly impacts affected communities. Explanations for the findings are provided in the context of an increasingly eclectic post-apartheid South African city.

Sociology of Crime and Its Representation in the News Discourse

This study discusses the perspectives on crime and the debates about the construction and the representation of crime in the news discourse. During the 19th century, debates about crime were mostly shaped by individual pathology which concentrated on physical characteristics, biological heritage and mental disorders. However, these debates became distinguished in the sociology field by the beginning of 20th century for the first time. This shift in the debates about crime would set the framework of the mainstream criminology approach in academy until the 1970s. Rather than relying on a sociological perspective, this approach remained within the boundaries of positivist understanding and focused on exploring the causes of crime via individual. However, the 1960s witnessed the questioning of this paradigm and by 1970s, sociological analyses and resolutions of crime came to existence with the help of socio-economical system criticisms. These discussions which intersect with the critical media studies relying mainly on ‘dominant ideology’ focus on the sociological construction processes and the representation patterns of crime.

Does Perceived Peer Delinquency Amplify or Mitigate the Deterrent Effect of Perceived Sanction Risk?

ABSTRACTThe present article studies the interplay of perceived peer delinquency and perceived sanction risk in crime causation. Different sets of hypotheses are formulated. From Situational Action Theory (SAT), it follows that adolescents who have many delinquent friends are more frequently exposed to a crime-conducive moral context. As a consequence, they will more often feel tempted to engage in criminal behavior, which renders them more responsive to sanction risk. Rational Choice Theory (RCT) suggests that adolescents who have no or few delinquent friends are more responsive to sanction risk because these individuals have more informal costs following from punishment to fear. These hypotheses are tested with longitudinal data from the British PADS+ study. Results provide strong support for the propositions derived from SAT. Perceived peer delinquency conditions the effect of perceived sanction risk, and sanction certainty perceptions are most influential among adolescents with a large number of delinquent friends.