Crime In The United States Research Articles

Time dynamics of elder victimization: Evidence from the NCVS, 1992 to 2005

Persons who are relatively younger have a comparably higher incidence of crime victimization than those who are older. Comparative studies of crime rates among those 65 and older with those for younger persons across time are virtually nonexistent. This study provides these analyses. Data from the National Crime Victimization Survey are used to study the relative victimization rate among US elders. Macroeconomic indicators and environmental interventions were included to examine whether structural forces influence elder crime victimization rates. Such influences are fractionally cointegrated with the long-term elder property and personal crime rates, with each having a distinct data-generating process. The results of these analyses suggest that personal, but not property, crime rates have declined since the passage of the Crime Bill of 1994. As well, the summer months are associated with elevated rates of property crime committed against elders but not personal crime.

'The Law is a Gun Thug in a Big Automobile': Criminalizing Labor in American History

As documented in the by then newly published book - Kenneth Casebeer, American Labor Struggles and Law Histories, Criminal law has been continually deployed to discourage or destroy collective action - Prosecuting cartage haulers in the 1760's, criminal conspiracy in early journeymen strikes, Police riot and martyrdom at Haymarket, Debs' contempt incarceration, trespass, murder prosecution in Gastonia, and in Elaine, Arkansas, Vagrancy in Free Speech fights, the Bisbee Deportation, arrests in steel, the Chicago Memorial Day Massacre, arrests and kangaroo trials on the Docks, outlawing the sit-downs and mutiny for sit-downs on ships in ports. Labor organization has always been some kind of crime in America and thus a critical lever of economic inequality and suppressing mobilization against it.

Computational approaches for empirical Bayes methods and Bayesian sensitivity analysis

We consider situations in Bayesian analysis where we have a family of priors $\nu_h$ on the parameter $\theta$, where $h$ varies continuously over a space $\mathcal{H}$, and we deal with two related problems. The first involves sensitivity analysis and is stated as follows. Suppose we fix a function $f$ of $\theta$. How do we efficiently estimate the posterior expectation of $f(\theta)$ simultaneously for all $h$ in $\mathcal{H}$? The second problem is how do we identify subsets of $\mathcal{H}$ which give rise to reasonable choices of $\nu_h$? We assume that we are able to generate Markov chain samples from the posterior for a finite number of the priors, and we develop a methodology, based on a combination of importance sampling and the use of control variates, for dealing with these two problems. The methodology applies very generally, and we show how it applies in particular to a commonly used model for variable selection in Bayesian linear regression, and give an illustration on the US crime data of Vandaele.

The Dissemination of Criminological and Criminal Justice Knowledge and Practice: A Profile of People's Republic of China Scholars Who Earn Doctorates in the United States

Policies and practices in countries do not exist in a vacuum. There are many sources of ideas for change. One of the most important is exposure to foreign ideas through international scholarly exchange. This article briefly reviews the history and causes that have contributed to this process with scholars from the People's Republic of China who have chosen to obtain doctorates in the United States and study Criminology and/or Criminal Justice. In particular, over the past two decades, close to two dozen scholars have come to the United States to earn masters and PhD degrees in the fields of Criminology/Criminal Justice or related fields. This article uses a survey methodology to understand this complex process.

The presumption of guilt: the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and race, class, and crime in America

The presumption of guilt: the arrest of Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and race, class, and crime in America

A Behavioral Economics Study of How US Trade Deficits with Asia Result in Hate Crimes in the US

A Behavioral Economics Study of How US Trade Deficits with Asia Result in Hate Crimes in the US

Are US Crime Rates Really Unit Root Processes?

Existing research has uncovered little evidence against the hypothesis of US crime rates being unit root processes, despite the uncomfortable implications of this assumption. In light of this, the present paper draws upon noted changes in the temporal patterns of US crime rates since 1960 to undertake an informed approach to testing of the unit root hypothesis which incorporates two potential points of structural change. The results obtained show the unit root hypothesis to be rejected for all classifications of criminal activity examined over the period 1960 to 2007. In addition, the dates of the detected breakpoints are supported by a variety of arguments available in the existing criminology literature concerning alternative determinants of crime and their movements. Interestingly, a difference is observed in the nature of the breaks detected for violent and property crimes. However, potential explanations for this are again found in theoretical arguments available in the criminology literature. Finally, the implications of the current findings for the properties of crime, its subsequent statistical analysis and past and future research are discussed.

A Behavioral Economics Study of How US Trade Deficits with Asia Result in Hare Crimes in the US

Free trade is a sacred shibboleth to economists, but this paper is a behavioural economic analysis which points out a psychological flaw based on the phenomenon of Frustration-Aggression. Illustrating how US trade deficits with Asia-Japan, Korea and China-cause generalized economic frustration in the US and hence are significant related to all types of hate crimes. This is similar to the history of pre-WWII Germany. However, Japanese companies, by location substantial production facilities to the US, have been able to significantly reverse this phenomenon. China’s trade defict, largest vis-à-vis the US, shows a strong relationship with hate crimes in the US. In contrast, Korea was an ally of the US unlike Japan and China, with a relatively small trade deficit with the US, and so does not suffer from the stigma of other Asian Countries.

Four factors that explain both the rise and fall of US crime, 1970–2003

Previous research has failed to explain the rise and fall of US crime since 1970. This study uses cointegration, error correction and common long-memory components analyses to demonstrate that four basic crime factors explaining both the increases in US violent and property crime between 1970 and 1991 and the dramatic declines in crime after 1991. The four factors include arrest rates, income per capita, the proportion of criminal-justice resources devoted to drug crime and alcohol consumption. Error correction models and common long-memory factors show an especially close link between crime rates and the percentage of prison resources devoted to drug offenders. Similar factors result in cointegrated models for murder, rape, robbery, assault and larceny. Additional modelling shows that effective abortion rates computed along the lines of Donohue and Levitt (2001) do not help in explaining the rise and fall of US crime.

TRAUMA TRAINING AND THE REPARATIVE WORK OF JOURNALISM

This article examines discourses of trauma and affective labor in the emergence of trauma training in US journalism. In a body of training texts and films used in US journalism schools, crime and disaster journalism are being refigured as affective encounters between reporters and victims; in the process, training builds a language of trauma that describes and models the news making process as potentially reparative: as an epistemological meeting point between existing knowledge of social traumas and a training apparatus that enables constructs of trauma to do the cultural production of news differently. Rather than treat the emergence of trauma training initiatives as further evidence of the hegemony of therapeutic politics, I draw from Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick's calls for reparative critique, in which transformations in the process of news production may reveal the work of affective labor and its emotional intensities as key, but often unacknowledged, features of cultural production. Analysis of training films and manuals in these curricula, on the one hand, shows their attachments to a medical discourse of trauma that borrows language and constructs from the trauma science literature, replicating forms of referentiality between wounded bodies and traumatized psyches. However, their translation into representational practices and modes of conduct for reporters – as witnesses to others' testimonies – also pose ways of understanding the burdens and affective responsibilities professions like journalism increasingly bear for displaying and interpreting social change and political upheaval.

A new horizon on organised crime: re-locating organised crime in America

David Critchely's reading of the historical records about Italian-American-organised crime seems deliberately provocative as a means of forcing new attention on an increasingly fossilised topic. In...

Critchley, David. The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931. New York: Routledge, 2009 Schneider, Stephen. Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada. Toronto: John Wiley & Sons, 2009

Social science research, for better or worse, is at its most convincing when looking backward. Most social science disciplines try to explain what has taken place, and the repercussions of past decisions and events. Predictability is in many ways more art than science. When it comes to the study of organized crime, history becomes a potent tool. Because research on current events and trends is so difficult, history offers a good lens by which to trace the grand patterns of organized crime. The literature on organized crime tends to be divided in two camps, those that believe that the threat is serious and real (for example, Garyaud 2008), and skeptical scholars who suggest that the rhetoric serves political ends (for example, Beare 2003). The two views are irreconcilable. Looking backward does not solve the debate, but it does help make sense of organized crime as a social phenomenon. For this essay, we review two books that study the history of organized crime in North America. Stephen Schneider’s Iced: The Story of Organized Crime in Canada presents four hundred years of Canadian organized crime history. David Critchley’s The Origin of Organized Crime in America: The New York City Mafia, 1891-1931 focuses more narrowly on the American mafia’s formative years when, it is often argued, American-Italian organized crime came of age. What do these two books tell us about organized crime? How do they inform our reading of Canadian and American history? The two books present a nuanced view of organized crime, neither exaggerating nor diminishing the political, economic or social role of organized crime. The authors challenge existing conventional views pertaining to Canada, the United States and the role of organized crime in the history of the two countries. Schneider argues that organized crime has played an important role in shaping Canada, dispelling the myth of a peaceful and law-abiding nation. Critchley, on the other hand, suggests that American mafia history has generally been overplayed–the reality does not match the purported image. The books are, in fact, a nice contrast. Schneider brings organized crime into Canadian history while Critchley does partially the opposite, reconsidering the place of the mafia in American history. Clearly, history is never as simple as it first appears.

Cowboys in the Middle East: Private Security Companies and the Imperfect Reach of the United States Criminal Justice System

Cowboys in the Middle East: Private Security Companies and the Imperfect Reach of the United States Criminal Justice System

Thug Life: Hip Hop’s Curious Relationship with Criminal Justice

I argue that hip hop music and culture profoundly influences attitudes toward and perceptions about criminal justice in the United States. At base, hip hop lyrics and their cultural accoutrements turns U.S. punishment philosophy upon its head, effectively defeating the foundational purposes of American crime and punishment. Prison and punishment philosophy in the U.S. is based on clear principles of retribution and incapacitation, where prison time for crime should serve to deter individuals from engaging in criminal behavior. In addition, the stigma that attaches to imprisonment should dissuade criminals from recidivism. Hip hop culture denounces crime and punishment in the United States in a way that essentially defies the underlying crime and punishment philosophy adopted and championed by U.S. legislators for decades. Hip hop artists, since the inception of hip hop as a musical genre, have rhymed in a narrative format that starkly informs all listeners and fans that the entire foundational regime of prison for crime in the United States is suspect, illegitimate and profane. As U.S. criminal law and punishment is profane and illegitimate to many, as hip hop artists fiercely argue, then the primary foundational underpinnings of U.S. criminal justice is lost on the hip hop generation, that of deterrence and stigma. Because, as hip hop aggressively describes, crime and punishment in the U.S. is fundamentally unfair, inequitable and biased against people of color and the poor, then punishment for committing certain crimes in America is viewed by the hip hop nation as illegitimate and imprisonment for committing suspect crimes is unaffecting. Hip hop culture has engendered in the global hip hop generation a tradition of exposing racial inequality and social injustice throughout the world, but particularly within the United States. To that end, this Essay argues that much like Critical Race Theory espouses a tradition of 'looking to the bottom,' that American purveyors of crime and punishment law consider the viewpoint of the hip hop nation, which espouses a better, more equitable theory of punishment and justice in the United States.

The origin of organized crime in America: the New York City Mafia, 1891-1931

1. Introduction 2. Black Hand, Calabrians, and the Mafia 3. First Family of the New York Mafia 4. The Mafia and the Baff Murder 5. The Neapolitan Challenge 6. New York City in the 1920s 7. Castellammare War and La Cosa Nostra 8. Americanization and the Families 9. Localism, Tradition, and Innovation

United States Civil Law & Criminal Law: Elements & Procedures at Trial & on Appeal

This 12-page CLE (continuing legal education) brochure is titled “United States Civil Law & Criminal Law: Elements & Procedures at Trial & on Appeal.” It was presented to a delegation of Chinese judges in 2009. It covers federal and state cases at the trial and appellate levels. It explains various civil causes of action and criminal charges.

Codifying Cultural Heritage: Why United States Criminal Law Suddenly Treats Our Rare Materials with Respect

“The Cultural Heritage Guideline will, in my opinion, prove to be one of the most important of all the sentencing guidelines for the long-term benefit of our nation,” said United States Attorney (now federal magistrate judge) Paul Warner. He was testifying before the United States Sentencing Commission, which was about to get serious with cultural crimes. He was also echoing what he had written in a letter to the Commission a mere three months earlier. In that letter, which fully addressed the harm caused to the American people by crimes against cultural resources, he explained that “[f]ew undertakings by the . . .

The Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Pp. xii+430. $78.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper).

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewThe Many Colors of Crime: Inequalities of Race, Ethnicity, and Crime in America. Edited by Ruth D. Peterson, Lauren J. Krivo, and John Hagan. New York: New York University Press, 2006. Pp. xii+430. $78.00 (cloth); $25.00 (paper).Stephen A. CernkovichStephen A. CernkovichBowling Green State University Search for more articles by this author Bowling Green State UniversityPDFPDF PLUSFull Text Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 114, Number 1July 2008 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/592517 Views: 220Total views on this site © 2008 by the University of Chicago Press. All rights reserved. For permission to reuse, please contact [email protected]PDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

The history of native Americans and the misdirected study of organised crime

Conventional chronologies of the history of organised crime in America tend to focus on the arrival of large numbers of Italian immigrants in the 1890s as the catalyst for organised crime. However, analysis of the history of interactions between colonists and aboriginal peoples in North America suggests a much earlier incipience of organised criminal activity marked by the arrival of different groups of immigrants, namely, Dutch, French and British colonists to the American north-east. Drawing upon primary documents describing the practices of early trading companies and their representatives, as well as of later land transactions, the authors will present evidence and argument asserting not only a longer history of organised crime in North America but also an explanation for the inadequacy of the paradigm that governs much current organised crime and transnational organised crime research.

Identity theft: An exploratory study with implications for marketers

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America, and millions of people become victims each year. Furthermore, identity theft costs corporations over $20 billion per year, and consumers are forced to spend over $2 billion and 100 million hours of time to deal with the aftermath. This paper uses a system dynamics model to explore policy options dealing with identity theft and to provide implications for marketers. The results indicate that the current approach to combating identity theft will not work. However, inexpensive security freezes could be effective, because they result in a nonlinear reduction in identity theft that is similar to the “herd immunity” seen in epidemiology. Thus, identity theft can be addressed by protecting just a fraction of the total population.