Crime Perspective Research Articles

Legal Safeguards for Victimized Women in Bangladesh:

In Bangladesh, the ratio of the number of women is much higher than the number of men. The Government has enacted various laws which are especially for women and the penalties which have been incorporated under the laws are also severe. But the rate of victimization is increasing day by day due to lack of proper application of laws and adequate monitoring of the concerned authorities. It is a matter of great concern that most of the occurrences of victimization of women begin at home by their family members or intimate partners and extends to the society afterwards. Women are victimized by different crimes especially sexual abuse, physical assault, mental harassment, persecution, violation of conjugal rights and violation of personal rights i.e. non-payment of dowry, maintenance etc. These are here considered as social crime because of anti-social nature and place of occurrence. The offences are also punishable under different social legislations. As the offences are criminal in nature, and sometimes these are considered also as civil wrongs, both the penalty and compensation could be inflicted by ensuring legal safeguard. In this study, various cases have been analyzed as enlisted in Victim Support Center (VSC) guided by Dhaka Metropolitan Police (DMP). Each of the cases was analyzed in social crime perspective for identifying the causes of victimization with proper recommendations. Finally, it has been observed that there are a lot of laws for protecting the rights of the victimized women, but the outcome level is not satisfactory. This paper identifies and analyses the causes for the victimization with a way of solution in reducing the rate of victimization by ensuring legal safeguards in the context of social crime in Bangladesh. It reveals that the number of victimized women from rural area is greater than urban region. It explores that the primary reasons of victimization are dowry, illiteracy, lack of economic independence and income, child marriage and lack of security for women. It also maintains that the consequences of victimization are significantly higher than the other crimes as it causes physical disability, psychological disorder, financial insolvency, emotional disorder and social condemnation that make a negative impact on rest of the life of the victims and their family members simultaneously.

Is Truth Stranger Than Fiction? Bizarre Details and Credibility Assessment

A series of three studies were designed to examine the influence of bizarreness on perceived witness credibility by mock-jurors. Study 1 investigated the relationship between bizarre details (baseline, mild, moderate, extreme), crime perspectives (victim/witness), and fantasy proneness on credibility assessment of eyewitness statements. Study 2 examined bizarreness level according to the number of bizarre details present (5, 10, or 15) and Study 3 observed the relationship between bizarreness level and the type of detail (description, action, event). The results for all three studies indicated that credibility was negatively related to level of bizarreness. In addition, action and event details were less believable relative to perpetrator descriptions, especially when bizarreness increased. Concurrently, ratings of belief in events as reported, credibility, and plausibility decreased as the number of bizarre details increased. These findings suggest that certain events may be “too strange to be true”.

Environmental Criminality in Greece and Cyprus: Towards a Critical Green Criminology of the Eastern Mediterranean

Several studies suggest that both in Greece and Cyprus, environmental violations are being publicly discussed and defined by active citizens members of Environmental Non-Governmental Organisations (ENGOs) who demand the protection of the environment. These actors of civil society demand and often achieve visibility from the central policy making. Given the above, the present text attempts to propose certain points that could contribute towards the establishment of a Critical Green Criminology by taking into consideration bottom-up perspectives of environmental crime. By studying perspectives, representations and demands of environmental NGOs concerning environmental criminality, through the prism of environmentalism as a cultural perspective, the present article constitutes a proposal for a green criminology which will focus on the invisible - from formal social control - environmental violations, as these are defined by active citizens and environmental organisations.

Rational Misbehavior? Evaluating an Integrated Dual-Process Model of Criminal Decision Making

Test the hypothesis that dispositional self-control and morality relate to criminal decision making via different mental processing modes, a ‘hot’ affective mode and a ‘cool’ cognitive one. Structural equation modeling in two studies under separate samples of undergraduate students using scenarios describing two different types of crime, illegal downloading and insurance fraud. Both self-control and morality are operationalized through the HEXACO model of personality (Lee and Ashton in Multivariate Behav Res 39(2):329–358, 2004). In Study 1, negative state affect, i.e., feelings of fear and worry evoked by a criminal prospect, and perceived risk of sanction were found to mediate the relations between both dispositions and criminal choice. In Study 2, processing mode was manipulated by having participants rely on either their thinking or on their feelings prior to deciding on whether or not to make a criminal choice. Activating a cognitive mode strengthened the relation between perceived risk and criminal choice, whereas activating an affective mode strengthened the relation between negative affect and criminal choice. In conjunction, these results extend research that links stable individual dispositions to proximal states that operate in the moment of decision making. The results also add to dispositional perspectives of crime by using a structure of personality that incorporates both self-control and morality. Contributions to the proximal, state, perspectives reside in the use of a new hot/cool perspective of criminal decision making that extends rational choice frameworks.

Being Fearless and Fearsome

Violence and masculinity, as many criminologists have argued, are tightly coupled in the United States. According to the current masculinity and crime perspectives, men who confront multiple oppressions (e.g., class, race, and political) are particularly apt to use violence because, while marginalized men lack economic power, they possess power in terms of their gender, especially through the use or threat of violence. While many scholars acknowledge that racial oppression can contribute to the development of violent masculine identities, the authors argue that race remains undertheorized in prevailing explanations of masculine identities and violence. In this study, the authors argue for further advancement of the colonial criminology framework to deepen our understanding of the race-based inequalities leading up to violence. More specifically, the authors analyze data collected from a 6-year ethnographic study of youth violence among Pacific Islander adolescents to illustrate the effects of the lasting legacy of colonialism as well as the continuing salience of racial and ethnic identity formation in explanations of violence, primarily involving Native Hawaiian and Samoan youths in Hawai‘i.

Beyond the retributive public: governance and public opinion on penal policy

The notion of a retributive public underlies many explanations of the USA's high incarceration rate. However, accounting for political context may undermine the retributive public assumption. Jonathan Simon's ‘governing through crime’ perspective provides one theory about the relationship between political context and public opinion on punitive penal policies. From this perspective, public support for punitive policies mirrors politicians’ focus on incapacitation and inadequate courts. Using data from a national telephone survey conducted in 1995 during the height of the public's concern about crime, this study uses logistic regression analyses to examine the relationship between beliefs about sentencing goals, distrust in courts, and support for mandatory sentencing. Consistent with agoverning through crime perspective, the results suggest that wanting to separate offenders from society and distrusting the courts increases the likelihood of supporting mandatory sentencing. Further analyses also suggest that the governing through crime perspective could be expanded to include the role of racial bias in support for punitive penal policies, especially as racist attitudes may interact with beliefs about sentencing goals. These findings call into question the retributive public assumption and point toward new directions for explaining public support for punitive policies in the USA.

Hårdare tag i arbetslivet?

Preventing violence at work: A study of descriptions of safety measures in Swedish trade union journals 1978–2004The purpose of this study is to examine if perceptions of interventions aimed at violence in the workplace have changed since the 1970s. In the beginning of the study period, structural factors are seen as the dominating explanation for workplace violence. The crime perspective rises in the 1990’s and methods of intervention becomes the control- and justice functions of larger society. The result shows search for accountability to be a salient factor for understanding the development towards an increasing use of penal sanctions.

Big Investment Fraud and “Yakuza Money” Crime — Two Perspectives of Financial Crime in Japan

Financial crime in Japan takes a major toll on both individual victims and the nation’s economy. This paper focuses on large investment frauds that have occurred from post-war Japan to the present as well as financial crimes that involve racketeers of boryokudans, or organized crime groups, more commonly known as yakuza. Major financial offending by organized crime groups include: yamikin (loan sharks), sokaiya (shareholders who extort corporate funds), jiageya (“land sharks” who frighten tenants into vacating properties), and new forms of yakuza money crime that constitute significant challenges to enforcement. The paper concludes that more comprehensive legislation that applies to all forms of investment fraud is needed in order to stem the tide of white-collar crime in Japanese society.

Peacekeeping and the Sexual Exploitation of Women and Girls in Post-Conflict Societies: A Serious Enigma to Establishing the Rule of Law

The article discusses the exploitation of women and girls by peacekeepers and its effect on efforts to establish the rule of law in a post-conflict situation. It provides a situational analysis of the problem, examining the issue from rights-based, stabilization, and organized crime perspectives. It considers the rule of law mandate of modern peace-building operations, including the ability of peacekeepers to help combat trafficking and the sexual exploitation of women and girls. It proposes a solution to tackling gender-based violence, trafficking and exploitation in the establishment of the rule of law through accountability and domestic capacity-building. The work of committed peace-builders is critical to achieving this goal.

Perspective of violence and crime

The relevance of failure in natural developmental processes and their family correlates for prevention is abundantly clear DOI: 10.4038/cmj.v50i3.1436 Ceylon Medical Journal Vol.50(3) 2005: 131-132

Mental Health and Violent Youth

Article AbstractFrom our regular book review column. In her book Mental Health and Violent Youth, Denise Paquette Boots, Ph.D., an Assistant Professor of Criminology at the University of Texas at Dallas, examines the relationship between youth mental illness and future violent crime. In this work, the author addresses the national economic, medical, social, and psychological costs of violence and discusses current trends in American violent criminal behaviors as they pertain to youth mental illness. The author conveys a developmental perspective of violent crime and provides an overview of published longitudinal studies on the correlation between youth mental health and future violence.

Understanding Identity Theft

Researchers typically label acts as “white-collar” based on the respectable status of the offender (populist perspective) or on the characteristics of the offense (patrician perspective). However, some crimes, such as identity theft are not easily classified into either of these categories. The current study is designed to contextualize previous research and to situate the crime of identity theft within these two broad perspectives of white-collar crime. To do this, 59 identity thieves incarcerated in federal prisons were interviewed to offer the offenders’ perspectives on existing research describing characteristics of thieves and the techniques they employ to complete their crimes. Results show that identity thieves are a diverse group in terms of demographic characteristics (age, race, gender, and social class), employment, and criminal histories. They employed a variety of methods to both acquire information and convert it to cash. The most common methods of acquiring information were to buy it from others or to steal it from mailboxes or trashcans. They also used numerous methods to convert these identities into valuable goods, which included accessing existing accounts, applying for new credit, and obtaining loans. Thus, the findings show that identity theft is difficult to classify as white-collar crime.

“Legitimate Strengths in Criminal Networks”

Extending from the organizing crime perspective, we study how legitimate world actors contribute to structuring a criminal network. This focus also underscores the facilitating role that some participants have in criminal settings. Based on a case study of an illegal drug importation network that was monitored by law-enforcement investigators over a two-year period, we find that although most legitimate actors (or non-traffickers) had nominal roles and contributed minimally to the criminal network's structure, a minority of these actors were critical to the network in two ways: (1) they were active in bringing other participants (including traffickers) into the network; and (2) they were influential directors of relationships with both non-traffickers and traffickers. The presence of such influential participants from legitimate occupational settings illustrates how upperworld figures can facilitate criminal enterprise beyond the mere contributions of legitimate status and expertise.

Race and Gender-Disaggregated Homicide Offending Rates

Although gender and race are two of the best known correlates of violent crime, surprisingly little research has examined how gender and race intersect in the etiology of violent behavior. To redress this, the authors' study integrates a communities and crime perspective within a gender inequality framework to examine the city-level correlates of homicide offending rates disaggregated by race and gender. Two questions are addressed: a) Are the contextual underpinnings for high rates of urban homicide in the United States similar or distinct across race and gender categories? b) Does the ability of city characteristics as predictors of violence vary depending upon the context of violence (i.e., by victim-offender relationship)? Consistent with expectations, findings indicate that there are differences in the relative importance of predictors of homicide across race and gender categories. In addition, the relative importance of homicide predictors depends upon the nature of the victim-offender relationship.

Toward an evolutionary forensic psychology

Most theories of crime have not explored intensively biological and especially evolutionary explanations for criminal behavior. Ellis presents a valuable new perspective that proposes that attention to physiological mechanisms shaped by evolutionary forces can provide insights into the causes of crime and sex differences in the patterns of crime. We discuss other theories and research relevant to Ellis' theory. We also propose that an evolutionary psychological perspective of crime will help to invigorate research and lead to a better understanding of criminality. An integrated evolutionary forensic psychology will help to explain sources of conflict between individuals, situations in which conflict leads to victimization, and victim defenses and coping mechanisms.

ETHICAL LIMITATIONS ON CRIMINAL PARTICIPATION

The paper explores the orthodox economic perspective on criminal participation and recognises its theoretical and empirical successes during its relatively short history. Questions are raised, however, over its conceptual underpinnings and its correspondence with reality. Paradoxically, the economics of criminal participation can neither tell us why we have had so much crime in living memory nor why we should not be currently experiencing far more. It assumes ‘criminals are (potentially all of) us’ and that crime is normal. It is argued that there is a need to bring in the moral dimension directly (without reducing it to a mere price) in order to understand why many agents renounce crime and often sacrifice apparent material advantages by doing the right thing. The economics of crime perspective needs to recognise more fully the role of internal as well as external sanctions impacting on behaviour.

Labor Markets, Delinquency, and Social Control Theory: An Empirical Assessment of the Mediating Process

The emerging labor market stratification and crime perspective has drawn on dual labor market theory and social control theory to examine the influence of labor market stratification and resulting job characteristics on criminal behavior. With empirical studies finding consistent support for this relationship, it has been suggested that parents' work experience may also influence their children's law-violating behavior. Using data from the National Survey of Families and Households, the current research examines whether parents' job characteristics, indicative of the primary- and secondary-sector labor market division, influence children's bonds to conformity and resulting levels of delinquency. The findings suggest that parents' job characteristics have significant effects on levels of parental supervision, children's feelings of attachment and efficacy, as well as educational aspirations and grade point averages, all of which directly or indirectly affect levels of delinquency

Deterring drunk driving fatalities: an economics of crime perspective

Econometric studies of public policies that might deter driving-under-the-influence (DUI) offenses generally adopt, either explicitly or implicitly, the basic framework provided in Becker’s (1968) expected utility model of criminal behavior. The literature has generally not provided consistent evidence of any particular source of direct deterrence due to the probability and/or severity of punishment for DUI, however. This may reflect the fact that only indirect DUI deterrence through alcohol control policies such as beer taxes and drinking age is consistently considered in these studies. Forced to select among many policy variables to keep regressions manageable, researchers have virtually always controlled for beer taxes and drinking-age laws in reduced-form models, but the selection of other variables (laws establishing sanctions for DUI, law enforcement efforts and laws that facilitate this effort, the potential for civil action against drivers or against bar owners who sell to drunk drivers, determinants of liquor price and availability, attitudes toward drinking, etc.) has been much less consistent. Furthermore, because there is no direct measure of state-level DUI offenses, some proxy must be used as a dependent variable (generally, some measure of traffic fatalities is employed) in studies using state-level data, and the proxy or proxies chosen can also vary from study to study (e.g., total fatalities, night-time fatalities, single-occupant fatalities, and fatalities involving young drivers). Thus, one study may find some specific laws or policies to be effective, but those same variables may have insignificant coefficients in another study while other variables seem significant, implying that no robust results can be found.

Labeling and differential association: Towards a general social learning theory of crime and deviance

This study contends that components from two theories-labeling and differential association-should be incorporated into a general social learning perspective of crime and deviance. Data from waves one, two, and three of the National Youth Survey (n=1725) are used to test the proposed model. Results indicate that labeling effects are mediated by associations with delinquent peers when looking at a 24-item delinquency index. Theoretical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Drinking, Driving, and Deterrence: The Effectiveness and Social Costs of Alternative Policies

TRAFFIC accidents are one of the leading causes of death in the United States and are the leading cause of death for people aged three to thirtyfour. It is estimated that alcohol is involved in approximately half of all fatal accidents.' The deaths and injuries of nondrinking drivers, passengers, and pedestrians both arouse public opinion and provide a clear-cut efficiency rationale for policies to correct the negative externalities.2 There are two types of policies aimed at reducing drunk driving. The first type of law attempts to deter drunk driving. The second type of law indirectly reduces drunk driving by controlling alcohol consumption, either in general or in high-risk groups. Examples of alcohol control policies