Trends In Crime Rates Research Articles

Variability in Violent Crime Rate Trends Among a Sample of U.S. Cities

Variability in Violent Crime Rate Trends Among a Sample of U.S. Cities

The Relationship Between Childhood Trauma and Crime and its Mechanism

In recent times, there has been a concerning upward trend in crime rates, with a noticeable decrease in the age of individuals involved in criminal activities. In response to this pressing issue, this research endeavors to delve into the root causes of criminal behavior. Specifically, our investigation centers on childhood traumatic events as potential catalysts for subsequent criminal conduct. The goal of this study is to scrutinize the causal link between childhood trauma and criminal behavior, drawing insights from the analysis of findings gathered from ten seasoned professionals. Furthermore, our research seeks to shed light on the intricate relationship between childhood trauma and criminal conduct. Individuals who have undergone childhood trauma may exhibit a propensity to mimic and internalize violent behaviors witnessed during their formative years, which may ultimately contribute to their involvement in criminal activities later in life. Additionally, it is imperative to recognize that childhood trauma can precipitate the development of psychological or mental disorders, potentially acting as a catalyst for criminal acts. A comprehensive comprehension of the intricate interplay between childhood trauma and criminal behavior, along with its underlying mechanisms, holds significant promise in equipping society with effective tools to address the alarming surge in crime rates.

Empirical Properties of Crime Rate Trends

This article considers the operation of the time series processes that underlie U.S. crime rate trends. These processes are important because they carry the influence of the variables that generate the rates. They limit the forms that explanations of crime trends can take, and they open avenues for new theoretical development. Using data from the nation and a panel of large cities, analysis finds that crime trends operate much like random walks or their smoothed cousins; that they rarely deviate from a constant pattern; and that they show little evidence of nonlinearity. The article discusses the substantive implications of these features for understanding crime trends, and it considers directions for expanding the study of their empirical properties.

Особенности преступности и противодействия ей в Северо-Кавказском федеральном округе

The article notes that the criminological situation in Russia as a whole has remained fairly stable in recent years. At the same time, it is possible to effectively counteract crime only if a more detailed analysis of qualitative and quantitative indicators of crime is carried out, taking into account the specifics of a particular subject (district, region). By the example of the North-Caucasus Federal District it is shown that not only in the District itself, compared with Russia as a whole, but also in its administrative-territorial units, crime rates differ significantly. The author draws attention to the fact that despite the low crime rate in the North- Caucasus Federal District, which has been maintained for several years, and the overall decrease in the number of registered crimes in January-November 2022 in almost all subjects of the District, nevertheless, the qualitative characteristics of crime in the North Caucasus Federal District are characterized by a number of negative trends. Thus, statistical data indicate a higher proportion of serious and especially serious crimes committed in the NCFD compared to the all-Russian indicator, the dominance in the number of crimes committed, crimes related to illegal arms trafficking, a wider spread of extremist and terrorist crimes, a high proportion of socially dangerous acts related to illegal trafficking narcotic drugs, psychotropic substances and their analogues. The socio-demographic characteristics of persons committing crimes are also touched upon, it is noted that in all subjects of the District these are usually persons who do not have a permanent source of income, as well as previously convicted. Extremely negative trends in crime rates in the Republic of North Ossetia-Alania have been noted. Taking into account the revealed specifics of crime in the North-Caucasus Federal District, as well as taking into account the socio-economic, demographic and other features of the North-Caucasus Federal District, the author draws attention to those areas that should be taken under special control by the leadership of the District and law enforcement agencies, and also makes some recommendations that can contribute to reducing crime in this region.

Crime drop in Ghana? Some insights from crime patterns and trends

This study examines crime rate trends in Ghana in the context of research into the international crime drop. Ghanaian police-recorded crime data are imperfect, but crime rates appear to have increased to the early 2000s then to have declined significantly. However, the national trend for all crime types masks significant variation by crime type and region. The national trends appear, broadly speaking, consistent with long-term crime increases and decreases in high-income countries, but with a lag that may reflect Ghana’s economic development trajectory. This may be consistent with the routine activity perspective if both crime opportunities and economic development increased in parallel, followed by a crime decline that reflected increased security measures or other change. The study raises many questions that require further research, and some suggestions to that end are outlined.

Thatcherism, Crime and the Legacy of the Social and Economic ‘Storms’ of the 1980s

AbstractUsing insights from the classical sociology of deviance and social structure (notably Durkheim and Merton) we explore the enduring impact of the social and economic changes which started in the UK in the early 1980s. In the two subsequent decades the UK went through a period of radical economic restructuring, leading to lasting social change. We seek to gauge the effect of these combined social and economic processes, which we label social and economic ‘storms’, at the national level. In so doing we assess, and ultimately defend, the heuristic utility of this conceptualisation, considering the extent to which such social and economic storms (individually and collectively) weakened bonds between individuals, within and between families, and across communities. We use proxy measures of economic and social changes in combination with recorded crime statistics to explore the degree to which such processes might be associated with victimisation rates. We find that crime was related to these macro‐level ‘storms’, although ultimately they were driven by economic variables. Our analyses show how political decision making can shape long‐term trends in crime rates.

Guns and crime revisited

I focus on the effect of changes in public security (policing) on private security measures that potential victims can take. In particular, I look at the tradeoff between different types of private security measures – such as using or carrying guns, carrying less cash or keeping less valuables at home, and using burglar alarms or Lojack – and study how this tradeoff is affected by changes in public security. If private householders’ direct security expenses are strongly substitutable with public policing (e.g., for guns which may be more useful in badly policed areas), an increase in policing results in a drop in these expenses; it also results in carrying or keeping less cash (an indirect security measure which reduces the prize a criminal can seize). If, however, householders’ direct security expenses are “complementary” to policing in the sense that they are more effective when police response is rapid (e.g., for burglar alarms), more policing increases these expenses unless the efficacy of joint (public and private) security expenses on combating crime encounters very sharply diminishing returns; moreover, a rise in policing also induces carrying or keeping more cash. An increase in penalties increases the tendency to keep cash on hand, and also reduces crime, provided that as private precautions increase, with policing constant, it takes a larger increment in security spending to compensate for a specific drop in penalties. The results are consistent with some empirical trends in crime rates, policing, penalties and private precautions.

Understanding the Nature and Effects of Police-Citizen Encounters in Social Context: The Road Less Traveled

Aggressive policing tactics have been identified as contributors to declining crime rate trends in urban, culturally diverse neighborhoods. They encompass stop and frisk practices which have spawned negative public opinion that contrasts with its justification by criminal justice officials as an effective means for the control and prevention of crime. The issue, however, begs deeper questions not readily addressed: how does the nature of police-citizen suspicion-based encounters influence the attitudes and behavior of both stakeholders; and does it contribute to effective crime control and prevention? Based on an analysis of theoretical and empirical research in the field, this article argues that a sense of shame and perception of fairness or unfairness are endemic to face-to-face suspicion-based encounters between police officers and the public, and have significant implications for the experience of justice, control and prevention of crime, and policy initiatives to promote community safety.

A cure for crime? Psycho‐pharmaceuticals and crime trends

In this paper we consider possible links between the diffusion of new pharmaceuticals used for treating mental illness and crime rates. We describe recent trends in crime and review the evidence showing that mental illness is a clear risk factor both for criminal behavior and victimization. We summarize the development of a number of new pharmaceutical therapies for the treatment of mental illness that came into wide use during the “great American crime decline.” We examine limited international data, as well as more detailed American data, to assess the relationship between rates of prescriptions of psychotropic drugs and crime rates, while controlling for other factors that may explain trends in crime rates. Using state-level variation in the rates that various drug therapies disperse within populations to identify impacts on crime rates, we find some evidence that the expansion of psychiatric drugs is associated with decreased violent crime rates, but not property crime rates. We find no robust impacts on homicide rates and no effects on arrest rates. Further, the magnitudes of the estimated effects of expanded drug treatment on violent crime are small. Our estimates imply that about 5 percent of the decline in crime during the period of our study was due to expanded mental health treatment.

Book Review: Park, W.-K. (2006). Trends in Crime Rates in Postwar Japan: A Structural Perspective. The Law and Political Science Series of the University of Kitakyushu, 20. Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan: Shinzansha Co., Pp. xii, 255

Book Review: Park, W.-K. (2006). Trends in Crime Rates in Postwar Japan: A Structural Perspective. The Law and Political Science Series of the University of Kitakyushu, 20. Morioka City, Iwate Prefecture, Japan: Shinzansha Co., Pp. xii, 255

Understanding international crime trends: The legacy of preschool lead exposure

This study shows a very strong association between preschool blood lead and subsequent crime rate trends over several decades in the USA, Britain, Canada, France, Australia, Finland, Italy, West Germany, and New Zealand. The relationship is characterized by best-fit lags (highest R 2 and t-value for blood lead) consistent with neurobehavioral damage in the first year of life and the peak age of offending for index crime, burglary, and violent crime. The impact of blood lead is also evident in age-specific arrest and incarceration trends. Regression analysis of average 1985–1994 murder rates across USA cities suggests that murder could be especially associated with more severe cases of childhood lead poisoning.

COPS and crime

The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 established the Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) program that provided grants to states and localities to pay up to 75% of the cost for new police hires for 3 years. To date, the COPS program has awarded almost $5 billion in hiring grants paying for 64,000 new police officers. We use annual data from 1990 through 2001 from 2074 cities with populations in excess of 10,000 to show that for each officer paid for by grant funds, the size of the force expands by 0.70 officers. The size of COPS grants are correlated with population and crime rates, but not the pre-COPS time trends in crime rates or the size of the police force. This allows us to use the size of COPS grants as an instrument for the size of the police force in regressions where crime is the outcome of interest. These models indicate that police added to the force by COPS generated statistically significant reductions in auto thefts, burglaries, robberies, and aggravated assaults.

Are U.S. Crime Rate Trends Historically Contingent?

Conventional explanations of crime rate trends assume that changes in the rates follow a process that is linear and constant, and that draws its inputs from a normal distribution. These features ensure that the present is linearly predictable from the past and that the future will be linearly predictable from the present. Questioning the conventional assumptions, an emerging class of historical contingency theories stresses variation in the crime-generating mechanism. According to contingency explanations, the process underlying the rates is nonlinear or non-normal, or has a structure that shifts over time. Future rate changes can then differ greatly depending on current conditions, and unanticipated developments will limit the accuracy of linear predictions. This article examines U.S. crime rates during the past two-thirds of the twentieth century, and finds little evidence of historical contingency. This supports the standard explanations, but it also raises deeper questions about the forces that produce the rates.

Crimes of Opportunity or Crimes of Emotion? Testing Two Explanations of Seasonal Change in Crime

While past research has suggested possible seasonal trends in crime rates, this study employs a novel methodology that directly models these changes and predicts them with explanatory variables. Using a nonlinear latent curve model, seasonal fluctuations in crime rates are modeled for a large number of communities in the U.S. over a three-year period with a focus on testing the theoretical predictions of two key explanations for seasonal changes in crime rates: the temperature/aggression and routine activities theories. Using data from 8,460 police units in the U.S. over the 1990 to 1992 period, we found that property crime rates are primarily driven by pleasant weather, consistent with the routine activities theory. Violent crime exhibited evidence in support of both theories.

Changes in child welfare and subsequent crime rate trends: A cross-national test of the lagged nurturance hypothesis

The General Evolutionary Ecological Paradigm for understanding criminal behavior [Criminology 32 (1994) 501.] predicts that social programs which improve the quality of such things as maternal and infant health care, parenting, and education will tend to reduce population-level crime rates 10–15 years later when children exposed to those conditions reach adolescence and early adulthood. This prediction—more simply referred to as the “lagged nurturance hypothesis”—is theoretically important because it integrates population-level perspectives on crime with the large body of microlevel research linking child development with delinquency. We test the lagged nurturance hypothesis using an extensive set of cross-national data. Despite inherent measurement and methodological difficulties associated with cross-national research that weaken statistical power, our findings support the lagged nurturance hypothesis. Implications for future research and public policy are discussed.

Crime and Victimization: An Economic Perspective

The recent upward trend in crime rates of developing countries has spurred widespread public concern about personal and proprietary insecurity. In some countries, the questions of crime, violence, and victimization are attracting more attention from academics and policy makers than traditional economic problems. The objective of this paper is to examine the main issues related to crime and victimization from an economic perspective. For this purpose the paper combines a review of the main results established in the literature with original research on the causes of crime and the risk factors of victimization. The first section provides a review of the estimates of the costs of crime, the main theoretical and empirical research on its causes, and the relative advantages of official and survey data on crime. The second section presents original work on the main causes of violent crime from a cross-country perspective. The empirical work starts with a basic model of the economic determinants of homicide and robbery rates. In turn, this empirical model is extended along five dimensions: 1) deterrence factors, 2) illegal drug-related activities, 3) demographic issues, 4) income and ethnic polarization, and 5) social capital. The third section reviews recent case studies of Latin American cities that rely on survey data to assess the empirical determinants of the probability of victimization. These studies focus on three types of risk factors: 1) individual characteristics, 2) household characteristics, and 3) community characteristics. The main conclusions from the previous sections are summarized in section four.

Changes in the Structure of Life Courses and the Decline of Social Capital in Canadian Society: A Time Series Analysis of Property Crime Rates

One of the paradoxes of contemporary society is the trend in aggregate crime rates, a trend that, for all intents and purposes, has been consistently upward in the post-war period. Because previous attempts to provide an account of both the motivational and opportunity prerequisites of crime have been relatively weak, the present paper proposes such a framework by integrating insights from life course research with a conception of the age stratification of social control. From this perspective, changes in the timing and order of life course events characteristic of the transition from adolescence to adulthood have weakened social control mechanisms for late teens and young adults. When significant life course events are delayed or removed, there is a consequent decline in institutional bonds and social capital. It is theorized that these declines play an important role in aggregate crime rate trends by increasing the size of the pool of motivated offenders. This perspective was tested in a time series analysis of Canadian property crime data and the results provide strong support for the proposed models. Further implications of this argument are also explored. Language: en

Hungarian transition after three years

THREE YEARS AFTER THE SYSTEMIC CHANGE in 1990, followed by continuing assiduous reforms under a stable new government, the economy is still being held back by severe crisis. On the surface, judging from shop windows, things might seem to have turned for the better, but the harsh economic indicators signal a deep crisis. It is not simply that the euphoria after the turning-point has disappeared. Figure 1 and Table 1 reveal that GDP and real incomes are still declining, industrial output was 40% less in 1992 than in 1988 and agricultural output dropped to less than half its earlier level. The trend is continuously down, suggesting that the decline still continues. Temporary positive developments, like the balance of payments surplus, are now turning negative, and seem to follow a downward spiral. Unemployment is still high (13%) and slightly growing, with a similar trend in crime rates. Looking at the indicators after three years, the question inevitably arises: what are the reasons for such a crisis? The question is the more interesting since Hungary, after a long period of step-by-step reform preparation, transformed peacefully in 1990. That there is a severe crisis is obvious. It is no exaggeration to say that the present crisis is greater than the great depression (1929-33). Then national product dropped by 7%, now by 19%, industrial output decreased by 12% then, while now by 36% (Korai, 1993). Also, there is a general understanding that the newly liberalised market and the monetary mechanism do not work (Erd6s, 1993(a)). Expectations before the systemic change were not optimistic either but the gravity and duration of real developments surpassed the expectations even of those who tried to estimate the effects of the transformation. In retrospect, some of them are now blaming Western economic theories for lacking any advice on transformation. These theories, they say, tell us only that the predominance of private ownership and restriction of the redistributory role of the state budget are necessary conditions for a market economy, but do not provide answers as to what to do in a not-underdeveloped post-communist society where private ownership is rather limited and all public services are financed by the state budget (Tardos, 1993(a)). In addition to inadequate theories, Komai also blames the politicians and the new government for not preparing the public for such difficulties.1 Politicians, however, were not aware of such a danger, and a look at the new

Crime and Incarceration: Some Comparative Findings from the 1980s

Incarceration, crime, and unemployment rates from Texas, California, and the United States during the 1970s and 1980s are examined to explore the link between incarceration policies and crime rates. Comparing Texas and California, despite different incarceration policies in the 1980s, there are few differences in violent crime rate trends. By contrast, in the late 1980s, property crimes increased in Texas and decreased in California. These state-rate differences across types of crime parallel findings across four successive parolee cohorts in Texas, where increases in repetitious property offending patterns were noted, and repetitious violent offending remained stable. Variations in incarceration rates and economic conditions are noted as explanatory factors.

Trends in Crime Rates, Certainty of Punishment and Severity of Punishment in the Netherlands

This paper addresses the interaction between crime rates and sentencing policies in the Netherlands, a country generally known for its relatively lenient treatment of criminals. The first section describes major changes which have taken place in Dutch crime policy and criminality over the last twenty years. The second part of the paper speculates about the interplay between, respectively, certainty and severity of punishment and crime rates in the Netherlands. The major source for the description of developments in Dutch crime and crime policy is the recently published government policy document Sameleving en Criminaliteit: Een Beleidsplan voor de Komende Jaren (1985), supplemented by other government reports, criminal justice statistics, and scholarly publications. In this study, no attempt is made to address the profound problems and criticisms that arise from the use of aggregated data to study general deterrence. We lack, at this point, the necessary data to provide sophisticated time-series analyses appropriate for such an endeavor. Rather, our efforts are directed at providing a general description of some of the more important changes which have taken place in Dutch criminal justice policy and crime, with some speculative comments about possible implications for deterrence theory.