Criminology Research Articles

Does context matter? Examining robbery reporting in a high crime country

Most empirical studies that examine why individuals report property crimes to the police have focused on Global North countries where crime rates are low. This study is situated in the most violent area of the world, Latin America, and examines Peru, which has the highest robbery victimization rate in the Americas. This article examines the applicability of theories of crime reporting in this Global South context using a large sample and multilevel modeling. We find that trust in the police has no impact on the reporting of the robbery of one’s cellphone, purse or wallet. The theories of rational choice and Black’s stratification of law provide strong explanations for the reporting of robbery of these personal items. Individuals of higher social status and those who reside in districts with low levels of social disadvantage are more likely to report, as well as those who have experienced violent victimization.

Managers’ Perceptions of Security Threats: The Case of Data Breaches

Organizations survive to the extent that they are able to provide adequate protection for their critical resources: personnel, information, and assets. Malicious actors including competitors, disgruntled insiders, terrorists, and nations frequently seek to steal, harm, damage, or destroy a firms’ resources. These actors often prey on firms because they are suitable targets or vulnerable to attack, suggesting opportunity is present. Using crime theory of opportunity, we explain why perceptions of vulnerability exist in some industries or firms. Past archival studies have examined factors that increase or reduce the risk of firms experiencing a security breach, but such research remains nascent and does not take an inclusive approach. The current study attempts to replicate and extend the results of past archival research using a survey approach to explore predictors of security breaches. Using a sample of 265 senior executives, this study explores predictors of experiencing industry and firm security breaches. Through a crime theory of opportunity lens, the findings reveal that some industry, organizational, and executive characteristics are significantly related to perceptions regarding the frequency of security breaches by executives.

Explaining Chinese Delinquency: Self-Control, Morality, and Criminogenic Exposure

This study extends the testing of situational action theory (SAT) to a Chinese population, and sheds new light on the directions of the moderation relationships between self-control and morality, and between crime propensity and criminogenic exposure on delinquency. Relying on a large, representative sample of middle school students from two areas of Guizhou, China ( N = 2,498), we find that both self-control and morality have significant inhibiting effects on delinquency. Moreover, self-control has a more profound curbing effect on delinquency among adolescents with higher levels of morality. Meanwhile, the promoting effect of crime propensity on delinquency decreases when levels of risky exposure increase. When adolescents have more unsupervised activities and delinquent peers, their crime propensity affects delinquency to a lesser extent. Our study confirms that individual and situational factors interlock in determining delinquency, and reiterates the value of empirical testing across cultures to validate and possibly improve general theories of crime.

Epilepsy, violence, and crime. A historical analysis.

In the 19th and early 20th century, epilepsy was one of the most investigated disorders in forensic psychiatry and psychology. The possible subsidiary symptoms of epilepsy (such as temporal confusion, alterations of consciousness, or increased aggression) played pivotal roles in early forensic and criminal psychological theories that aimed to underscore the problematic medical, social and legal status of epileptic criminals. These criminals were considered extremely violent and capable of committing sudden, brutal acts. Although the theory of "epileptic criminality" was refuted due to 20th-century developments in medicine, forensic psychiatry, and criminal psychology, some suppositions related to the concept of epileptic personality have lingered. This paper explores the lasting influence of the theory of epileptic personality by examining the evolution of the theories of epileptic criminality both in the international and the Hungarian context. Specifically, it calls attention to the twentieth-century revival of the theory of epileptic personality in the works of Leopold Szondi, István Benedek and Norman Geschwind. The paper shows that the issue of epileptic personality still lingers in neuropsychology. In doing so, biological reductionist trends in medical-psychological thinking are traced, and attention is drawn to questions that arise due to changing cultural and medical representations.

Unstructured Socializing With Peers and Delinquency: The Role of Mediation Through the Lens of Akers’ (1998) Social Structure Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance

Unstructured Socializing With Peers and Delinquency: The Role of Mediation Through the Lens of Akers’ (1998) Social Structure Social Learning Theory of Crime and Deviance

An agent-based model for simulating urban crime with improved daily routines

We propose a scalable agent-based crime simulation model based on the routine activity theory. It uses census data and time geography to create a synthetic population with residences and job locations, commuting schedules, and daily routines constrained by disposable time that are more representative than existing models. The time and location of crime incidents in this model are determined by random encounters between vulnerable targets and motivated offenders when they travel or carry out scheduled activities on a road network. This model is applied to simulate robberies in January 2011 for Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Three scenarios are simulated to demonstrate its value for crime theory development and shed light on modeling issues in need of improvement before it can reliably assist policymaking or inform the public. Major findings from this study include the model's ability to replicate prominent robbery hotspots in the study area with various degrees of success and the consistent effects of target definition and offender strategy on model performance. The study also suggests missing model components to effectively constrain the displacement of crime opportunities under hotspot policing, which can be the key to resolving contradiction between our simulation results and other empirical researches and crime simulations.

Kafka, from literature to a criminology of desertion

Este trabajo se divide en tres grandes ejes, los cuales procurarán ofrecer una semblanza sobre Franz Kafka en tanto criminólogo menor, es decir, un criminólogo que no tiene un modelo convencional al cual adaptarse. En primer lugar, abordaremos la frágil vida de Kafka con la que se opuso a la gorda salud dominante de quienes están decididos a aferrarse al sentido dominante de la existencia. Luego, aspiraremos a generar alianzas entre la literatura y la criminología para intensificar todo lo que sirva para que la literatura fecunde a la criminología y viceversa, para crear vida entre ambas, y propagarla. Por último, exploramos si realmente merecemos ser castigados tal como el Estado lo lleva adelante en la actualidad, en particular cuando la legislación relega sistemáticamente a sectores de la ciudadanía que no están en condiciones de intervenir ni en la creación ni en la modificación de las normas jurídicas. En definitiva, ¿esos sectores deberían respetarlas?, ¿deberían tomarlas como expresión legítima de una serie de valores si las condiciones sociales primordiales para que ello sea así, están ausentes?

The Legacy of the Criminological School of Professor O.V. Damaskin

The Legacy of the Criminological School of Professor O.V. Damaskin

Features of criminological planning

The paper discusses the features of criminological planning. The conceptual apparatus that acts as a tool for criminological planning and crime prevention is clarified. A number of concepts as «criminological planning», «strategic plan», «crime mapping», «individual planning» are characterized. A number of reasons that motivate people to break the law are identified; the most significant sociological theories of crime also are identified. It is emphasized that in connection with urbanization, the features of criminological planning also undergo certain changes and modifications. Innovative methodologies appear with the appropriate set of principles, methods and technologies, which are specially selected to solve a specific criminological problem. By means of a comparative analysis, the most stable differences in the concepts of «criminological planning» and «criminological forecasting» have been identified. The theory of crime, types and stages of criminological planning are considered; the necessary set of methods, techniques, techniques and tactics for the implementation of criminological planning to achieve the goals and objectives on the path to sustainable development of the state. A set of proposals and recommendations for improving criminological planning in the light of current trends has been formulated and substantiated. The main strains of optimizing criminological planning are: the formulation of the system of state anti-criminological educational policy; cooperation with institutions of community support; introduction into practice of foreign experience in conducting strategic sessions; the formation of a creative position, necessary for the implementation of thorough management of anti-criminological programs.

Analisis Yuridis Pertimbangan Hakim Mahkamah Agung Terhadap Pencabutan Pengaduan Yang Melewati Batas Waktu Dengan Menerapkan Pendekatan Restorative Justice (Analisis Yurisprudensi Mahkamah Agung No. 1600 K/Pid/2009 dan Putusan No. 2238 K/Pid.Sus/2013)

The purpose of law in general to bring about or create harmony in society is clearly a noble goal as the implementation of the correctional system which is imbued with the spirit of protection which became the forerunner to the formation of a distinctive Indonesian strafrechtstheorien. We want a criminal theory that is built in addition to paying attention to developments in the international/global order, the growth of legislation (top down) but also maintaining legal values that live and are maintained in people's lives. Withdrawal of a complaint is a process in which one of the litigants wants to settle/resolve the problem in good faith because he feels that the case has been resolved by means of a family mechanism. This often happens, especially in cases of a complaint offense, the regulation on the revocation of complaints has been regulated in the provisions of Article 75 of the Criminal Code regarding the period of revocation of complaints within 3 months. In practice, there are several cases that have expired/expired in withdrawing a complaint, it is allowed to be revoked by the panel of judges. It is interesting why, because on the one hand, de jure revocation of complaints over time cannot be withdrawn and must be carried out by law, on the other hand the judge as a mouthpiece of justice overrides this provision with the consideration that "the balance is disturbed if peace and harmony are hindered by regulations". The approach method in this research is the statutory approach, the case approach, and the conceptual approach. By researching primary, secondary, and tertiary legal materials. the technique used is by means of library research. The results of the study explain that the regulation regarding the revocation of complaints that have expired has no provisions that regulate it, only limited to the revocation of complaints with a period of 3 months, namely in Article 75 of the Criminal Code. And the current legal developments, especially the judiciary, there are things that are becoming increasingly legal breakthroughs through the jurisprudence of the Supreme Court no. 1600 K/Pid/2009 which decides may withdraw the complaint even though the time has passed/expired. Of course, this must be considered in order to form rules that specifically regulate the expiration of a complaint revocation process

Konstitusionalitas Perbuatan Tidak Menyenangkan Sebagai Tindak Pidana Ujaran Kebencian: Analisis Surat Edaran Kapolri Nomor: Se/6/X/2015

This article aims to analyze the position of acts as a form of hate speech (haatzaai articlesen), which in fact the concept of acts has been eliminated by the Constitutional Court Decision Number 1 / PUU-XI / 2013, The problem is focused on the constitutionality of wrongdoing. fun as a form of hate speech (haatzaai articlesen). In order to approach this problem, a theoretical reference from the element theory of crime and the theory of constitutionality of norms is used. This research is a normative legal research, so that the data is collected through literature studies, both on primary, secondary and tertiary legal materials. This research was analyzed qualitatively. This study concludes that: (1) With the Constitutional Court Decision Number 1 / PUU-XI / 2013 which is legally binding, then every legal norm in statutory regulations made after the Constitutional Court Decision must comply with the provisions with does not bring back the existence of the phrase unpleasant actions. (2) Chief of Police Circular Number: SE / 6 / X / 2015 is not a statutory regulation (regeling), but a policy regulation (beleidsregel) which juridically results in the lack of authority to create new norms or restore the existence of norms that have been abolished by the Constitutional Court, so the concept of acts in such a Chief of Police Circular is unconstitutional.

State-organized crime and the killing of wolves in Norway

While scholars of state crime and organized crime have frequently explored the intersection of these fields with green criminology, for the most part they have not brought the two together as organized state criminality as a means to explore environmental destruction. Of the few explorations of organized state green crime that do exist, most do not embrace a non-speciesist perspective. In this article, we develop a non-speciesist theory of organized state green crime to explain the Norwegian state-licensed killing of wolves, a phenomenon that we analyze through the use of the concept ideological inertia. Our main argument is that the underlying cultural, political and economic interests that were prioritized up to the 1970s in Norway continue to have a counteracting effect on the protection of large carnivores, which the country committed to as a signatory to the Bern Convention.

Small area variation in crime effects of COVID-19 policies in England and Wales

PurposeThe aim of this study is to examine small area variation in crime trajectories during the COVID-19 pandemic in England and Wales. While we know how police-recorded crime responded to lockdown policies at the ‘macro’ level, less is known about the extent to which these trends were experienced uniformly at localized spatial scales. MethodsLongitudinal k-means clustering is used to unpick local area variation in police notifiable offences across England and Wales. We describe the clusters identified in terms of their spatial patterning, opportunity structures and crime type profile. ResultsWe find that in most small areas, crime remained fairly stable throughout the pandemic. Instead, a small number of meso-level areas contributed a disproportionately large amount to the macro-level trend. These were typically city centers with plentiful pre-pandemic crime opportunities, dominated by theft and shoplifting offences. ConclusionFindings offer support for opportunity theories of crime and for a mobility theory of crime during the pandemic. We explore potential implications for policy, theory and further research.

Perempuan dan Teror: Memahami Peran Kombatan Perempuan dalam Kampanye ISIS

At this time, writing about women in the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria campaign has focused on their role as supporters. While in acts of terror, ISIS often turns women into combatans in ISIS terror acts. The study was conducted with a content analysis method for documents discussing the acrion of ISIS in Iraq, Syria and Southeast Asia and analyzed by transnational crime theory. Since the development of globalization and the advancement of information, technology communication, terrorist groups have been easier to create transnational terrorism networks because they are supported by various technological conveniences. ISIS makes use of these modern tools to spread their ideology, find and recruit new members from all corners of the world more easily. In recent years ISIS suffered a major defeat that changed the map and strategy of terror. This article concludes that women have been incarnated as subjects in ISIS international terrorism. The use of women as combatants in ISIS terror attacks is unusual. Thoughts that ISIS has implanted since 2015 produced various results by doing new terror attacks with women as perpetrators. Deradicalization then carried out by military and non-military ways. The military way to attack ISIS actions with military weapons, while the non-military way by changing the thoughts of the perpetrators.

Inequality, concentrated disadvantage, and homicide: towards a multi-level theory of economic inequality and crime

ABSTRACT One of the most consistent findings in the cross-national literature is the association between economic inequality and homicide rates. However, recent research has raised doubts concerning causality. To address some of these concerns, I draw on a (modified) version of Coleman’s theory-building model to connect societal-level economic inequality and homicide rates through mechanisms operating at the neighbourhood level. The causal pathway operates through three mechanisms. First, greater economic inequality within society corresponds with higher degrees of spatial segregation by income across neighbourhoods. Second, spatial segregation contributes to concentrated disadvantage and less social integration of the lowest economic stratum, described as (reduced) collective efficacy and social isolation. Finally, more tenuous social integration contributes to higher rates of crime due to weakened social control and cultural/social adaptations to social isolation. This integration of the cross-national and neighbourhood literatures provides new avenues for research on the societal inequality/homicide association.

Free Criminology Books

Free Criminology Books

Resources for Learning Open Criminology

Resources for Learning Open Criminology

Testing a multilevel opportunity theory of crime (place in neighborhood theory)

This research aims to empirically test a newly developed “place in neighborhood (PIN)” theory, proposed by Wilcox and Tillyer recently. Using secondary data, the authors generate measures of crime and opportunity factors in street blocks nested in neighborhood clusters in Chicago. Hierarchical non-linear models are used to assess the impact of factors in street block level, neighborhood level, and their cross-level interactions on residential burglary. The results show that all four street block level variables are associated with levels of burglary, and two of three neighborhood level variables (social control and delinquency rate) are significantly associated with lower and higher levels of residential burglary, respectively. Five of the twelve cross-level interaction terms are significantly associated with residential burglary rates. Two of the main effects and one of the cross-level interaction terms show unexpected opposite directions. The findings lend partial support to PIN theory.

Enhancing Security in Affordable Housing: The Case of Prince Fawaz Project

The present study argues that the urban form of affordable housing projects affects safety and security. The study examines the level of safety and security in the Prince Fawaz project proposing recommendations that enhance it. Theories and approaches concerned with the environmental crime are initially reviewed. Then, urban and architectural features as well as crime rates and patterns are documented. Also, trace and behaviour observations are carried out. The observations monitored urban features and behaviours associated with crime or fear of crime. Residents’ perception for security and fear of crime is extracted through a questionnaire. A Space Syntax is processed and linked with the questionnaire and observation outputs. Observations demonstrate a semblance of fear of crime which is supported by records of car and home theft. Although the questionnaire reflects a suitable level of security, it points to peripheral spaces and areas around mosques and shops as the less secure. However, enhancing security in the Prince Fawaz project requires urban interventions including controlling access to peripheral spaces, reviving areas detected to be unsafe, repositioning elements causing visual obstacles and enhancing appearance by vegetation and sustainable maintenance. Besides, reformulating the movement network so that an appropriate integration between residents and strangers is achieved. On the conceptual level, the study proves that none of the theories of environmental crime can act as a comprehensive approach; but each can partly work.

National Culture and Occupational Fraud Magnitude: The Moderating Role of Fraud Type

ABSTRACT This study investigates the relationship between national culture and the magnitude of occupational fraud. Guided by national culture theory and economic theory of crime, we propose that a country's culture, as measured by Hofstede's six national culture dimensions—power distance, individualism, achievement orientation, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence—is related to the magnitude of occupational fraud. Further, we propose that the type of fraud moderates this relationship. We test these effects using a two-level model on a dataset of 2,898 occupational fraud cases across 41 countries. We find that uncertainty avoidance and long-term orientation display significant positive associations with occupational fraud magnitude (while power distance and achievement orientation display marginally significant positive associations). Further, the effects of achievement orientation, uncertainty avoidance, and indulgence are moderated by fraud type (while power distance and long-term orientation show marginally significant interaction effects).