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Inequalities, Crime, and Citizenship
Abstract
As Hagan and Petersen observe, "Linkages between social inequality and crime have been subjects of speculation as well as some dispute since the early days of European . . . and American Criminology" (1995: 1). Such "speculation" and "dispute" persist, not only in criminology but also in adjacent academic fields. In part, this is because the problems of crime (commission and victimization) and of inequality are real-world problems attracting sustained attention from politicians and policy makers, commentators and media, interest groups across a wide spectrum (criminal justice agencies, victim support groups, prison reform advocacy organizations) and, of course, the general public.
En este estudio se usa información espacial para complementar los análisis que sobre el crimen hace la teoría económica y que se centran en la disponibilidad de fuerza policial y eficiencia de la justicia. Particularmente, se analiza el papel que juega el nivel de ingresos permanentes sobre los delitos en una unidad geográfica y sus vecinos, además de la relación de éstos con las características socioeconómicas. Un ejercicio de aplicación para las comunas de Medellín permite afirmar que un aumento del 1% en los ingresos permanentes en las comunas reduce en promedio en 0.67% los delitos, y el efecto sobre sus vecinos es significativo y variable. Los modelos de panel tradicionales subestiman el impacto real que puede tener un incremento en los ingresos sobre algunas comunas. Pruebas de robustez evidencian la bondad de los resultados y la adecuación del modelo al proceso generador de los datos.
'It's the Family, Stupid! Continuities and Reinterpretations of the Dysfunctional Family as the Cause of Crime in Three Political Periods'
in R. Matthews and J. Young, Eds, (2003) The New Politics of Crime and Punishment, Willan (Republished in 2013, Taylor Francis
This article enquires whether modern practices of punishment are undergoing a transformation by investigating the effect that the development of citizenship has had upon modern punishment. Citizenship requires that people expand their horizons of recognition and treat people, who had previously been disregarded, as equals. This is one of the primary cultural influences upon punishment and explains why modern punishment has always partly been an inclusionary project. The effect of citizenship is ambivalent as punishment is designed not only to incorporate offenders but also to underline their `conditional' status as citizens, hence the persistence of brutal treatment. This article traces the influence of citizenship, through the emergence of civil, political and social rights, upon punishment from the late 18th century to the present day. It argues that the `inclusionary' aspect of punishment is waning as the conditions of citizenship are becoming ever more stringent.
Since many serious violent offences are not reported, effective police-accident and emergency department (AED)joint working is important in increasing the chances of offenders being brought to justice and increasing access to victim support services. The research was driven by hypotheses that detection is hindered by poor liaison; that the roles of AED personnel are confused; that treatment of injured victims is not based on an ethical framework to protect their interests or the interests of society; and that there is insufficient time in the AED to address criminal justice and other issues as well as treating physical injuries. Liaison was investigated by means of triangulated methods comprising surveys of random stratified samples of police officers and AED personnel and a case series of victims treated in five large AEDs. It was found that there was almost no Knowledge of existing formal guidance among health and police practitioners who actually deal with victims. Most of the injured were transported fi om bars and the street to the AED where, for long periods, they became trapped in a medical environment dominated to the exclusion of all else, by the need to treat physical injuries. This, in effect, prevented them from reporting offences. Efforts to preserve confidentiality, far from protecting the interests of patients and society, meant that AED health professionals ignored the circumstances and psychological impact of injury and risk of further injury. This meant that the roles of other agencies were not considered. This very narrow focus was at odds with the instincts of most health professionals, half of whom believed they should have some role in victim protection and support, the detection of crime and community Grime prevention. The results of this study suggest that, based on the exercise of victim choice, there are extensive opportunities ethically to improve rates of detection and access to victim support.
Crime and Everyday Life, Fourth Edition, provides an illuminating glimpse into roots of criminal behavior, explaining how crime can touch us all in both small and large ways. This innovative text shows how opportunity is a necessary condition for crime to occur, while exploring realistic ways to reduce or eliminate crime and criminal behavior by removing the opportunity to complete the act. Encouraging students to take a closer look at the true nature of crime and its effects on their lives, author Marcus Felson and new co-author Rachel L. Boba (an expert on crime prevention, crime analysis and mapping, and school safety) maintain the book's engaging, readable, and informative style, while incorporating the most current research on criminal behavior and routine activity theory. The authors emphasize that routine daily activities set the stage for illegal acts, thus challenging conventional wisdom and offering students a fresh perspective, novel solutions for reducing crime … and renewed hope. New and Proven Features Includes new coverage of gangs, bar problems, and barhopping; new discussion of the dynamic crime triangle; and expanded coverage of technology, Internet fraud, identity theft, and other Internet pitfalls; The now-famous “fallacies about crime” are reduced to nine and are organized and explained even more clearly than in past editions; Offers updated research on crime as well as new examples of practical application of theory, with the most current crime and victimization statistics throughout; Features POP (Problem-Oriented Policing) Center guidelines and citations, including Closing Streets and Alleys to Reduce Crime, Speeding in Residential Areas, Robbery of Convenience Stores, and use of the Situational Crime Prevention Evaluation Database; Updated “Projects and Challenges” at the end of each chapter Intended Audience This supplemental text adds a colorful perspective and enriches classroom discussion for courses in Criminological Theory, Introduction to Criminal Justice, and Introductory Criminology.
"The Truly Disadvantagedshould spur critical thinking in many quarters about the causes and possible remedies for inner city poverty. As policy makers grapple with the problems of an enlarged underclass they—as well as community leaders and all concerned Americans of all races—would be advised to examine Mr. Wilson's incisive analysis."—Robert Greenstein,New York Times Book Review "'Must reading' for civil-rights leaders, leaders of advocacy organizations for the poor, and for elected officials in our major urban centers."—Bernard C. Watson,Journal of Negro Education "Required reading for anyone, presidential candidate or private citizen, who really wants to address the growing plight of the black urban underclass."—David J. Garrow,Washington Post Book World Selected by the editors of theNew York Times Book Reviewas one of the sixteen best books of 1987. Winner of the 1988 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.
The war on drugs, begun in the Reagan Administration and presently continuing unabated, has resulted in an explosion in the American prison population. Whether a desired effect of the war or not, this increase has been accounted for by a severely disproportionate number of African American males. Jerome Miller demonstrates in Search and Destroy that an African American male between the ages of eighteen and thirty-five has an inordinate likelihood of encountering the criminal justice system at some point during those years. In a wide-ranging survey of blacks and the justice system, Miller notes the presence of bias among police officers, probation officers, courts, and even social scientists whose data form the basis for many policies and social workers whose responsibility is allegedly to members of the underclass.
This book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime prevention, disorder and community safety in contemporary society.
This book provides an analytic overview and assessment of the changing nature of crime prevention, disorder and community safety in contemporary society. Bringing together nine original articles from leading national and international authorities on these issues, Crime, Disorder and Community Safety examines recent developments including the shift towards an increase in local authority's responsibility for crime control and community safety, the development of inter-agency alliances, the changing nature of policing and the passing of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The question underpinning this collection is whether we are experiencing a major watershed in crime prevention and community safety policies. In addressing these issues the various authors explore the theory, politics and practice associated with these changes and assess their significance in relation to a number of specific groups - the disadvantaged, the socially excluded, youth, women and ethnic minorities. Adam Crawford University of Leeds, Marian Fitzgerald University of Leeds, Lynn Hancock Midddlesex University, Tim Hope University of Keele, George L. Kelling Rutgers
This research examines the effects of economic discrimination against social groups on national rates of homicide. Drawing on Peter Blau's macrostructural theory, I hypothesize that nations with intense and pervasive discrimination will exhibit comparatively high levels of homicide, and that the effects of discrimination will exceed those of income inequality. Regression analyses using both INTERPOL and World Health Organization homicide data support both hypotheses. Indicators of economic discrimination against social groups are significantly and positively related to homicide rates despite fairly extensive controls for other theoretically relevant national characteristics. Moreover, the effects for discrimination are consistently stronger than those for income concentration. These results suggest that the structuring of economic inequality on the basis of ascribed characteristics is a particularly important source of lethal violence in contemporary societies.
The aim is to explore the usefulness of inverting the class analysis problematic, which starts from class structure and then asks under what conditions sociopolitical class formation occurs, and then how this in turn bears upon social cohesion. By contrast, the route followed here starts from the assumption that the institutional unity of citizenship, market and bureaucratic relations is central to social cohesion, and then concentrates on the questions of how inequalities of class and status affect the institutionalization of citizenship and thereby its integrative function. While its practice is heavily influenced by the structure of social inequality, citizenship can be seen to exert a force-field of its own. Four main types of 'civic stratification' are distinguished by reference to citizens' differing enjoyment of, and abilities to exercise, rights, their social categorization by the rights themselves and by their motivation to extend and enlarge them: namely, civic exclusion, civic gain and deficit, and civic expansion. Their consequences for social integration are then briefly discussed. One advantage of this approach is that it allows inequalities related to age, gender and ethnicity to be incorporated within the same explanatory scheme.
Background
This paper describes the work undertaken over many years by the author and colleagues concerning the role of opportunity in crime. The work began in the early 1970s in the Home Office Research Unit, the British government’s criminological research department.
Discussions
The work supported a preventive approach – situational crime prevention – that was highly contentious in the criminology of the day because it sought to reduce opportunities for crime, rather than to modify offender propensities. Critics claimed that situational crime prevention would displace rather than reduce crime because they assumed that opportunity merely determines the time and place of crime, but does not cause it.
Summary
This paper describes the difficulties in establishing that opportunity is cause of crime and why this took so long. It reviews the research that was undertaken to this end, and it summarizes the benefits for criminology and crime policy of accepting that opportunity does cause crime.
There is now a wealth of data demonstrating a strong relationship (in the United States, at least) between unemployment and contact with the criminal justice system. Black youth are disproportionately represented in both categories. Until the current period, most youth simply “matured” out of a life of crime. However, we are witnessing a new development of a deep bifurcation of the social structure and a corresponding development of a possible permanent “underclass.” Our previous assumptions about the life cycle, the market economy, and employment prospects must be reconceptualized if we are to address this concern with any success. In particular, programs of “crime reduction” must address the structural transformations that have so altered the unemployment differences between Black and White youth.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, several important reviews of the literature failed to establish a clear consensus on the relationship between economic conditions and violent crime. The research presented here applies the procedures of meta-analysis to 34 aggregate data studies reporting on violent crime, poverty, and income inequality. These studies reported a total of 76 zero-order correlation coefficients for all measures of violent crime with either poverty or income inequality. Of the 76 coefficients, all but 2, or 97 percent, were positive. Of the positive coefficients, nearly 80 percent were of at least moderate strength (>.25). It is concluded that poverty and income inequality are each associated with violent crime. The analysis, however, shows considerable variation in the estimated size of the relationships and suggests that homicide and assault may be more closely associated with poverty or income inequality than are rape and robbery.
This article outlines the significance of green issues for criminology. It proposes the development of a green `perspective' which could serve as a rallying-point and foundational base for otherwise disparate but relevant and related work. The paper reviews past studies which may be seen as contributing to such a foundational base and provisionally suggests 10 areas where green issues connect with established and/or new criminological concerns.
Hirschi and Gottfredson have recently argued that proposed sociological explanations of the observed relationship between age and crime are in error. This present article contends that their arguments rest on faulty logic and on misstatements of the empirical evidence currently available.
This essay seeks to move on from the critical debates that have followed the publication of The Culture of Control by taking up constructive suggestions, refining or extending the book's claims, and sketching out new lines for future research. After a preliminary discussion of the proper role of theory in historical and sociological research it seeks to clarify and develop the following ideas: the concept of the field and its role in the study of crime control and criminal justice; the field as a contested balance of forces; situated rationality and conflicted action; gender relations and the culture of control; national characteristics and responses to late modernity; American exceptionalism; analysis and critique in the study of social control.
The hypothesis tested is that variations in rates of urban criminal violence largely result from differences in racial inequality in socioeconomic conditions. Data on the 125 largest American metropolitan areas (SMSAs) are used to ascertain whether this hypothesis can account for three correlates of violent crime differently interpreted in the literature. Criminal violence is positively related to location in the South, which has been interpreted as the result of the Southern tradition of violence. It is positively related to the proportion of blacks in an SMSA, which has been interpreted as reflecting a subculture of violence in ghettos. And it is positively related to poverty, which has been interpreted as the emphasis on toughness and excitement in the culture of poverty. The analysis reveals that socioeconomic inequality between races, as well as economic inequality generally, increases rates of criminal violence, but once economic inequalities are controlled poverty no longer influences these rates, neither does Southern location, and the proportion of blacks in the population hardly does. These results imply that if there is a culture of violence, its roots are pronounced economic inequalities, especially if associated with ascribed position.
Its a book! sorry...frank Zimring