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No evidence of racial discrimination in criminal justice processing: Results from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health
Abstract
One of the most consistent findings in the criminological literature is that African American males are arrested, convicted, and incarcerated at rates that far exceed those of any other racial or ethnic group. This racial disparity is frequently interpreted as evidence that the criminal justice system is racist and biased against African American males. Much of the existing literature purportedly supporting this inter-pretation, however, fails to estimate properly specified statistical models that control for a range of indi-vidual-level factors. The current study was designed to address this shortcoming by analyzing a sample of African American and White males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). Analysis of these data revealed that African American males are significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated when compared to White males. This racial disparity, however, was com-pletely accounted for after including covariates for self-reported lifetime violence and IQ. Implications of this study are discussed and avenues for future research are offered.
... That is, some researchers attribute DMC mostly to differential involvement in crime (e.g. Beaver et al., 2013;Franklin, 2010), but others to differences in the justice system selection or treatment (e.g. Leiber, Johnson, Fox, and Lacks, 2007). ...
... Living in a high crime area was however not related to single or multiple arrests, but county level unemployment was. Conversely, in an analysis of the Add Health data, (Beaver et al., 2013) race did not significantly impact the probability of arrest when a composite measure of IQ was included in the model. Beaver et al (2013), however, only used a subsample of African American and White males and did not include any measures of disadvantage status. ...
... Conversely, in an analysis of the Add Health data, (Beaver et al., 2013) race did not significantly impact the probability of arrest when a composite measure of IQ was included in the model. Beaver et al (2013), however, only used a subsample of African American and White males and did not include any measures of disadvantage status. ...
The overrepresentation of minority youth in the juvenile justice system has been well documented. More research has, however, been needed on levels of discrimination, particularly on potential biases in the earliest point of contact, such as police decisions to stop and arrest young people. Further, few studies have examined individual and neighborhood characteristics simultaneously, which has limited the understanding of citizens’ experiences with the police. Focusing on potential biases in the juvenile justice system is essential as recent studies indicate that most types of interventions have negative consequences for the lives of young people, such as increasing the probability of crime in adulthood.
The current study addresses some of the limitations of previous research and uses data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) to test several hypotheses related to the probability of having been stopped or arrested by the police in youth, and the long-term impact of punitive interventions by the police and school authorities.
Results generated from the multilevel analyses fail to show that racial and ethnic minorities are more likely than White youth to be stopped by the police. Independent of differences in behavior, Black youth are, however, more likely to be arrested than White adolescents. There is no significant difference between the probability of police stops or arrest for Hispanic and White youth. The probability of arrest also increases with increased concentrated disadvantage (concentrated poverty, a high proportion of single-parent households, and a high proportion of residents without a high school diploma).
Interventions in adolescence (being arrested or suspended/expelled from high school) do not decrease subsequent crime but instead lead to more crime in adulthood. The findings indicate that this is partly because these interventions decrease adult SES, particularly interventions by school authorities. The current study also indicates that Black youth and young women are more vulnerable to the negative consequences of interventions than other groups.
... Finally, others point out that the offending rates between racial groups are not equal. Blacks generally have the highest level of criminal offending of all racial groups (Beaver et al., 2013;Steffensmeier et al., 2011), especially violent offending (Chan, Myers, & Heide, 2010;Delisi, Dooley, & Beaver, 2007;Tonry, 2010). Racial disparity, especially in arrest, thus results from black over-involvement in criminal behavior (DÁlessio & Stolzenberg, 2003;Snyder & Sickmund, 1999;Wilbanks, 1987). ...
... Reports (2013) show that blacks account for 28% of all arrests, despite making up just around 15% of the population in the United States (FBI, 2013). The disparity in arrest is even greater for serious and violent offenses (Beaver et al., 2013;Chan, Myers, & Heide, 2010;Delisi, Dooley, & Beaver, 2007;Tonry, 2010). For instance, the same FBI Uniform Crime Report (2013) noted that Blacks accounted for 29% of all arrests for property crimes, 30% for drug crimes, and 39% for violent crimes. ...
... Two studies using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRIS) from 1997 to 1998 and 1999 failed to find that race had any effect on arrest, noting that offense type and seriousness accounted for most of the variation in arrests (D'Alessio & Stozenberg, 2003;Pope & Snyder, 2003). An additional study using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health found that while black males were initially 1.43 times more likely than white males to be arrested, the effect was entirely accounted for once verbal IQ scores and selfreports of violent behavior were included (Beaver et al., 2013). However, the majority of studies find that minorities, particularly when comparing blacks to whites, have a considerably higher probability of arrest, even when controlling for several legal and extralegal factors (Kochel, Wilson, & Mastrofski, 2011;Lytle, 2013). ...
Objectives: Criminal involvement is non-randomly distributed across individuals and across groups, resulting in differential probabilities of arrest. Thus, various predictors of arrest probability across time were examined for different groups. Methods: Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, the current study examined latent class membership in the probability of arrest over a 15-year time span starting when participants were 12–16 years-old and ending when they were 28–31 years-old. Latent class regressions were employed to prospectively investigate whether demographic and criminological risk factors from the base wave could predict class membership. Results: Results from the latent class growth analyses resulted in three to four classes characterized by an abstainer group, a stable, low-level group, an adolescent-limited group, and a stable moderate-level chronic group. In general, race, poverty, and other risk factors exhibited weak and inconsistent effects in predicting class membership. In contrast, being male and self-reported delinquency were consistent predictors of class membership. Conclusion: Across model comparisons and net of other predictors, self-reported delinquency was a strong predictor of class membership, suggesting that differential arrest probability is predominantly explained by time-stable delinquent behavior.
... Beaver et al.'s (2013) index of self-reported "lifetime" offending was created by summing across items that measured involvement in acts of serious physical violence that were included in each wave of the data collection. Beaver et al. (2013) also controlled for verbal IQ scores because they argued it is related to both offending and it significantly predicts the likelihood of being arrested and processed by the criminal justice system. Beaver et al.'s (2013) baseline model showed that African American males were significantly more likely to have ever been arrested and incarcerated and that they receive longer criminal sentences than White males. ...
... The majority of the research indicates that African Americans have more contact with the police than others. However, there are studies that have found that the relationship between race and contact is reduced to nonsignificance after relevant covariates are controlled (e.g., "lifetime offending"; Beaver et al., 2013;Huizinga et al., 2007). These mixed results warrant further analyses of the differential involvement hypothesis. ...
... Second, our analyses include a more expansive measure of offending than the one used by most of the prior longitudinal research. For example, Beaver et al. (2013) only focused on acts of serious physical violence, Huizenga et al.'s (2007) measure was limited to offending over the prior year, and Kirk's (2008) measure only included the 12-month period prior to the first wave of data collection of the PHDCN-LCS. Our summation measure counts the number of offenses individuals committed including both violent and property crimes based on the Self-Report of Offending protocol, prior to and across the three waves of data collection (Fergusson et al., 2003). ...
This research draws on longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine whether African Americans report more trouble with the police than Latinos, Whites, and members of other racial groups after controlling for self-reported offending and other covariates. We tested whether the average self-reports of trouble with the police varied across the neighborhood clusters included within the PHDCN and generated a series of negative binomial models to assess whether African Americans self-reported more trouble with the police than others. The results generated from the unconditional hierarchical model showed that the average self-reports of trouble with the police did not significantly vary across the neighborhoods. The negative binomial results indicate that African Americans report significantly more trouble with the police while controlling for the respondents’ levels of offending, level of impulsivity, levels of anxiety and depression, gang membership, their family’s criminal involvement, whether they or their parents had serious mental health issues, the respondents’ current and expected economic conditions, their racial affinity, as well as other individual characteristics.
... Research has shown scores on the PVT to have excellent predictive validity (e.g., Beaver et al., 2013a) and to be relatively reliable when measured at lagged time periods (Beaver et al., 2013b). Moreover, research has shown that scores on the PPVT-R correlate significantly with scores derived from other IQ tests, particularly among children (Carvajal et al., 1993). ...
... What was particularly surprising about the analyses, however, was that the influence of race was no longer statistically significant in the fully specified model that accounted not only for IQ, but also for involvement in violent behaviors and for levels of self-control. These findings converge with those focusing on other phenotypes, wherein the effects of race can be fully accounted for when including a complete list of covariates (Beaver et al., 2013a;Wright et al., 2014), some of which may serve as mediators. ...
The current study examined whether adolescent IQ predicted risk for mortality by the age of 32. Analyses of data from the Add Health revealed that IQ was related to mortality risk, such that respondents with relatively lower IQs were significantly more likely to experience early life mortality when compared with respondents with comparatively higher IQs. This association remained statistically significant even after controlling for a host of covariates such as race, gender, involvement in violent behaviors, levels of self-control, and poverty. The average IQ of deceased respondents was approximately 95 while the average IQ of living respondents was about 100.
... Juxtaposed against concern about minority overrepresentation in the criminal justice system is the view that differences in minority processing and sanctioning may be "warranted." The logic is that minorities may engage both in more crime and in more of the types of crime that could be anticipated to result in arrest, pre-trial detention, conviction, and incarceration (Beaver et al., 2013). Here, then, any minority differences are not per se disparate but rather would be "warranted." ...
... However, it diverts attention away from the fact that processing and sanctioning differences among Whites and minorities may stem from minorities engaging in higher rates of offending. If so, observed arrest, processing, and sanctioning differences may be "warranted" and thus not disproportional or disparate (Beaver et al., 2013;Spohn, 2000). ...
Scholars and policy makers have expressed concern that observed minority differences in processing (e.g., arrest, detention, conviction) and sentencing stem not from the legal merits of cases but rather from intentional or unintentional discrimination. An additional concern is that there may be disparities in society that lead to offending differences among racial and ethnic groups, and that these differences may be amplified by disparities that minorities experience in and through the criminal justice system. In this article, we identify the dimensions along which information is needed to document minority disparities in criminal justice processing and sanctioning and to guide interventions to reduce them. We conclude that research to date has not systematically documented the true prevalence of minority disparities in criminal justice processing or sanctioning or the causes of them. We then argue that social structural disparities faced by minorities warrant comparable attention to that given to criminal justice disparities. Documentation of these disparities and their causes will be necessary to shed light on the exercise of formal social control. It also can contribute to efforts to understand offending and how most effectively to reduce crime and unfair sanctioning.
... For example, Cuthberston (2017) rejected the findings from the Lammy Review, claiming that it fails to prove bias in the criminal justice system since crime is disproportionately committed by young people, and the ethnic minority population is disproportionately young. This is an argument drawn from the differential involvement thesis (Beaver et al., 2013;Blumstein, 1982;Sorensen et al., 2003), which generally claims that ethnic minority people disproportionately commit more serious and violent crime, and that therefore, ethnic disparities are a product of differential criminality. More recently, the Commission on Race and Ethnic Disparities (2021) report pointed at the disproportional involvement of ethnic minority individuals in violent crime and gangs; and concluded that ethnic disparities in England and Wales are not the result of institutional racism, individual discrimination or prejudice, but rather, they can be explained by socio-economic, cultural or religious factors. ...
Large research efforts have been directed at the exploration of ethnic disparities in the criminal justice system, documenting harsher treatment of minority ethnic defendants, across offence types, criminal justice decisions, and jurisdictions. However, most studies on the topic have relied on observational data, which can only approximate ‘like with like’ comparisons. We use causal diagrams to lay out explicitly the different ways estimates of ethnic disparities in sentencing derived from observational data could be biased. Beyond the commonly acknowledged problem of unobserved case characteristics, we also discuss other less well-known, yet likely more consequential problems: measurement error in the form of racially-determined case characteristics or as a result of disparities within the ‘Whites’ reference group, and selection bias from non-response and missing offenders’ ethnicity data. We apply such causal framework to review findings from two recent studies showing ethnic disparities in custodial sentences imposed at the Crown Court (England and Wales). We also use simulations to recreate the most comprehensive of those studies, and demonstrate how the reported ethnic disparities appear robust to a problem of unobserved case characteristics. We conclude that ethnic disparities observed in the Crown Court are likely reflecting evidence of direct discrimination in sentencing.
... Indeed, these patterns mimic broader research on race, ethnicity, and contact with police (e.g., Kochel et al., 2011;Mitchell & Caudy, 2017). Notably, some scholars suggest that racial and ethnic disparities in arrest exist because minorities are more likely to engage in violent or more serious crime (e.g., Beaver et al., 2013). However, others suspect that disparities in police contact are due to racial profiling and discrimination by law enforcement (e.g., Koch et al., 2016;Mosher, 2001). ...
This study examines the association between self-identified race and ethnicity, perceived skin color, and ever being unfairly stopped, searched, or questioned by police among a nationally representative sample of Whites, Blacks, Latinos, and other groups. Results show that Non-Latino Blacks and Latinos are more likely to experience unfair police treatment compared with non-Latino Whites. Respondents with medium brown, dark brown, or black skin tones are more likely to report unfair treatment by police than those with white skin. Darker skin is consequential within Latinos, although Black respondents (regardless of color) are among those most likely to experience unfair police treatment.
... This flaw reflects the fallacy that researchers believe they can safely ignore the degree to which the stimuli used in experimental studies match the distributional properties of the real-world groups they represent. One reason for this disregard may be the belief that all groups have roughly identical distributions on important underlying causal characteristics. 1 Yet this assumption is incorrect, as groups differ (and often markedly so) on important personality, motivational, and cognitive dimensionsin other words, on the interest and ability factors that relate to nearly all outcomes (see, e.g., ACT, 2017;Andreoni et al., 2019;Beaver et al., 2013;Benbow & Stanley, 1980;Benbow, Lubinski, Shea, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000;Byrnes, Miller, & Schafer, 1999;Ceci & Williams, 2010;Diekman, Steinberg, Brown, Belanger, & Clark, 2017;Gottfredson, 1998;Halpern et al., 2007;Hsia, 1988;Hsin & Xie, 2014;Jussim, Cain, Crawford, Harber, & Cohen, 2009;Jussim, Crawford, Anglin, Chambers, et al., 2015a;Jussim, Crawford, & Rubinstein, 2015c;Lee & Ashton, 2020;Lippa, 1998;Lu, Nisbett, & Morris, 2020;Lubinski & Benbow, 1992;Lynn, 2004;Lynn & Irwing, 2004;McLanahan & Percheski, 2008;Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, & Tyler, 2001;Sowell, 2005Sowell, , 2008Su, Rounds, & Armstrong, 2009;Tregle, Nix, & Alpert, 2019;Wright, Morgan, Coyne, Beaver, & Barnes, 2014). 2 In understanding the role of decision-maker bias in producing disparate outcomes, it is necessary to compare and interpret the size of categorical bias effects with the size of these behavioral differences across groups. ...
We endorse Cesario's call for more research into the complexities of “real-world” decisions and the comparative power of different causes of group disparities. Unfortunately, these reasonable suggestions are overshadowed by a barrage of non sequiturs, misdirected criticisms of methodology, and unsubstantiated claims about the assumptions and inferences of social psychologists.
... This flaw reflects the fallacy that researchers believe they can safely ignore the degree to which the stimuli used in experimental studies match the distributional properties of the real-world groups they represent. One reason for this disregard may be the belief that all groups have roughly identical distributions on important underlying causal characteristics. 1 Yet this assumption is incorrect, as groups differ (and often markedly so) on important personality, motivational, and cognitive dimensionsin other words, on the interest and ability factors that relate to nearly all outcomes (see, e.g., ACT, 2017;Andreoni et al., 2019;Beaver et al., 2013;Benbow & Stanley, 1980;Benbow, Lubinski, Shea, & Eftekhari-Sanjani, 2000;Byrnes, Miller, & Schafer, 1999;Ceci & Williams, 2010;Diekman, Steinberg, Brown, Belanger, & Clark, 2017;Gottfredson, 1998;Halpern et al., 2007;Hsia, 1988;Hsin & Xie, 2014;Jussim, Cain, Crawford, Harber, & Cohen, 2009;Jussim, Crawford, Anglin, Chambers, et al., 2015a;Jussim, Crawford, & Rubinstein, 2015c;Lee & Ashton, 2020;Lippa, 1998;Lu, Nisbett, & Morris, 2020;Lubinski & Benbow, 1992;Lynn, 2004;Lynn & Irwing, 2004;McLanahan & Percheski, 2008;Roth, Bevier, Bobko, Switzer, & Tyler, 2001;Sowell, 2005Sowell, , 2008Su, Rounds, & Armstrong, 2009;Tregle, Nix, & Alpert, 2019;Wright, Morgan, Coyne, Beaver, & Barnes, 2014). 2 In understanding the role of decision-maker bias in producing disparate outcomes, it is necessary to compare and interpret the size of categorical bias effects with the size of these behavioral differences across groups. ...
In psychology, causal inference – both the transport from lab estimates to the real world and estimation on the basis of observational data – is often pursued in a casual manner. Underlying assumptions remain unarticulated; potential pitfalls are compiled in post-hoc lists of flaws. The field should move on to coherent frameworks of causal inference and generalizability that have been developed elsewhere.
... This flaw reflects the fallacy that researchers believe they can safely ignore the degree to which the stimuli used in experimental studies match the distributional properties of the real-world groups they represent. One reason for this disregard may be the belief that all groups have roughly identical distributions on important underlying causal characteristics. 1 Yet this assumption is incorrect, as groups differ (and often markedly so) on important personality, motivational, and cognitive dimensions -in other words, on the interest and ability factors that relate to nearly all outcomes (see, e.g., ACT 2017; Andreoni et al. 2019;Beaver et al. 2013;Benbow & Stanley 1980;Byrnes et al. 1999;Ceci & Williams 2010;Cesario et al. 2019;Diekman et al. 2017;Gottfredson 1998;Halpern et al. 2007;Hsia 1988;Hsin & Xie 2014;Jussim et al. 2009Jussim et al. , 2015aJussim et al. , 2015cLee & Ashton 2020;Lippa 1998;Lu et al. 2020;Lubinski & Benbow 1992;Lynn 2004;Lynn & Irwing 2004;McLanahan & Percheski 2008;Roth et al. 2001;Sowell 2005Sowell , 2008Su et al. 2009;Tregle et al. 2019;Wright et al. 2014). 2 In understanding the role of decision-maker bias in producing disparate outcomes, it is necessary to compare and interpret the size of categorical bias effects with the size of these behavioral differences across groups. ...
This article questions the widespread use of experimental social psychology to understand real-world group disparities. Standard experimental practice is to design studies in which participants make judgments of targets who vary only on the social categories to which they belong. This is typically done under simplified decision landscapes and with untrained decision makers. For example, to understand racial disparities in police shootings, researchers show pictures of armed and unarmed Black and White men to undergraduates and have them press "shoot" and "don't shoot" buttons. Having demonstrated categorical bias under these conditions, researchers then use such findings to claim that real-world disparities are also due to decision-maker bias. I describe three flaws inherent in this approach, flaws which undermine any direct contribution of experimental studies to explaining group disparities. First, the decision landscapes used in experimental studies lack crucial components present in actual decisions (Missing Information Flaw). Second, categorical effects in experimental studies are not interpreted in light of other effects on outcomes, including behavioral differences across groups (Missing Forces Flaw). Third, there is no systematic testing of whether the contingencies required to produce experimental effects are present in real-world decisions (Missing Contingencies Flaw). I apply this analysis to three research topics to illustrate the scope of the problem. I discuss how this research tradition has skewed our understanding of the human mind within and beyond the discipline and how results from experimental studies of bias are generally misunderstood. I conclude by arguing that the current research tradition should be abandoned.
... During the late 1980s and 1990s, scholars advanced competing explanations for why they thought Black people were overrepresented in the CJ system. On one side were scholars such as Wilbanks (1987), who contended that Black people may disproportionately commit crime as a result of experiencing racial inequality (see Beaver et al., 2013;Delisi, 2011;Delisi & Regoli, 1999;DiIulio, 1996;MacDonald, 2003MacDonald, , 2008MacDonald, , 2016. On the other side of the debate were scholars such as Mann (1993), who attributed Black people's overrepresentation not to disproportionate involvement in criminal behavior, but to structural inequalities and individual racial biases which disproportionately funneled Black people through the CJ system while simultaneously diverting white people away from the CJ system (see also Miller, 1992aMiller, , 1992bMiller, , 1996Russell-Brown, 2004). ...
The purpose of this study was to determine whether persons of different racial/ethnic backgrounds differ in their perceptions of the role racial discrimination plays in the overrepresentation of Black people in the U.S. prison system. The paper also tested the gradient hypothesis of comparative conflict theory, which predicts Black people perceive the greatest amount of racial discrimination, followed by Latinx and white people, respectively. This study also tested whether perceptions of race relations between Black, Latinx, and white people influenced the role participants thought racial discrimination played in Black people’s overrepresentation. Nationally representative Gallup Poll data were used. Results partially supported the gradient hypothesis. Black people were more likely than Latinx and white people to perceive racial discrimination to explain Black people’s overrepresentation in prison, but Latinxs’ views did not differ from whites’. Participants who perceived poorer relations between Black, Latinx, and white people were more likely to consider racial discrimination to explain Black people’s overrepresentation. Findings suggest Black people and those who perceive poorer race relations are most likely to support criminal justice reform efforts aimed at reducing racial disparities in the criminal justice system.
... A substantial body of research has examined a list of extralegal factorsfactors that should be irrelevant to the criminal justice system, but may not beto determine their potential role in the criminal justice system (Engen & Gainey, 2000;Hagan, 1974;Meyer & Gray, 1997). Entire knowledge bases exist examining the way extralegal factors, such as age, gender and race, might structure how persons are differentially processed through the criminal justice system from arrest through sentencing (Beaver et al., 2013;Steffensmeier, Painter-Davis, & Ulmer, 2017;Steffensmeier, Ulmer, & Kramer, 1998). Comparatively less research, however, has focused on other extralegal factors, such as attractiveness. ...
A substantial body of research examining the role that attractiveness plays in a wide range of outcomes has revealed that attractiveness is a beneficial characteristic across multiple domains of life, including some related to crime and the criminal justice system. The current study uses these findings as a springboard to examine the potential association between attractiveness and multiple measures of criminal justice processing, including being arrested, being convicted, being sentenced to probation and being incarcerated. Analysis of data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health revealed that more attractive persons were less likely to be arrested and convicted than less attractive persons, but there was no association with odds of being sentenced to probation or incarcerated. Follow-up analyses revealed that the beneficial effect of being attractive was confined solely to females. We discuss possible reasons for these results and provide suggestions for future research.
... The Add Health is a widely used data source of scholars across academic disciplines. The nature of the data collection, including sampling strategy, measurement, and availability of the data have been repeatedly described elsewhere (Beaver et al., 2013;Harris, Halpern, Smolen, & Haberstick, 2006). Briefly, the Add Health 1 is a longitudinal and schoolbased survey derived from a nationally representative sample of adolescents in Grades 7 to 12 first interviewed in 1994-1995 (Harris et al., 2006). ...
Despite the prior linkages of low resting heart rate to antisocial behavior
broadly defined, less work has been done examining possible associations
between heart rate to psychopathic traits. The small body of research on
the topic that has been conducted so far seems to suggest an inverse
relationship between the two constructs. A smaller number of studies have
found the opposite result, however, and some of the previous studies have
been limited by small sample sizes and unrepresentative samples. The
current study attempts to help clarify the relationship between resting
heart rate and psychopathic traits in a large, nationally representative
sample (analytical N ranged from 14,173-14,220) using an alternative
measure of psychopathic traits that is less focused on antisocial processes,
and rooted in personality traits. No significant relationship between heart
rate and psychopathic traits, or heart rate and a measure of cold
heartedness, was found. It is possible that previous findings of a link
between heart rate and psychopathy have been driven by the inclusion of
overt antisocial behavior in many traditional psychopathy measures.
Further work is needed to confirm the associations (or lack thereof)
between heart rate and the behavioral, affective, and personality trait
aspects of psychopathy.
... The Add Health is a widely used data source of scholars across academic disciplines. The nature of the data collection, including sampling strategy, measurement, and availability of the data have been repeatedly described elsewhere ( Beaver et al., 2013;Harris, Halpern, Smolen, & Haberstick, 2006). To date, 4 waves of data have been collected and made widely available for research proposes. ...
Despite the large body of research linking low resting heart rate to antisocial behavior broadly, significantly less work has been done linking heart rate to psychopathic traits. The small body of research on the topic that has been conducted, has found an overall inverse relationship between the two constructs. A significant minority of studies have found the opposite results, however, and many prior studies have been limited by small sample sizes and unrepresentative samples. The current study attempts to help clarify the relationship between resting heart rate and psychopathic traits in a large, nationally representative sample using an alternative measure of psychopathic traits that is less focused on antisocial processes. No significant relationship between heart rate and psychopathic traits, or heart rate and a measure of cold heartedness, was found after controlling for age, sex, and race. Implications of the findings, study limitations, and directions for future research are discussed.
... The alternative hypothesis that the higher arrest rate of blacks is due to police discrimination faces many problems (e.g. see Beaver et al. 2013;Mac Donald 2016a: 151-162). Anyway, my goal is not to analyze empirical data but rather to illustrate the logic of the argument for discrimination and evaluate it. ...
Racial profiling has come under intense public scrutiny especially since the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. This article discusses two questions: (1) whether racial profiling is sometimes rational, and (2) whether it can be morally permissible. It is argued that under certain circumstances the affirmative answer to both questions is justified.
... wn relationships based on other data sources (K. M. Beaver, Barnes, & Boutwell, 2015;Herrnstein & Murray, 1994;New Century Foundation, 2005). This may be related to differential lying/non-disclosure by SIRE (Hindelang, 1981;Piquero, Schubert, & Brame, 2014), the self-selection of the sample, or reflect biases in the justice system (Alexander, 2014;K. Beaver et al., 2013). ...
The relationship between criminal and antisocial (CAS) behaviors and cognitive ability (CA) were examined in a large online sample of dating site users (complete sample n = 68,371). 12 question items were found that measured CAS to some degree. Of these, 11 showed a negative relation to CA. The answers to the CAS items were all positively related, suggesting the existence of a general factor of CAS behavior. Scores for this factor were estimated using multiple methods. The resulting scores were then subjected to a series of regression models to examine whether the link between CA and CAS would hold up in the presence of other predictors. The results showed that the link between CA and CAS scores was robust to model specifications with standardized betas of -.15 to -.20. Furthermore, a CA x sex interaction was found such that the CA x CAS relationship was stronger for men (r’s -.20 and -.13, for men and women, respectively).
... Denying the reality of this biological difference would then be positively pernicious, delaying important interventions that could ameliorate the problem. The same holds for population disparities in crime rates (Beaver et al. 2013;Jones-Webb and Wall 2008;Rushton and Templer 2009). If researchers do not carefully study the etiology of these population disparities, then they cannot fully address or propose solutions to the problem. ...
Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted
that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological
structure that is invariant across human populations.
Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions
of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with
this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populations
(demes, ethnic groups, races) are almost always attributed
to cultural and sociological forces in the relevant literatures.
However, there are strong reasons to suspect that the
hypothesis of a panhuman nature is incorrect. Humans migrated
out of Africa at least 50,000 years ago and occupied many
different ecological and climatological niches. Because of
this, they evolved slightly different anatomical and physiological
traits. For example, Tibetans evolved various traits that
help them cope with the rigors of altitude; similarly, the Inuit
evolved various traits that help them cope with the challenges
of a very cold environment. It is likely that humans also
evolved slightly different psychological traits as a response
to different selection pressures in different environments and
niches. One possible example is the high intelligence of the
Ashkenazi Jewish people. Frank discussions of such differences
among human groups have provoked strong ethical
concerns in the past. We understand those ethical concerns
and believe that it is important to address them. However,
we also believe that the benefits of discussing possible human
population differences outweigh the costs.
... Denying the reality of this biological difference would then be positively pernicious, delaying important interventions that could ameliorate the problem. The same holds for population disparities in crime rates (Beaver et al. 2013;Jones-Webb and Wall 2008;Rushton and Templer 2009). If researchers do not carefully study the etiology of these population disparities, then they cannot fully address or propose solutions to the problem. ...
Many evolutionary psychologists have asserted
that there is a panhuman nature, a species typical psychological
structure that is invariant across human populations.
Although many social scientists dispute the basic assumptions
of evolutionary psychology, they seem widely to agree with
this hypothesis. Psychological differences among human populations
(demes, ethnic groups, races) are almost always attributed
to cultural and sociological forces in the relevant literatures.
However, there are strong reasons to suspect that the
hypothesis of a panhuman nature is incorrect. Humans migrated
out of Africa at least 50,000 years ago and occupied many
different ecological and climatological niches. Because of
this, they evolved slightly different anatomical and physiological
traits. For example, Tibetans evolved various traits that
help them cope with the rigors of altitude; similarly, the Inuit
evolved various traits that help them cope with the challenges
of a very cold environment. It is likely that humans also
evolved slightly different psychological traits as a response
to different selection pressures in different environments and
niches. One possible example is the high intelligence of the
Ashkenazi Jewish people. Frank discussions of such differences
among human groups have provoked strong ethical
concerns in the past. We understand those ethical concerns
and believe that it is important to address them. However,
we also believe that the benefits of discussing possible human
population differences outweigh the costs.
... Social psychological research demonstrates subconscious mental associations between race and crime (Eberhardt et al., 2004) and suggests that police officers hold more racially biased and xenophobic attitudes than members of the general public (Sidanius et al., 2003). Nevertheless, debate surrounding the causes of racial disparities persists (Engel and Swartz, 2014) while commentators continue to reject the idea that the police and other justice agencies are racially biased (Beaver et al., 2013). 1 ...
Too little consideration has been given to conceptualizing race within mainstream criminological scholarship. One consequence of this oversight is the existence of a stale debate over the causes of racial disparities in crime and criminal justice outcomes. This article draws upon intersectionality to present an historical analysis of the policing of African Americans. The article argues that the concept of dehumanization helps explain the structural inequalities that produce crime within African American communities and the presence of racism within law enforcement agencies. The discipline may advance research in this area by adopting a constructionist racialization framework.
... Importantly, this dynamic applies to the processes that influence social-psychological attitudes as well as those which influence morphological traits (Walsh and Beaver 2009). To date, biosocial criminologists have assessed a number of traditional criminological assumptions and have convincingly illustrated that adherence to a purely sociological examination of crime, criminality, and criminal justice system processing produces an incomplete understanding of these topics (Barnes et al. 2014b;Beaver 2009;Beaver et al. 2013a;Walsh and Beaver 2009; for reviews, see Moffitt 2005;Moffitt et al. 2011;Raine 2002). One component of a biosocial criminology approach is derived from evolutionary biology and is known as life history theory (LHT). ...
Community attitudes toward the police are of increasing concern to scholars and practitioners. Although it is widely accepted that perceptions of procedural justice are influential in shaping citizens’ attitudes toward police, prior studies have not considered its relationship to crime density. To address this gap, we examined the relationship between crime density, perceptions of procedural justice, and intentions to report crimes to police using data from a demographically representative survey in an urban center widely known for exhibiting extremely high violent crime rates. We created a path model predicting perceptions of procedural justice, the likelihood of contacting police to report a crime, and the likelihood of socially interacting with police other than in relation to crime. The results indicate that independent of race and educational background, community members’ trust in police mediates the relationship between local crime density and their intentions report crimes to and otherwise interact with the police.
... However, a different pattern is observed when analyzing victimization outcomes. It must be noted note that the state-of-the-art review above focused on adolescent violence and not on other outcomes such as mental health, drug use, serious crimes and/or juvenile justice system's outcomes were a different pattern of findings might be observed (see for example Beaver et al., 2013). Given that this line of research is under development and there still are gaps in the existing literature, researchers are currently interested in examining the intersection of race/ethnicity, gender, and immigration to better explain variations in adolescent violence and victimization. ...
... Research on sentencing and racial inequality has found that while some racial disparities occur, with Black and Latino defendants receiving more severe sentences (Baumer, 2013;Spohn, 2000), these disparities are small or occur through indirect mechanisms or stages (Kutateladze, Andiloro, Johnson, & Spohn, 2014). While some studies have not found direct racial disparities in criminal justice processing (Beaver et al., 2013), the lack of direct racial differences in sentencing or other punishment outcomes after controlling for legally relevant factors does not mean that there is a racially unbiased process (Spohn, 2000;Zatz, 2000). Many of these legally relevant factors are also racially stratified, and thus race matters in indirect rather than direct ways. ...
While scholars have noted that The War on Drugs has disproportionately impacted Black and Latino communities, we have little understanding as to how spatial patterns of prosecution and sentencing drive these inequalities. This article explores the geography of race in drug prosecutions by examining the role of neighborhood racial/ethnic and other demographic characteristics on sentencing outcomes for drug defendants in Sacramento, CA. We examine both the rate and length of sentences by block group. Specifically, we first estimate models for the number of prison, jail, and probation or fine sentences as rates per population and as rates per filing. We find that felony drug defendants in Black neighborhoods are penalized after filing through an increased rate of prison sentences per filing, although they do indicate a higher but not statistically significant rate of sentences per population as well. On the other hand, initial patterns of filing primarily drive sentencing in Latino neighborhoods. While the rate of prison and probation sentences differs based on the racial and ethnic neighborhood composition, it largely does not impact sentence length.
... Gender and race were included as dichotomous dummy variables, wherein gender was coded as 0 = female and 1 = male and race was coded such that 0 = Caucasian and 1 = African American. Given that IQ, victimization, and violence all have been found to stratify significantly between Caucasians and African Americans (Beaver, DeLisi, et al., 2013;Jensen, 1998;Lo, Howell, & Cheng, 2013), all other races were excluded from the analyses to simplify the findings and interpretation of the results. Importantly, all of the IQ, victimization, and violence measures used in the current analyses were significantly different between Caucasians and African Americans, with African Americans scoring lower on IQ, higher on victimization, and higher on violence (p b .05, ...
Intelligence has been linked to antisocial, violent, and criminal behaviors. Surprisingly, however, there is a lack of research examining whether intelligence differentially affects the risk for personal victimization. The current study addresses this gap in the literature by examining whether adolescent levels of verbal intelligence are related to the odds of personal victimization in adolescence and adulthood. This study analyzed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health). The results revealed a statistically significant and consistent association between intelligence and victimization. Persons with lower intelligence were more likely to report being victimized even after controlling for the effects of violent criminal behavior. Future research would benefit by examining more closely the association between IQ score and the risk for victimization over the life course.
... Additionally, there is evidence of differences in a range of temperament scores cutting across samples of Asian and American respondents [28][29]. In studies examining related traits-such as general intelligence (which is associated with long term planning, problem solving ability, increased prosocial behavior, and increased self-regulation)similar race-graded patterns have emerged such that Blacks and Hispanics tend to evince lower scores than Whites and Asians [26][27][30][31]. ...
Objectives
To examine whether differential exposure to pre- and perinatal risk factors explained differences in levels of self-regulation between children of different races (White, Black, Hispanic, Asian, and Other).
Methods
Multiple regression models based on data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Birth Cohort (n ≈ 9,850) were used to analyze the impact of pre- and perinatal risk factors on the development of self-regulation at age 2 years.
Results
Racial differences in levels of self-regulation were observed. Racial differences were also observed for 9 of the 12 pre-/perinatal risk factors. Multiple regression analyses revealed that a portion of the racial differences in self-regulation was explained by differential exposure to several of the pre-/perinatal risk factors. Specifically, maternal age at childbirth, gestational timing, and the family’s socioeconomic status were significantly related to the child’s level of self-regulation. These factors accounted for a statistically significant portion of the racial differences observed in self-regulation.
Conclusions
The findings indicate racial differences in self-regulation may be, at least partially, explained by racial differences in exposure to pre- and perinatal risk factors.
... At the same time, a large portion of the variation in criminal justice involvement is not explained by differential involvement in crime. Many studies continue to find that so-called "extralegal" factors (like race) play a complicated role in exposure to surveillance, arrest, conviction, and sentencing decisions (e.g., Bishop & Leiber, 2011;Goffman, 2014), whereas others find that Black youth are not more likely to be incarcerated than White youth once prior violent behavior and other characteristics are accounted for (e.g., IQ proxies, family problems, or poverty; see, for example, Beaver et al., 2013). Furthermore, one study of Black and White boys who were followed from childhood to early adulthood found that the majority of racial differences in juvenile arrest were associated with differential exposure to early childhood risk factors (Fite et al., 2009). ...
Though many studies have examined racial disproportionality in arrest and sentencing, few have examined disparities once initial sentencing has been completed. We examined racial disparities in responses to juveniles who violate the conditions of a probation sentence. Across 2 sites with diverse ethnic and racial compositions and sentencing regimes, we tested whether probation officers monitored youth differently according to their race or ethnicity, whether judges had differential responses to probation violations for youths of different racial or ethnic groups, and whether a jurisdictional context driven by sentencing guidelines responds differently to violations relative to one with greater flexibility. Although we find some regional differences, no systematic pattern of discrimination toward one particular racial or ethnic group is documented. Finally, our data demonstrate that the most common juvenile justice system response to probation violations in both sites was overwhelmingly punitive, and not treatment or otherwise oriented.
... Importantly, this dynamic applies to the processes that influence social-psychological attitudes as well as those which influence morphological traits (Walsh and Beaver 2009). To date, biosocial criminologists have assessed a number of traditional criminological assumptions and have convincingly illustrated that adherence to a purely sociological examination of crime, criminality, and criminal justice system processing produces an incomplete understanding of these topics (Barnes et al. 2014b;Beaver 2009;Beaver et al. 2013a;Walsh and Beaver 2009; for reviews, see Moffitt 2005;Moffitt et al. 2011;Raine 2002). One component of a biosocial criminology approach is derived from evolutionary biology and is known as life history theory (LHT). ...
Evolutionary life history theory (LHT) is a powerful organizing framework central to the life sciences. Interest in biosocial criminology is growing, and adoption of LHT may accelerate progress toward an integrative evolutionarily informed human science. We examined the relationship of life history to attitudes toward the police using data from a demographically representative community-wide survey in a Midwestern county with an urban center exhibiting high rates of violent crimes. As expected, life history was associated with demographic characteristics. Controlling for demographics, slower life history was associated with greater perceptions of procedural justice and police legitimacy, i.e., intentions to contact the police. LHT may promote an integrative human science and a deep theoretical framework for understanding modern social patterns.
... In regard to criminal justice issues, intelligence may even help explain, at least in part, differences in arrest and incarceration rates across population groups. Beaver, DeLisi, et al. (2013), for example, found that controlling for individual differences in intelligence and lifetime violence completely accounted for group differences in arrest and incarceration rates Similar to low self-control, low intelligence has been consistently associated with delinquency and antisocial behavior across the life-course (koenen et al., 2006;Moffitt et al., 1981;Raine et al., 2005). Findings which support the close association between intelligence and self-control extend even to an incarcerated sample (Myers & Ellis, 1992). ...
Self-control represents, perhaps, one of the most robust predictors of antisocial behavior uncovered by behavioral scientists. What remains more unclear, however, are the exact sources of individual differences in levels of self-control. Emergent evidence along these lines is beginning to suggest that levels of intelligence—another robust correlate of antisocial behavior—may play an important role in predicting the development of self-control. Moreover, the influence of intelligence may begin to manifest very early in development. Building on prior work, the current study seeks to explore the role of intelligence in predicting levels of self-control in children. Our findings suggest that higher levels of intelligence predict higher levels of self-control beyond other traditional criminological and sociological variables including parenting practices and parental levels of self-control. These findings further underscore the relevance of intellectual functioning for a host of impactful traits in humans.
... More often than not, empirical data have shown that racial minority individuals are disproportionately stopped, arrested, criminally charged, and even more subject to severe police force compared to their White counterparts (Dunn & Reed, 2011;Reiss, 1968). Relatively recently, however, a growing body of research has set forth a counterargument by pointing out that (1) African American individuals possess more disrespectful demeanor toward the police (Engel, 2003), (2) police officers initiate contact with citizens mostly based on their actions not because of racial stereotypes, meaning that African Americans are more likely to be involved in a cycle of traffic violations and license suspensions (Regoeczi & Kent, 2014;Tillyer & Engel, 2012), and (3) African Americans self-report more violent behavior than Whites (Beaver et al., 2013). As DeLisi (2011) indicated, more research to further the race effects in criminal justice systems is urgent. ...
There is great concern about algorithmic racial bias in the risk assessment instruments (RAIs) used in the criminal legal system. When testing for algorithmic bias, most research effectively uses arrest data as an unbiased measure of criminal offending, which collides with longstanding concerns that arrest is a biased proxy of offending. Given the centrality of arrest data in RAIs, racial differences in how arrest proxies offending may be a key pathway through which RAIs become biased. In this review, we evaluate the extensive body of research on racial differences in arrest as a measure of crime. Furthermore, we detail several ways that racial bias in arrest records could create algorithmic bias, although little research has attempted to measure the degree of algorithmic bias generated by using racially biased arrest records. We provide a roadmap to assist future research in understanding the impact of biased arrest records on RAIs.
Although research has documented an association between sociodemographic and behavioral factors and contact with local police, it remains unclear whether such relationships exist among college students who experience contact with university police. It is also unknown how such factors relate to students’ perceptions of campus police. Given the contentious nature of law enforcement in the U.S. and the racialized climate in higher education, it is imperative to understand how college students’ interactions with and perceptions of campus police fall in relation to the broader narrative of policing. Analyzing data from a current sample of approximately 400 undergraduate students enrolled at a small, public university in the Northeast United States, this study examines the sociodemographic and behavioral correlates of students’ contact with and perceptions of university police. Results suggest there are minimal differences between students with and without a history of police-initiated contact in terms of sociodemographic background. Nevertheless, despite this distribution of contact with campus police, self-identified sexual minorities, racial and ethnic minorities, as well as politically liberal students were among those to possess more negative views of campus police. We discuss these findings as a potential by-product of the broader rhetoric surrounding police-community relationships and racism in higher education.
This chapter examines neoconservatism and its dominant influences on shaping criminal justice rhetoric and policies in the UK, U.S., Canada, and Australia. Neoconservatism rebuts charges of racism in criminal justice, and instead sees crime as a course of action freely chosen by amoral individuals who threaten society's social order and moral fabric. As such, the primary neoconservative criminal justice discourse and policy initiatives are the need for a significant and empowered law enforcement presence, harsh punishment for criminal behavior, public safety, personal responsibility, and victim restitution. It is an ideology that, over the last 40-plus years, has been the catalyst for penal populism as media-driven politicians compete with each other to prove they are tough on crime and impose harsher prison sentences on offenders.KeywordsNeoconservativismNeoliberalPenal populismTough on crimeLaw and order
Differential treatment under the law has historically been the case for African Americans. The current study theorized that the War on Drugs, which was waged disproportionately in majority Black communities, had the unintended effect of making drug use riskier for Black men by limiting the supply of drugs to high-risk populations who commit far more serious and violent criminal offenses. A subsample of the Add Health data containing Black and White male survey participants were compared with respect to drug use, violence, and criminal justice involvement. Drug use was found to be less prevalent, overall, for Black men but its association with violence was greater for Black men than White men. Differential legal treatment for violence and drugs was found to be greater for Black men than White men and had diminishing returns for deterring violence and negative returns for drugs by predicting greater use. Accounting for differential legal treatment did not significantly reduce predicted racial disparities in violence or drug use. Implications of these findings are discussed.
To date, there has been no research examining the factors that might lead to being arrested for self-reported criminal abstainers—that is, persons who report that they have refrained from engaging in crime. The current study addressed this gap in the literature and examined whether certain factors were associated with being arrested among a sample of self-reported criminal abstainers. Results generated from binary logistic regression equations of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Ns ranging from 404 to 3567) revealed that arrests were based, in part, on race, sex, and intelligence level. Specifically, African Americans, males, and abstainers who scored lower on intelligence tests were all significantly more likely to be arrested than were Caucasians, females, and abstainers who scored higher on intelligence tests. We conclude by discussing the practical and methodological implications of the study as well as directions for future research.
Literature has documented racial and ethnic disparities in resident fatalities by the police and police fatalities by residents. Yet, there has been a lack of research on police-resident relationships within Hispanic communities. Additionally, research has rarely considered the relevance of social context for fatal police-resident encounters or examined resident and police fatalities concurrently. We use data on 7,125 fatal police-resident encounters nested within 1,739 agencies and 1,506 U.S. census-designated places from 2000–2016 to examine whether macro-level racial and ethnic composition distinguishes resident fatalities and police fatalities. Results indicated that the odds of resident fatalities relative to police fatalities were significantly higher in majority Hispanic than majority white places. Racial disparities persisted in mixed-race places with at least 20% Hispanic residents. Furthermore, disparities were only observed in highly disadvantaged places, suggesting that racial and ethnic composition and structural disadvantage must be considered concomitantly to contextualize fatal police-resident encounters.
Racial inequalities pervade U.S. justice systems and are the focus of a growing body of research. However, there are fewer studies on racial disparities in juvenile justice settings, particularly on decisions points at the “deep end” of the system after youth have been adjudicated delinquent. The current study examines racial disparities in length of stay, institutional misconduct, and community program placement for youth admitted to the Virginia juvenile justice system from 2012–2017. We find that black youth have significantly longer lengths of stay and more serious institutional misconduct than white youth. Controlling for legal and extralegal factors eliminates the disparity for length of stay, but it remains significant for serious institutional misconduct. In recent years, youth of all races are placed into community programs rather than traditional correctional centers at similar rates. Disparities for Hispanic youth and other races are difficult to distinguish because few are admitted to the system.
Purpose
Little is known about demographic differences in patterns of incarceration among delinquent youth as they age. This study examines gender and racial/ethnic differences in patterns of incarceration in a sample of youth after they leave detention.
Methods
Participants were 1829 youth detained in Chicago, IL between 1995 and 1998. Lifetime dates and locations of incarcerations were gathered from state and county correctional records. We used cluster analysis to identify distinct groups based on the number of incarcerations, length of each stay, and setting.
Results
By young adulthood, nearly all youth had multiple incarcerations. We identified five distinct groups among men, ranging from those incarcerated only as juveniles to men with long prison stays. Among women, we identified four groups, ranging from women with one juvenile incarceration to women who had been incarcerated in prison. Overall, men were incarcerated more frequently and for longer periods of time when compared with women. Racial/ethnic minorities were highly likely to be included in groups with the most extensive incarceration histories.
Conclusions
Men and people of color are at high risk for re-incarceration as they age. Policymakers should expand policies promoting alternatives to incarceration to avoid entrenchment in the justice system.
Black and Latinx persons are overrepresented in the population of people who are incarcerated, on probation and on parole in the United States. Empirical investigations on the breadth and depth of the disparate outcomes for incarcerated Black and Latinx persons remain limited, presenting historical gaps in the understanding of community corrections at different time periods. Taking the position that history repeats itself and that data on racial and ethnic inequalities from the past are as relevant as data in the present, this study examines the relationship between race and community corrections during the 1980s, filling a historical void in the documentation, statistical rigor, and understanding of disproportionate probation outcomes. A nationally representative sample of 12,368 people on probation in the United States during the late 1980s was used to examine Minority Threat Theory, yielding the findings that an individual’s race and ethnicity, as well as the community’s racial and ethnic composition were predictive factors of a probationer being rearrested for a felony charge. The findings suggest that racial and ethnic disparities in community corrections existed almost four decades ago and the crafting of policies that foster a fair community corrections system should look to the past as well as the present when tailoring and implementing community alternatives to incarceration.
Disparities between males and females in criminal behavior have been widely documented. Despite the extensive amount of research examining sex differences in criminal and analogous behaviors, there is no consensus on whether self-reported misbehavior accounts for the large sex differences found in all phases of the criminal justice system. The current study explores whether, and to what degree, self-reported misconduct accounts for male-female differences. To do so, data drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) were analyzed. Consistent with prior research, the results revealed statistically significant and substantively large male-female differences in being arrested, pleading guilty, being sentenced to probation, and being incarcerated. These disparities were unaffected by self-reports of lifetime violent behavior, lifetime non-violent behavior, low self-control, IQ, parental socialization, and social support.
Our study explores the arrest experiences of two generational cohorts—those entering adulthood on either side of a large shift in American policing. Using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (1979 and 1997), we find a stark increase in arrest odds among the later generation at every level of offending, suggesting a decoupling between contact with the justice system and criminal conduct. Furthermore, this decoupling became racially inflected. Blacks had a much higher probability of arrest at the start of the twenty-first century than both blacks of the generation prior and whites of the same generation. The criminal justice system, we argue, slipped from one in which arrest was low and strongly linked to offending to one where a substantial share of Americans experienced arrest without committing a crime.
Research has long-documented racial/ethnic disparities in criminal justice outcomes. However, despite race/ethnicity being a multidimensional social construct, prior research largely relies on self-identification measures, thereby disregarding research on skin tone stratification within-racial/ethnic groups. The current study extends beyond this by examining the relationship between race/ethnicity and arrest employing both self-identified race/ethnicity and perceived skin color. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health, we explore the main and intersecting effects of self-identified race/ethnicity and perceived skin color on experiencing an arrest in adulthood between- and within-self-identified Whites, Blacks, Latinos, Native Americans, and Asians. We use structural disadvantage as a framework for exploring how social structural factors as well as antisocial behavior mediate the relationship between race/ethnicity/color and arrest. Results suggest that focusing on the racial/ethnic disparities alone masks differences in arrest by color and that the effect of color varies by race/ethnicity. Results also suggest that measures indicative of disadvantage, but not offending, partially explain these associations.
This article examines biosocial criminology’s partial social constructionism of race, that is a logic of difference that attempts to accommodate both a social and biological interpretation of race. We focus on the way biosocial criminologists operationalize race to outline the sociological consequences of what we see as a renewed commitment to the bio-criminalization of race. Biosocial criminologists do not reject that race is socially constructed, but in practice they disregard the main consequences and raison d’être of this postulate. Though biosocial criminologists praise the incorporation of cutting-edge science into criminology, the research programme’s actual findings concerning race do not necessarily align with views from genetic and neuroscientific research. Instead, we argue that biosocial criminology solicits social constructionism as a shield to re-insert antiquated biologic notions of race through a guise of bio-sociality.
Purpose
Prior studies of policing and sentencing often find racial disparities in criminal justice decision-making. However, there is limited research on the existence of racial disparities within correctional facilities.
Methods
Using a nationally representative survey of federal and state institutions, the impact of race and ethnicity on the use of solitary confinement is examined through logistic regression and multilevel logistic regression.
Results
Initially, black inmates are 20% more likely to report being punished with solitary confinement than whites, but this effect is completely mediated once social and criminal histories, as well as various forms of prison misbehavior are taken into account. Conversely, inmates of other racial groups (primarily Asian) were less likely than whites to be punished with solitary confinement. Hispanic ethnicity may be associated with 25% increase in the risk of being punished with solitary confinement than non-Hispanic whites, but the pattern is not consistent across models.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that assaultive behavior against staff and other inmates along with drug and alcohol violations are paramount in correctional officer decision-making. Future research should consider these infractions, institutional context, and inmate history when examining the potential indirect effect of race in prison.
This article investigates American biosocial crim-inology, a research field that crystallised in the 2000s, through the lens of Bourdieu's field theory. Mixing biological with sociological variables, the biosocial move-ment offers a form of crime science extended to antiso-cial behaviour. A controversial criminology, it is mainly undertaken by researchers who are dominated in their criminological field by sociology. Although heteroge-neous, this current of research is generally identified by a 'vocal' minority of academics who graduated from less prestigious criminology and criminal justice university departments. An analysis of the discourses and practices of this minority led to the unearthing of an array of more or less subversive strategies vis-à-vis the dominant socio-criminology that are aimed at increasing their volume of scientific and academic capital.
In their 2012 article, Pollock, Oliver, and Menard found that race was not a significant predictor of being arrested or questioned by police. In light of recent events such as the death of Michael Brown Jr., Freddie Gray, and others, and the resulting media coverage and public protest, the current article sought to reexamine predictors of police contact in greater detail. For this examination, separate analyses were run on respondents with and without serious offending reported to determine whether predictors of police contact are different for individuals with whom the police presumably have more discretion (individuals who are not serious offenders). In addition, path models with logistic regression were created to examine potential indirect effects of all variables, including race. Results indicate that race does have an indirect effect on police contact, but it is White individuals who are more likely to be questioned and arrested. In addition, other factors including low parental socioeconomic status (which is associated with ethnicity), previous police contact, and gender are more likely, than even involvement in crime, to determine if a person will be questioned or arrested. Differences in predictors based on the seriousness of the offender and implications of the findings are discussed.
Multiple scientific disciplines have weighed in with different viewpoints regarding the origins of criminal behavior among human beings. What is lacking, however, is a framework capable of uniting the theoretical viewpoints into a single overarching perspective. The current article offers such a framework. Drawing on a variety of influences, we argue that many types of crime can be understood in the evolutionary context of human life history. Along these lines, we present a framework capable of explaining different patterns of criminal offending both at the individual level as well as the macro-level. Although the current article offers only a starting point, the way forward in the study of crime should involve a multi-disciplinary, multilevel explanatory framework. The evolutionary taxonomy we propose represents a step in that direction.
Race and ethnic difference in delinquency are examined using the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. We argue that crime theories that attempt to explain race and ethnic differences imply consistent effects for different offenses and common mediating processes. Analyses suggest some degree of group consistency in delinquent behaviors for Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, and some Asian groups, but not for African Americans. Black youth have higher rates of violent offenses than White youth, lower rates of substance use, and similar rates of property offending. Some variables are consistent mediators while others are not. Crime theories can account for the low rates of delinquency among Asian Americans while theories of violence and substance use are needed to understand differences between Black and White youth. The findings are inconsistent with the idea that group differences among youth are due to the socioeconomic status of their families or neighborhoods. The race patterns are also inconsistent with the stereotype of high crime rates in Black communities.
The study of the distribution and correlates of arrest is widely recognized as an important topic, for the purposes of contributing to changes in police policy and training, which in turn increase the fairness of U.S. policing. Despite agreement that this area of research is an important one, there remains variation in the way arrest is measured. The current study compares two common measurements of arrest, official records and self-reports, for National Youth Survey Family Study (NYSFS) respondents across four time periods.
Both self-report and official crime data have known limitations, leading to the critical question as to whether inferences about the adolescent life-course of crime are different across these data sources. Using both official and self-report arrest data on a sample of subjects drawn from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) longitudinal cohort study, this paper examines the extent to which individual age-arrest curves are comparable across these data sources. Particular attention is given to examining whether criminal career dimensions, namely participation, frequency of arrest, age of onset, and continuity in behavior, are similar across data sources. Additionally, this paper examines whether the key predictors of youth crime (e.g., family processes, peer influence, and neighborhood disadvantage) function similarly across measurement types. Findings reveal that a sizable number of youth self-report being arrested without having a corresponding official arrest record, and a sizable proportion of those youth with an official arrest record fail to self-report that they had been arrested. Despite significant differences across the two arrest measures on many criminal career dimensions, the effects of family supervision, parent-child conflict, and neighborhood disadvantage operate similarly across data types.
Recent studies suggest a decline in the relative Black effect on violent crime in recent decades and interpret this decline as resulting from greater upward mobility among African Americans during the past several decades. However, other assessments of racial stratification in American society suggest at least as much durability as change in Black social mobility since the 1980s. Our goal is to assess how patterns of racial disparity in violent crime and incarceration have changed from 1980 to 2008. We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Using 1980–2008 California and New York arrest data to adjust for this “Hispanic effect” in national Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, we assess whether the observed national decline in racial disparities in violent crime is an artifact of the growth in Hispanic populations and offenders. Results suggest that little overall change has occurred in the Black share of violent offending in both UCR and NCVS estimates during the last 30 years. In addition, racial imbalances in arrest versus incarceration levels across the index violent crimes are both small and comparably sized across the study period. We conclude by discussing the consistency of these findings with trends in economic and social integration of Blacks in American society during the past 50 years.
Although blacks are arrested disproportionately for most types of violent crimes, disagreement persists as to the extent to
which official arrest data are indicative of differential offending behavior or selection bias on the part of law enforcement
personnel Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), we assess the effect of an offenders race
on the probability of arrest for 335,619 incidents of forcible rape, robbery, and assault in 17 states during 1999. The baseline
model for these comparisons is the equiprobability hypothesis that relative to violation frequency as reported by crime victims,
the likelihood of arrest for white and black offenders is roughly equal. Multivariate logistic regression results show that
the odds of arrest for white offenders is approximately 22% higher for robbery, 13% higher for aggravated assault, and 9%
higher for simple assault than they are for black offenders. An offenders race plays no noteworthy role in the likelihood
of arrest for the crime of forcible rape. These findings suggest that the disproportionately high arrest rate for black citizens
is most likely attributable to differential involvement in reported crime rather than to racially biased law enforcement practices.
Although J. Block's critique (see record
1995-29649-001) of the D. Lynam, T. Moffitt, and M. Stouthamer-Loeber report (see record
1993-29924-001) contains several interesting points, many of his criticisms are not valid and resulted from miscommunications, misunderstandings, and simple preferences. Specifically, the authors believe the criticisms to be the results of mistaking a single hypothesis for an organizing principle, a misunderstanding of the reported path analyses, and a simple preference for impulsivity over IQ as an explanatory construct. An attempt is made to address the misinterpretation through clarification of the predicted relations between IQ, executive dysfunction, impulsivity, and delinquency. The original path analyses are reviewed and are shown to refute not only the original self-control hypothesis (Lynam et al., 1993), as reported, but also Block's more recent version. Finally, evidence marshalled by Block to support his emphasis on impulsive personality over low IQ is argued to have inadequacies from empirical and social policy perspectives. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
It is widely accepted that race differences in intelligence exist, but no consensus has emerged on whether these have any genetic basis. The present book is the first fully comprehensive review that has ever been made of the evidence on race differences in intelligence worldwide. It reviews these for ten races rather than the three major races (Africans, Caucasians, and East Asians) analyzed by Rushton (2000). The races analyzed here are the Europeans, sub-Saharan Africans, Bushmen, South Asians and North Africans, Southeast Asians, Australian Aborigines, Pacific Islanders, East Asians, Arctic Peoples, and Native American Indians. Studies of these are presented in Chapters 3 through 12; Chapter 13 summarizes these studies and gives evidence on the reliability and validity of the IQs of the races. Chapter 14 discusses the extent to which race differences in intelligence are determined by environmental and genetic factors. Chapters 15, 16, and 17 discuss how race differences in intelligence have evolved over the course of approximately the last 100,000 years. These discussions are preceded by accounts of the nature of intelligence and the measurement of race differences given in the first chapter, and of the concept of race in Chapter 2. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Recent studies suggest a decline in the relative Black effect on violent crime in recent decades and interpret this decline as resulting from greater upward mobility among African Americans during the past several decades. However, other assessments of racial stratification in American society suggest at least as much durability as change in Black social mobility since the 1980s. Our goal is to assess how patterns of racial disparity in violent crime and incarceration have changed from 1980 to 2008. We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Using 1980–2008 California and New York arrest data to adjust for this “Hispanic effect” in national Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, we assess whether the observed national decline in racial disparities in violent crime is an artifact of the growth in Hispanic populations and offenders. Results suggest that little overall change has occurred in the Black share of violent offending in both UCR and NCVS estimates during the last 30 years. In addition, racial imbalances in arrest versus incarceration levels across the index violent crimes are both small and comparably sized across the study period. We conclude by discussing the consistency of these findings with trends in economic and social integration of Blacks in American society during the past 50 years.
This study, drawing on approximately 1,100 males from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, demonstrates the importance of genetics, and genetic-environmental interactions, for understanding adolescent delinquency and violence. Our analyses show that three genetic polymorphisms - specifically, the 30-bp promoter-region variable number tandem repeat (VNTR) in MAOA, the 40-bp VNTR in DAT1, and the Taq1 polymorphism in DRD2 - are significant predictors of serious and violent delinquency when added to a social-control model of delinquency. Importantly, findings also show that the genetic effects of DRD2 and MAOA are conditional and interact with family processes, school processes, and friendship networks. These results, which are among the first that link molecular genetic variants to delinquency, significantly expand our understanding of delinquent and violent behavior, and they highlight the need to simultaneously consider their social and genetic origins.
While the punishment of juvenile offenders has increasingly become an issue of major concern to the public, there are few studies that test the government's coercive response to offending by this particular group. This study addresses this issue by examining the variation in sentence length for juvenile offenders adjudicated in the adult criminal courts for violent offenses. Results from the regression analyses consistently show that, while factors related to the specific offense are important contributors to the variation in sentence length, differences in the ideological climate of each state are a strong predictor of the variation in adult sanctions for minors. Specifically, the findings show that conservative citizen ideology and Republican control of state government are important contributors to the variation in sentencing of juveniles across U.S. states. Additional evidence shows that states where judges must run in an election to gain their seats proscribe more severe sanctions on juvenile offenders by sentencing more of them to adult prisons. Overall, the results suggest that the social and political climate of each state plays a very strong role in the sentencing of juvenile offenders to adult prisons.
A focus on the longitudinal patterning of individual criminal careers lies at the heart of
criminology generally, and the criminal career paradigm in particular. One aspect of the criminal career paradigm that has received very little empirical attention, likely because of the lack of requisite data (self-report and official records for the same individuals) is the variation in the individual risk per crime, or Q. Using the unique data available from the three-site Rand Second Inmate Surveys, we were able to link data from the crime and arrest processes at the individual level in order to measure individual crime rates, and examined (1) jurisdictional similarities in Q, (2)
similarities in Q across offender subgroups, and (3) the distinctive variation in Q with offense frequency.
Based on a comprehensive study of three counties in Texas, this work examines the idea of differential handling of minority youth offenders. Traditional wisdom indicates that minorities are over-represented in the juvenile justice system due to racism and discrimination within the system itself. The author refutes this logic by challenging current studies and examining the results of the Texas study. The findings suggest that minorities are represented in the juvenile justice system in greater numbers than their majority offender counterparts due to their greater involvement in criminal activity, not to any differential treatment they may receive at crucial decision points within the system.
Allegations of racial bias against the juvenile justice system are often supported by the federal government, which suggests that minorities continue to be targeted more frequently for arrest, prosecution, conviction, and imprisonment merely because they are persons of color. Drawing on new research, the author addresses racial disparity in the juvenile justice system and contends that previous research suffers methodological and statistical analysis problems, resulting in the mischaracterization of the issue of racial bias. The present study argues that most minority juveniles receive different case outcomes because of the severity of their current offense, and both the length and severity of their prior delinquency careers. Tracy's research ultimately indicates that rather than being discriminatory, the juvenile system is, instead, reacting to a particular type of delinquent using legally permissible guidelines.
Imprisonment rates for black Americans have long been five to seven times higher than those for whites. The immediate causes are well known: high levels of black imprisonment resulting in part from higher black than white arrest rates for violent crime and vastly higher black drug arrest rates. Drug arrest disparities result from police decisions to concentrate attention on drugs blacks sell and places where they sell them. Prison disparities are aggravated by laws prescribing sentences of unprecedented severity for offenses for which blacks are disproportionately arrested. Those practices and policies were shaped by distinctive sociological, psychological, and political features of American race relations. Work on the psychology of American race relations shows that many white Americans resent efforts made to help black Americans overcome the legacy of racism; that stereotypes of black criminality support whites' attitudes toward drug and crime control policy; and that statistical discrimination, colorism, Afro-American feature bias, and implicit bias cause black offenders to be treated especially severely. Sociological work on racial stratification shows that whites support policies that maintain traditional racial hierarchies. Contemporary drug and crime control policies are components of the Republican Southern Strategy, shaped by and exacerbating those phenomena, to use crime as a "wedge issue" to appeal to whites' racial anxieties and resentments.
This paper reviews the research literature concerning the extent to which studies of delinquency that use official records produce results compatible with studies of delinquency that use self-reports of adolescents. Particular attention is given to sex, race, and social class as correlates of delinquency. The notion that official and self-report methods produce discrepant results with respect to sex, race, and class is largely illusory. In reaching conclusions of discrepancy several techniques have been used in the literature; the most general is the assumption that self-reports and official data tap the same domain of behavior. When the domain limitations of self-reports are recognized (and other illusory techniques are abandoned), the conclusion of general consistency between self-reports and official correlates for sex, race, and class emerges. This consistency and other evidence from victimization surveys, studies of the reliability and validity of self-reports, and studies of biases in criminal justice processing, suggest that both official data and self-reports provide valid indicators of the demographic characteristics of offenders, within the domain of behavior effectively tapped by each method.
In the United States and elsewhere, racial and ethnic disparities in crime and criminal justice are relatively ubiquitous. Yet the meaning of such disparities is not well understood. To address this concern, periodically there have been calls for research that takes into account the broader structural context of the racially and ethnically inequitable crime and justice patterns. However, a comprehensive approach to understanding such inequality is seldom applied in research. In this article, I review findings from a program of research on crime across race–ethnic neighborhoods that I have undertaken with Lauren J. Krivo and other colleagues to provide, and assess, such a framework. The starting point of our approach is that ethnoracial inequality in neighborhood crime is an outgrowth of a racialized social structure maintained largely through racial residential segregation. As anticipated, the findings illustrate the value added from research that embeds its assessment of crime and justice within an understanding of structured societal inequality. From these results, I call for placing race and ethnicity at the center of the study of crime and justice.
This book is about differences in intellectual capacity among people and groups and what those differences mean for America's future.(preface) The major purpose of this book] is to reveal the dramatic transformation that is currently in process in American society---a process that has created a new kind of class structure led by a "cognitive elite," itself a result of concentration and self-selection in those social pools well endowed with cognitive abilities. Herrnstein and Murray explore] the ways that low intelligence, independent of social, economic, or ethnic background, lies at the root of many of our social problems. The authors also demonstrate the truth of another taboo fact: that intelligence levels differ among ethnic groups. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)(jacket)
A line of research has revealed that a polymorphism in the promoter region of the MAOA gene is related to antisocial phenotypes. Most of these studies examine the effects of low MAOA activity alleles (2-repeat and 3-repeat alleles) against the effects of high MAOA activity alleles (3.5-repeat, 4-repeat, and some-times 5-repeat alleles), with research indicating that the low MAOA activity alleles confer an increased risk to antisocial phenotypes. The current study examined whether the 2-repeat allele, which has been shown to be functionally different from the 3-repeat allele, was associated with a range of antisocial phenotypes in a sample of males drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Analyses revealed that African-American males who carried the 2-repeat allele were, in comparison with other African-American male genotypes, significantly more likely to be arrested and incarcerated. Addi-tional analyses revealed that African-American male carriers of the 2-repeat allele scored significantly higher on an antisocial phenotype index and on measures assessing involvement in violent behaviors over the life course. There was not any association between the 2-repeat allele and a continuously measured psychopathic personality traits scale. The effects of the 2-repeat allele could not be examined in Caucasian males because only 0.1% carried it.
The Pittsburgh Youth Study is a prospective longitudinal survey of three samples of Pittsburgh boys (each containing about 500 boys) initially studied in first, fourth, and seventh grades. The first two data collection waves yielded self-reported delinquency and combined delinquency seriousness scores (the combined scores based on information from boy, mother, and teacher) for the middle sample (up to an average age of 10.7 years) and oldest sample (up to an average age of 13.9 years). These scores were compared with records of petitions to the Allegheny County Juvenile Court for delinquency offenses before and up to six years after the assessments. The area under the ROC curve was used as a measure of validity. Concurrent validity was higher than predictive validity. The combined scale had similar concurrent validity but greater predictive validity than the self-report scale, and the combined scale also identified a greater number of boys as serious delinquents. Concurrent validity for admitting offenses was higher for Caucasians, but concurrent validity for admitting arrests was higher for African-Americans. There were no consistent ethnic differences in predictive validity. There was an increase in predictive validity, for both African-Americans and Caucasians, by combining self-report data with information from other sources. Afrer controlling for delinquency measures, African-Americans were more likely than Caucasians to be petitioned in the future, but not in the past. In this research, ethnic differences in official delinquency were partly attributable to ethnic differences in delinquent behavior and were not attributable to differential ethnic attrition or differential ethnic validity of measures of delinquent behavior.
In “Toward a Theory of Race, Crime, and Urban Inequality,” Sampson and Wilson (1995) argued that racial disparities in violent crime are attributable in large part to the persistent structural disadvantages that are disproportionately concentrated in African American communities. They also argued that the ultimate causes of crime were similar for both Whites and Blacks, leading to what has been labeled the thesis of “racial invariance.” In light of the large scale social changes of the past two decades and the renewed political salience of race and crime in the United States, this paper reassesses and updates evidence evaluating the theory. In so doing, we clarify key concepts from the original thesis, delineate the proper context of validation, and address new challenges. Overall, we find that the accumulated empirical evidence provides broad but qualified support for the theoretical claims. We conclude by charting a dual path forward: an agenda for future research on the linkages between race and crime, and policy recommendations that align with the theory’s emphasis on neighborhood level structural forces but with causal space for cultural factors.
Although structural disadvantage has been found to predict both crime and illicit drug use, its pattern relative to methamphetamine use is not clear. To gain further insight into the relationship between structural disadvantage and methamphetamine use, the current study examines how structural disadvantage, as a macro-level risk factor, predicts methamphetamine use relative to other illicit drug use among a national sample of male arrestees. The study also examines the interaction between race/ethnicity, structural disadvantage, and methamphetamine use, vis-à-vis that of other drugs. Findings reveal that Black and Latino arrestees were more likely than Whites to test positive for marijuana, cocaine, and opiates than methamphetamine. Also, Whites in less disadvantaged areas were more likely than similarly situated Blacks to test positive for methamphetamine than marijuana, cocaine, and opiates. Policy implications are discussed.
Using a national poll with a representative sample of Blacks (N = 854), this article examined the experiences of those Blacks who believe that they had recently been treated unfairly by the police. More specifically, the research examined the role of gender in the perception of unfair treatment by the police. The results of the analysis from the full sample found that age (being older), region (being from the South), and being female decreased the likelihood of reporting having been recently treated unfairly by the police. To examine the differences between Black men and women, the authors conducted a split-sample binary logistic regression analysis. The analysis revealed that Black women who resided in the South were less likely to report experiencing unfair treatment by the police. For Black men, being older and having a higher income resulted in the reduced likelihood of the perception of having been treated unfairly. The implications of the research also are considered.
In the public debate over incarceration policy, there is considerable disagreement about what value of individual offending frequency (λ) is appropriate to use in estimating incapacitative effects. This article provides an approach for estimating the mean values of λ for diverse subsets of the total offender population, with particular emphasis on subsets generated by filtering through various stages of the criminal justice system. Sharp differences in offending frequency are displayed between robbery and burglary inmates, across three states, and particularly between resident inmates and free, active offenders. Free offenders average 1 to 3 robberies and 2 to 4 burglaries per year, while resident inmates have λ values 10 to 50 times higher. Differences result from the underlying levels of criminal activity and the sanction Levels that offenders face. A highly heterogeneous distribution of offending frequency in the total population of offenders combines with relatively Low imprisonment levels to lead to substantial selectivity of high-λ offenders among resident inmates and a correspondingly low mean value of λ among those offenders who remain free. These results have important implications for estimating incapacitative effects of an increase in incarceration, since the additional inmates will be drawn from free offenders whose mean λ is at least an order of magnitude Lower than that of the current inmate population.
Purpose Existing research on criminal justice contact data has not adequately examined the quality of self-reported timing data, has produced discrepant findings on validity as it relates to demographics, and is limited in its assessment of data quality using a life event calendar method. The study described in this article assessed the validity of self-reported contacts with the criminal justice system gathered using a life event calendar with a sample of incarcerated men.Methods Self-reports of criminal justice contacts (i.e., arrests, jail terms, prison terms) were obtained from over 700 incarcerated men using a structured life-event calendar method. Similarly, data were collected from the inmate's official records for the same events. These reports served as an external criterion for the self-reports.Results Results indicated a significant degree of reporting errors for arrests using the life event calendar approach with better reporting for jail and prison terms. Additionally, individuals with the highest number of previous arrests had the greatest recall difficulties.Conclusions Recall of arrest presents a difficult recall task. The life event calendar method should either be modified to improve recall of specific events for criminological samples or used instead to capture information on more general and extended events.
Discretion is an integral component of the criminal justice system and is exercised by both police and the judiciary. Based on the extant research, evidence of racial/ethnic disparities within the context of traffic stops and sentencing decisions has been documented. Due to its long history of inquiry, sentencing research has developed a more thorough understanding of disparity and its correlates. This article contends that racial profiling research could expedite its development by learning from the history of sentencing research. Specifically, the extant research on sentencing decisions has demonstrated the value and utility of theory and methods as pillars of knowledge development. Therefore, progress in racial profiling research is most likely accomplished by employing similar theoretical frameworks and appropriate quantitative and qualitative approaches.
Using conjunctive analysis of case configurations and the National Crime Victimization Survey this research explores the situational contexts of violence against Hispanics most and least often reported to the police and compares situational contexts of violence reported to the police among Hispanic, non-Hispanic White and non-Hispanic Black victims. Results indicate that Hispanic victimization most often reported varies greatly across situational context. Almost all violence reported involves a female victim, and almost all that is reported infrequently involves a never-married, uninjured male victim. Beyond those patterns, the role of all other situational factors is contingent on the specific situational context. Findings reveal wide-spread differences in situational contexts associated with the reporting of violent victimization against Hispanics, non-Hispanic Whites and non-Hispanic Blacks. Future research should continue to focus on Hispanics, with a focus on with-in group differences and longitudinal research.
Both self-report and official crime data have known limitations, leading to the critical question as to whether inferences about the adolescent life-course of crime are different across these data sources. Using both official and self-report arrest data on a sample of subjects drawn from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) longitudinal cohort study, this paper examines the extent to which individual age-arrest curves are comparable across these data sources. Particular attention is given to examining whether criminal career dimensions, namely participation, frequency of arrest, age of onset, and continuity in behavior, are similar across data sources. Additionally, this paper examines whether the key predictors of youth crime (e.g., family processes, peer influence, and neighborhood disadvantage) function similarly across measurement types. Findings reveal that a sizable number of youth self-report being arrested without having a corresponding official arrest record, and a sizable proportion of those youth with an official arrest record fail to self-report that they had been arrested. Despite significant differences across the two arrest measures on many criminal career dimensions, the effects of family supervision, parent–child conflict, and neighborhood disadvantage operate similarly across data types.
Mean levels of three characteristics—verbal IQ, number of sexual partners, and birth weight—were examined in African American, White (European-descent) Americans, and Black/White mixed race American adolescents. The sample came from Wave 1 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. The mean age was 16 years. According to their interviewers, the mixed race children had an African American physical appearance. The African American adolescents had a lower birth weight, a lower verbal IQ, and a higher number of sexual partners than did White adolescents. For each characteristic, the mixed race mean fell between the means of the two parental populations. Design extensions were proposed that include: (1) directly genotyping for individual racial admixture, (2) including parents of the mixed race children, and (3) including their cousins.
A growing body of research examined the ways in which various legal and extralegal factors influence prosecutors' charging decisions. Though the results of these studies were mixed, some researchers reported that extralegal factors had little or no effect on important decisions such as case rejection and dismissal. The majority of this research, however, suffered from a considerable shortcoming—that is, most studies considered the direct effects of measures such as age, race, and gender, but failed to consider the potential interactions that might occur between these factors. Consequently, the present research employed a nationally representative sample of felony drug defendants to address this issue by examining whether or not age and gender condition the effect of race on prosecutors' decisions to dismiss criminal charges. Implications of the findings are discussed in the context of theory, research, and policy.
Untimed Raven's Standard Progressive Matrices (SPM) were administered to 309 17- to 23-year-old students at the University of the Witwatersrand and the Rand Afrikaans University in Johannesburg, South Africa (173 Africans, 136 Whites; 205 women, 104 men). African students solved an average of 44 of the 60 problems whereas White students solved an average of 54 of the problems (p<.001). By the standards of the 1993 US normative sample, the African university students scored at the 14th percentile and the White university students scored at the 61st percentile (IQ equivalents of 84 and 104, respectively). The African–White differences were found to be greater on those items of the SPM with the highest item–total correlations, indicating a difference in g, or the general factor of intelligence. A small sex difference favoring males was found in both the African and the White samples, but unrelated to g.
An important question from research on criminal careers is whether the processes that generate participation in criminal activity are similar to those that drive offending frequency among those who have initiated. This article considers basic demographic correlates asking whether those factors are associated with both initial and sustained early adulthood criminality in Australia. Three findings emerged from the study: (1) the offenders exhibited high levels of criminal activity during early adulthood; (2) males were more likely than females to offend and offend at higher rates as adults; and (3) Indigenous youth were more likely than non-Indigenous youth to offend and offend at higher rates as adults. Overall, the study results showed that basic correlates of crime were linked to both participation and frequency of offending in early adulthood—even within a sample of serious offenders. The article addresses the theoretical implications of the findings and directions for future research.
Behavioral genetic research has revealed that antisocial phenotypes are under genetic influence. This study examines whether genetic factors also affect the odds of being processed through the criminal justice system.
A sample of adoptees (n = 191-257) drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health was analyzed. They self-reported on whether they had ever been arrested, sentenced to probation, incarcerated, and arrested multiple times. Assessments were also conducted of the criminal status of their biological parents.
Adoptees who have a biological father or a biological mother who have been arrested previously are significantly more likely to be arrested, sentenced to probation, incarcerated, and arrested multiple times when compared with adoptees whose biological parents have not been arrested.
Adoptees who are genetically predisposed to antisocial phenotypes are at risk for being formally processed through the criminal justice system.
Little is known about the racial patterns of crimes committed by sexual homicide offenders (SHOs). This study examined race and age influences on victim-offender relationship for juvenile and adult SHOs. A large sample (N = 3868) from the Supplemental Homicide Reports (1976-2005) was used. Analyses of victim-offender patterns included examining victim age effects (child, adolescent, adult, and elderly). The findings revealed several race- and age-based differences. Black offenders were significantly overrepresented in the SHO population. This finding held for juveniles and adults independently. White SHOs were highly likely to kill within their race, "intra-racially" (range 91-100%) across four victim age categories, whereas Black SHOs killed both intra-racially (range 24-82%) and inter-racially (18-76%), with the likelihood of their killing inter-racially increasing as the age of the victim increased. This study underscores the importance of considering victim-offender racial patterns in sexual murder investigations, and it offers practical implications for offender profiling.