The study of terrorism represents one of the major turning points in criminology of the twenty-first century. In the space of just two decades, research on terrorism and political extremism went from a relatively uncommon niche to a widely recognized criminological specialization. Terrorism research now appears in nearly all mainstream criminology journals; college courses on terrorism and political violence have been added to the curricula of most criminology departments; and a growing number of criminology students are choosing terrorism as a suitable topic for class papers, research topics, theses and dissertations. The purpose of this book is to explore similarities and differences between terrorism and more ordinary forms of crime. This Element considers the ways that criminology has contributed to the study of terrorism and the impact the increasing interest in terrorism has had on criminology. This Element also provides empirical comparisons of terrorist attacks to more ordinary crimes and criminal offenders. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Cover -- Half Title -- Title -- Copyright -- Dedication -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1 Understanding Postwar Crime Trends -- Interpreting American Crime Trends -- What the Crime Trends Tell Us -- Crime and Social Institutions -- Institutional Responses to Crime -- 2 Riding the Wave: Street Crime Trends in Postwar America -- Official Crime Data -- The Rise of the Self-Report Crime Survey -- The National Crime Victimization Survey -- Comparing Crime Data Sources -- Street Crime Trends in Postwar America -- Some Immediate Implications of Postwar Crime Trerids -- Putting the Trends into Context -- Toward an Explanation of Postwar U.S. Crime Trends -- 3 Offender Characteristics and Crime Trends in Postwar America -- Data on Offender Characteristics -- Race and Crime in Postwar America -- Arrest Trends by Race and Ethnicity -- Cross-Sectiorial Arrest Rates by Race -- Postwar Trends in African American and White Crime -- Offender Characteristics and Postwar Crime Trends -- 4 Evaluating Common Explanations of Crime -- Common Theories of Crime -- Toward an Explanation of Postwar American Crime Trends -- 5 Crime and Social Institutions -- Institutional Legitimacy, Change, and Crime -- Crime and Social Institutions -- The Timing of Postwar Institutional Changes -- 6 Crime and American Political Institutions -- Political Institutions and Crime -- Entering the Age of Distrust -- Declining Political Legitimacy in Postwar America -- Crime Trends and Civil Rights–Related Actions -- Summary and Conclusions -- 7 Crime and American Economic Institutions -- Crime and Economic Institutions -- Economic Legitimacy and Crime in Postwar America -- Conclusions: Crime and the Postwar Economy -- 8 Crime and Changes in the American Family -- Family Organization and Legitimacy -- Family Change and Crime Trends
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AbstractWhite‐collar crime and illegal political extremism share several characteristics with relevance to criminology. Neither is associated with lower socioeconomic status individuals, both involve perpetrators that rarely see themselves as criminal, and both face unique data challenges. Following Edwin Sutherland's influential research, the study of white‐collar crime became a recognized specialization within criminology. Similarly, following the coordinated attacks of September 11, 2001, political extremism became increasingly accepted as a legitimate research topic in criminology. I explore several ways that the study of terrorism has influenced criminological research and how responses to terrorist attacks since 9/11 can help us understand policing. Terrorism research has vividly illustrated the socially constructed nature of crime, has encouraged researchers to see not only the deterrence potential of punishment but also its capacity to produce backlash, has accelerated cross‐national criminology research, and has hastened the embrace of open sources as an important form of criminal justice data. Changes in policing following 9/11 and the resulting war on terror also provide critical insights into the extent to which policing depends on community trust and legitimacy. As with the embrace of white‐collar crime nearly a century ago, mainstream criminology has been enriched by widening its scope to include political extremism.
Democracy is directly linked to the two main components of criminology: crime and justice. Moreover, the scientific study of crime and justice has been limited in large part to researchers working in democratic regimes. In this article, I address the question of how criminologists through research and education can better nurture democratic, nonauthoritarian societies. I argue that our field would be strengthened by expanding the domain of criminology in five directions: 1) by providing more emphasis on historical data and analysis, 2) by broadening the scope of emotions we test for among offenders, 3) by doing more cross‐national comparative analysis, 4) by bringing situational variables into our research, and 5) by making criminology more interdisciplinary. Although the most recent wave of democratization produced a record number of democratic regimes, we are observing ominous challenges to fundamental democratic rights from around the world. As criminologists, we have a vested interest in supporting the democratic, nonauthoritarian societies in which our craft has thrived.
▪ Abstract The United States in the 1990s has experienced the greatest sustained decline in violent crime rates since World War II—even though rates thus far have not fallen as rapidly as they increased during the crime boom of the 1960s and early 1970s. I review a set of exogenous and policy-related explanations for the earlier crime boom and for the crime bust of the 1990s. I argue that our understanding of crime trends is hampered by a lack of longitudinal analysis and by ahistorical approaches. I identify a set of questions, concepts, and research opportunities raised by taking a more comprehensive look at crime waves.
Despite the frequency of guilty pleas, researchers disagree about the ability of plea bargaining to provide justice. Critics argue that plea bargaining deprives defendants of due process rights and procedural safeguards Proponents argue that guilty pleas save resources for cases that require trial and allow officials flexibility to tailor justice to individual defendants. This article explores these issues by examining the effect of defendant and case characteristics on sentence severity for 3,269 male robbery and burglary defendants who either pled guilty or were tried in six U.S. jurisdictions, three of which had recently attempted to eliminate or greatly reduce plea bargaining and three with few restrictions on plea bargaining. The results confirm some criticisms of plea bargaining, but refute others. More criminally experienced defendants and defendants who pled guilty at the earliest opportunity did not receive sentencing leniency. Moreover, to a large extent, the same variables predict sentence severity for guilty pleas and trials. In contrast, the results show that defendants convicted at trial received more severe sanctions than defendants who pled guilty, controlling for case severity, evidence, and offender characteristics The results also suggest that the jurisdictions which attempted to control plea bargaining through more centralized control of assistance succeeded in tightening the fit between case characteristics and sentences for both cases adjudicated by guilty plea and trial.
Abstract Contemporary social science has produced little research on connections between climate change and crime. Nonetheless, much prior research suggests that economic insecurity may affect individual calculations of the cost and benefit of engaging in criminal behavior, and climate change is likely to have important economic consequences for professions like fishing that depend directly on the environment. In this paper, we test the possibility that climate change affects participation in maritime piracy, depending on the specific ways that it impacts regional fish production. Our analysis is based on piracy in East Africa and the South China Sea. These two regions are strategic in that both areas have experienced a large amount of piracy; however, rising sea temperatures have been associated with declines in fish production in East Africa but increases in the South China Sea. We treat sea surface temperature as an instrument for fish output and find that in East Africa higher sea surface temperature is associated with declining fish production, which in turn increases the risk of piracy, whereas in the South China Sea higher sea surface temperature is associated with increasing fish production, which in turn decreases the risk of piracy. Our results also show that decreases in fish production bring about a larger number of successful piracy attacks in East Africa and that increases in fish production are associated with fewer successful attacks in the South China Sea. We discuss the theoretical and policy implications of the findings and point out that as climate change continues, its impact on specific crimes will likely be complex, with increases and decreases depending on context.
Significance Statement There is little evidence on the effect of climate change on criminal behavior. This study seeks to quantify the impact of a specific type of climate change—rising sea temperature—on maritime piracy, a type of crime that is linked exclusively to the ocean. The risk of piracy attacks and the probability of successful attacks are higher with declines in fish production in East Africa and lower with increases in fish production in the South China Sea. These results suggest that climate change does affect maritime piracy rates and that its effect depends on the specific situational context and the rational choices that changing sea temperatures generate.
This study examines the effects of a measure of country-level social disorganization on levels of terrorist attacks and fatalities in 101 countries from 1981 to 2010. We measure social disorganization as the presence of state instability: revolutionary and ethnic war, adverse regime change, and genocide. The classic social disorganization perspective posits that individuals experiencing these types of rapid social change will be freed from the institutional and informal restraints that bind them to society, and keep them conforming to social norms and laws. We examine the extent to which this reasoning applies to the number of terrorist attacks and fatalities from terrorist attacks occurring in countries. To control for the possibility that better functioning states are better able to prevent terrorist attacks, we include two measures of state capacity. We find that controlling for state capacity and a wide variety of other variables, social disorganization is consistently associated with increases in terrorist attacks and fatalities. We consider implications of the results for future research and policy. Adapted from the source document.
