Suchergebnisse

Abstract
Research Question
Is violent crime victimization among US minority groups higher than for White Americans in general, or is there a distinct failure of equal protection by race with respect to firearm homicide?

Data
This analysis examines per capita rates of violent victimization for Blacks, Hispanics, and Whites as reported in recent years in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), as well as the firearms homicide data collected from local and state death certificates by the US Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Method
The analysis compares the extent of disparity between White and minority victimization rates for different kinds of violent crimes. The framework is to calculate the ratio of minority victimization rates to the White rates for the same offense categories.

Findings
While there are very small differences in victimization rates by race/ethnicity for most types of violent crime, and while Whites report higher victimization rates than minorities do for some kinds of violent crimes, there is a massive ratio for rates of firearms homicides. Black Americans of all ages, for example, suffer firearm homicides at a rate that is 12 times higher per capita than for Whites. Hispanic Americans are twice as likely to be victimized by firearm homicide than Whites.

Conclusions
Policing strategies often fail to distinguish different types of violence, even when discussing racial disparity in policing actions. The evidence of this report provides the most direct support for police increasing the precision of their focus on crime prevention efforts that can reduce homicide as the most important racial disparity in criminal victimization, and, in the US context, firearm homicide in particular.

For many years, notes Alex Piquero, youth of color have been overrepresented at every stage of the U.S. juvenile justice system. As with racial disparities in a wide variety of social indicators, the causes of these disparities are not immediately apparent. Some analysts attribute the disparities to "differential involvement"—that is, to differences in offending by minorities and whites. Others attribute them to "differential selection"—that is, to the fact that the justice system treats minority and white offenders in different ways. Still others believe the explanation lies in a combination of the two. Differential involvement may be important earlier in the judicial process, especially in youths' contacts with police, and may influence differential selection later as individuals make their way through the juvenile justice system. Adjudicating between these options, says Piquero, is difficult and may even be impossible. Asking how much minority overrepresentation is due to differences in offending and how much to differences in processing no longer seems a helpful way to frame the discussion. Piquero urges future research to move beyond the debate over "which one matters more" and seek to understand how each of the two hypotheses can explain both the fact of minority overrepresentation in the juvenile justice system and how best to address it. Piquero cites many sizable gaps in the research and policy-relevant literature. Work is needed especially, he says, in analyzing the first stage of the justice system that juveniles confront: police contacts. The police are a critical part of the juvenile justice decision-making system and are afforded far more discretion than any other formal agent of social control, but researchers have paid surprisingly little attention to contacts between police and citizens, especially juveniles. Piquero notes that some states and localities are undertaking initiatives to reduce racial and ethnic disparities. He urges researchers and policymakers to evaluate such initiatives, especially those using strategies with a track record of success. Researchers should also examine empirically the far-reaching consequences of disproportionate minority representation in the juvenile justice system, such as poor outcomes in education, labor force participation, and family formation. Finally, Piquero emphasizes that one critical research area involves updating justice system data systems and repositories, which have failed to track changes in U.S. demographic and immigration patterns.

"The ""Handbook of Quantitative Criminology"" is designed to be the authoritative volume on methodological and statistical issues in the criminology/criminal justice field. Like handbooks available in other disciplines (economics, psychology, sociology), this book will be the go-to book for new and advanced methods in the field that will provide overviews of the issues, with examples and figures as warranted, for students, faculty, and researchers alike. Authored by leading scholars in criminology/criminal justice, the Handbook contains 24 chapters on topics in the following key areas: (1) research design, (2) experimental methods, (3) methods for overcoming data limitations, (4) innovative descriptive methods, (5) estimation techniques for theory and policy, (6) topics in multiple regression, and (7) new directions in statistical analysis."

This paper reports on a benefit-cost analysis of a targeted intervention program, the YouthBuild USA Offender Project (YBOP), aimed at low-income, criminal offenders who are 16–24 years old. Using data on 388 participants, we find: (1) evidence of reduced recidivism and improved educational outcomes that exceed our expectations based on similar cohorts and (2) evidence consistent with a positive benefit-cost ratio, indicating that every dollar spent on the YBOP is estimated to produce a return on investment between $7.20 and $21.60, with benefits to society ranging between $174,000 and $281,000 per participant at a cost to society between $13,000 and $24,000.

Researchers have consistently linked commercial sexual exploitation (CSE) of youth and involvement in prostitution with substance dependency and delinquency. Yet, important questions remain regarding the directionality and mechanisms driving this association. Utilizing a sample of 114 CSE/prostituted youth participating in the Pathways to Desistance study—a longitudinal investigation of the transition from adolescence to adulthood among serious adolescent offenders—the current study examined key criminal career parameters of CSE/prostitution including age of onset and rate of recurrence. Additionally, structural equation modeling (SEM) was used to explore concurrent associations and causal links between CSE/prostitution and drug involvement. Findings show a general sequential pattern of the ages of onset with substance use and selling drugs occurring prior to CSE/prostitution, evidence that a small group with chronic CSE/prostitution account for the majority of CSE/prostitution occurrences, and high rates of repeated CSE/prostitution. SEM results suggest CSE/prostituted youth persist in drug involvement from year to year but infrequently experience perpetuation of CSE/prostitution from year to year. Concurrent associations between CSE/prostitution and drug involvement were found across the length of the study. Additionally, drug involvement at one year was linked to CSE/prostitution during the subsequent year during early years of the study.

Much of the research testing Moffitt's taxonomy of antisocial behavior has concentrated on life‐course‐persistent as opposed to adolescence‐limited offending. For Moffitt, adolescence‐limited delinquency occurs near puberty as a function of factors endemic to the peer social context of adolescence, including the realization that adolescents are physically mature enough to engage in adult‐like behaviors, but are forbidden to engage in such acts because of their biological age. Using data from the Youth‐In‐Transition survey, we find that adolescence‐limited delinquency is characterized by involvement in rebellious but not aggressive delinquency. Further, rebellious delinquency is accounted for by the interaction between early maturity and the autonomy aspects of peer activities.