More than twenty years ago, Albert Reiss (1988) recognized that some individuals are responsible for instigating group offending, whereas others follow accomplices into crime (or offend alone). Since this initial discussion by Reiss, however, little clarity has emerged regarding the factors that predict or explain the instigation of co-offending. Specifically, some literature has suggested that the tendency to instigate varies systematically across individuals, such that chronic or serious offenders are more likely to instigate group crime. Instigation also may vary across crime types (i.e., within-individuals), according to whether individuals have crime-specific skill or experience. Using data from inmates in the Colorado Department of Corrections to investigate these hypotheses, the results reveal that individuals with earlier ages of criminal onset are more likely to report they instigate group crime, net of controls. At the same time, indicators of crime-specific expertise predict the tendency to instigate group crime. The Discussion section considers the implications of these results and offers directions for future research.

Objectives: This study addresses the enduring question about whether exposure to deviant peers causes individuals to engage in deviance. Ample literature comments on this point, but methodological limitations prevent strong conclusions about causality. Method: The authors conducted a laboratory-based experiment under the guise of a memory/recall study for which participants could earn up to $20. All 91 participants had the opportunity to cheat on a computer-based word recall task by clicking on up to four links that provided access to the words in order to illegitimately earn more money for their performance. In the treatment condition (n = 47), subjects were exposed to a confederate who indicated an intention to cheat, justified this behavior, and cheated on the task. Results: Whereas none of the participants in the control condition cheated on this task, 38 percent of the participants in the treatment condition did. This effect endures when controlling for various attributes of participants in regression models. Supplemental analyses underscore the notion that clicking on the links reflected cheating rather than curiosity. Conclusions: This experiment provides evidence that exposure to a deviant peer can cause individuals to engage in deviance. Future experimental work should focus on determining the precise mechanism/mechanisms responsible.

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Arrest rates per capita for possession of marijuana have increased threefold over the last 20 years and now constitute the largest single arrest offense category. Despite the increase in arrest numbers, rates of use have remained stable during much of the same period. This article presents the first estimates of the arrest probabilities for marijuana, conditional on use in the previous 12 months; this is an appropriate measure of the intensity of enforcement against users. We analyze differences by age, race, and gender from 1982 to 2008. The probabilities of arrest for a marijuana user were similar across age and race categories until 1991. By 2006, that had changed sharply. Arrest rates among current marijuana users are disproportionately high for adolescents, Blacks, and males. The rate has varied between 0.8% and 1.8% across years; the rate per incident of use has ranged between about 1/3,000 and 1/6,000. There is no compelling account of why marijuana arrest probabilities have increased nationally or why the focus has been on youth, minorities, and males but the disproportionate increase for young Black males raises issues of disparate impact.

posits that individuals can increase their labor market returns through investments in education and training. This concept has been studied extensively across several disciplines. An analog concept of criminal capital, while the focus of speculation and limited empirical study, remains considerably less developed theoretically and methodologically. This paper offers a formal theoretical model of criminal capital indicators and tests for greater illegal wage returns using a sample of serious adolescent offenders, many of whom participate in illegal income-generating activities. Our results reveal that, consistent with human capital theory, there are important illegal wage premiums associated with investments in criminal capital, notably an increasing but declining marginal return to experience and a premium for specialization. Further, as in studies of legal labor markets, we find strong evidence that, if left unaccounted for, non-random sample selection causes severe bias in models of illegal wages. Theoretical and practical implications of these results, along with directions for future research, are discussed.