No abstract

The short-run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal *

The “near repeat” phenomenon suggests that when a crime occurs in a given area, the surrounding area may exhibit an increased risk for subsequent crime in the days following the original incident. The present study assesses the extent to which near repeats generalize across three different crimes, including shootings, robbery, and auto theft. A series of near repeat models was estimated to further specify the temporal proximity of near repeats for each crime type under investigation. Results showed that a near repeat pattern exists across crime types; however, each crime type has a unique spatiotemporal pattern. Implications for police strategies, such as geographical profiling and future research connecting near repeat patterns to repeat offenders, are discussed.

During the last few decades, criminologists have identified several adult roles and statuses, including employment, positive family relations, and economic stability, as critical for promoting successful reintegration and desistance. Very few researchers, however, have investigated the conditions that serve to bring about these transitions and successes crucial for behavior change. As a complement to a burgeoning amount of literature on the impact of incarceration on health, we emphasize the reverse: Health has important implications for reentry outcomes and reincarceration. Informed by multiple disciplines, we advance a health‐based model of desistance in which both mental and physical dimensions of health affect life chances in the employment and family realms and ultimately recidivism. Investigating this issue with longitudinal data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative (SVORI) and structural equation models, we find overall support for the health‐based model of desistance. Our results indicate several significant pathways through which both manifestations of health influence employment, family conflict, financial problems, and crime and reincarceration. The findings highlight the need for implementation of correctional and transitional policies to improve health among the incarcerated and avert health‐related reentry failures.

Objectives: Examine how neighborhoods vary in the degree to which they experience repeat/near repeat crime patterns and whether theoretical constructs representing neighborhood-level context, including social ecology and structural attributes, can explain variation in single incidents and those linked in space and time. Methods: Examine social, structural, and environmental design covariates from the American Community Survey to assess the context of near repeat burglary at the block group level. Spatially lagged negative binomial regression models were estimated to assess the relative contribution of these covariates on single and repeat/near repeat burglary counts. Results: Positive and consistent association between concentrated disadvantage and racial heterogeneity and all types of burglaries was evident, although the effects for other indicators, including residential instability, family disruption, and population density, varied across classifications of single and repeat/near repeat burglaries. Conclusions: Repeat/near repeat burglary patterns are conditional on the overall level and specific dimensions of disorganization, holding implications for offender-focused as well as community-focused explanations. This study contributes greater integration between the study of empirically observed patterns of repeats and community-based theories of crime, including collective efficacy.

No abstract

Gender’s role in self-control measures has been largely neglected. Although studies show that males have lower self-control than females, rarely have researchers questioned whether items used to measure self-control should be used for both groups. This study uses a Rasch rating scale analysis to assess item functioning of Grasmick et al.’s 24-item self-control scale for males and females. Using a sample of young adults, results indicate that 33% of the scale items showed differential functioning or item bias; that is, after controlling for self-control, females found one third of the items to be either more or less agreeable than males. Once biased items were removed from the scale, males, on average, still had lower self-control than females. In addition, after excluding biased items from the scale, the effect of self-control on criminal behavior and other outcomes was similar to the effect found with the full 24-item scale. Suggestions for future research on Grasmick et al.’s self-control scale are offered, and limitations of the current study are discussed.

Sex differences in romantic jealousy have been widely reported in the recent psychological literature. According to this literature, men are more likely than women to report being more distressed at sexual than emotional infidelity. There are two explanations for this difference: an evolutionary psychological and a social cognitive explanation. According to the evolutionary psychological account, men and women exhibit differences in jealousy because they faced different reproductive challenges during human evolution. According to the social cognitive account, men and women exhibit these differences because they have been socialised to believe that attachment and sex are weighted differently by each gender. In this study, 268 participants completed a questionnaire designed to compare predictions based on these two theories. The results are generally consistent with the evolutionary account. Men are more distressed by sexual infidelity than by emotional infidelity, and this is not accounted for by beliefs about jealousy that they hold about men, women or themselves.