Paul Nieuwbeerta

Bio: Paul Nieuwbeerta is an academic researcher from Leiden University. The author has contributed to research in topics: Prison & Imprisonment. The author has an hindex of 45, co-authored 209 publications receiving 6368 citations. Previous affiliations of Paul Nieuwbeerta include Radboud University Nijmegen & Utrecht University.

The effects of life circumstances on longitudinal trajectories of offending

Abstract: This study, which is based on individual criminal careers over a 60-year period, focuses on the development of criminal behavior. It first examines the impact that life circumstances such as work and marriage have on offending, then tests whether the effects of these circumstances are different for different groups of offenders, and finally examines the extent to which the age-crime relationship at the aggregate level can be explained by age-graded differences in life circumstances. Official data were retrieved for a 4-percent (N=4,615) sample of all individuals whose criminal case was tried in the Netherlands in 1977. Self-report data were derived from a nationally representative survey administered in the Netherlands in 1996 to 2,244 individuals aged 15 years or older. In analyzing this data, we use semi-parametric group-based models. Results indicate that life circumstances substantially influence the chances of criminal behavior, and that the effects of these circumstances on offending differ across offender groups. Age-graded changes in life circumstances, however, explain the aggregate age-crime relationship only to a modest extent.

How Do Residential Burglars Select Target Areas? A New Approach to the Analysis of Criminal Location Choice

Abstract: This paper introduces the discrete spatial choice approach to the study of criminal target choice. The approach is used to assess whether residential burglars are attracted to target areas that are affluent, accessible, and poorly guarded. In addition, the importance of these criteria is postulated to vary across burglars. The theory is tested using data on 548 residential burglaries, committed by 290 burglars from the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. The likelihood of a neighbourhood’s being selected for burglary is heightened by its ethnic heterogeneity, its percentage of single-family dwellings, and its proximity to where the offender lives. The results and prospects of the discrete spatial choice approach for spatial target selection research are discussed. The problem of criminal location choice is a classical one in criminology. It pertains to the descriptive question of where offenders commit their offences, and to the explanatory question of why they commit them there, rather than somewhere else. In the literature, answers to the latter question have involved two general notions that have usually been dealt with separately. The first is the notion that for a crime to occur, a motivated offender must find a suitable target, in the absence of a capable guardian (Cohen and Felson 1979). The second is the notion that crimes tend to occur close to where the offender lives (Baldwin and Bottoms 1976: 78–98; Wiles and Costello 2000; Ratcliffe 2003). This paper combines these two notions, in an attempt to answer the question of how residential burglars select their target areas. For that purpose, we introduce the discrete spatial choice approach. This approach analyses target selection as being influenced by target characteristics and by offender characteristics, simultaneously. We argue that the discrete spatial choice approach is able to integrate previous findings in this field of inquiry, and is a useful theoretical and methodological tool for research in criminal target choice. In the next section, we present a review of the literature on target selection by burglars. Subsequently, we give an overview of earlier methods in the study of criminal location choice, and introduce the discrete spatial choice approach and the closely related conditional logit model. The approach is then applied to residential burglary in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands, using data from police records. The paper concludes with a summary of the main results, and a discussion of the potential and the pitfalls of the discrete spatial choice approach for studying criminal location choice. * Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), PO Box 792, NL-2300 AT Leiden, The Netherlands, email: bernasco@nscr.nl or nieuwbeerta@nscr.nl, telephone: +31 71 5278527. The Haaglanden Police Force provided the crime data used in this study. We acknowledge the contributions of Rieny Albers, Hanneke van Essen, Floor Luykx (NSCR), Astrid Patty and Peter Versteegh (Haaglanden Police Force) to the collection and processing of data. We thank Richard Block, Henk Elffers, Jan de Keijser, Jasper van der Kemp and Peter van Koppen and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on a previous version.

Criminal Victimisation in Seventeen Industrialised Countries. Key findings from the 2000 International Crime Victims Survey

Abstract: The International Crime Victimisation Survey (ICVS) is the most far-reaching programme of fully standardised sample surveys looking at householders' experience of crime in different countries. The first ICVS took place in 1989, the second in 1992, and the third in 1996. Surveys have been carried out in over 50 countries since 1989, including a large number of city surveys in developing countries and countries in transition. This report deals with eleven industrialised countries which took part in the third sweep.

A New Approach to the Analysis of Criminal Location Choice

Abstract: This paper introduces the discrete spatial choice approach to the study of criminal target choice. The approach is used to assess whether residential burglars are attracted to target areas that are affluent, accessible, and poorly guarded. In addition, the importance of these criteria is postulated to vary across burglars. The theory is tested using data on 548 residential burglaries, committed by 290 burglars from the city of The Hague, the Netherlands. The likelihood of a neighbourhood's being selected for burglary is heightened by its ethnic heterogeneity, its percentage of single-family dwellings, and its proximity to where the offender lives. The results and prospects of the discrete spatial choice approach for spatial target selection research are discussed. The problem of criminal location choice is a classical one in criminology. It pertains to the descriptive question of where offenders commit their offences, and to the expla natory question of why they commit them there, rather than somewhere else. In the literature, answers to the latter question have involved two general notions that have usually been dealt with separately. The first is the notion that for a crime to occur, a motivated offender must find a suitable target, in the absence of a capable guardian (Cohen and Felson 1979). The second is the notion that crimes tend to occur close to where the offender lives (Baldwin and Bottoms 1976: 78-98; Wiles and Costello 2000; Ratcliffe 2003). This paper combines these two notions, in an attempt to answer the question of how residential burglars select their target areas. For that purpose, we introduce the discrete spatial choice approach. This approach ana lyses target selection as being influenced by target characteristics and by offender char acteristics, simultaneously. We argue that the discrete spatial choice approach is able to integrate previous findings in this field of inquiry, and is a useful theoretical and method ological tool for research in criminal target choice. In the next section, we present a review of the literature on target selection by burglars. Subsequently, we give an overview of earlier methods in the study of criminal location choice, and introduce the discrete spatial choice approach and the closely related conditional logit model. The approach is then applied to residential burglary in the city of The Hague, the Netherlands, using data from police records. The paper concludes with a summary of the main results, and a discussion of the potential and the pitfalls of the discrete spatial choice approach for studying criminal location choice. * Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR), PO Box 792, NL-2300 AT Leiden, The Netherlands, email: bernasco@nscr.nl or nieuwbeerta@nscr.nl, telephone: +31 71 5278527. The Haaglanden Police Force provided the crime data used in this study. We acknowledge the contributions of Rieny Albers, Hanneke van Essen, Floor Luykx (NSCR), Astrid Patty and Peter Versteegh (Haaglanden Police Force) to the collection and processing of data. We thank Richard Block, Henk Elffers, Jan de Keijser, Jasper van der Kemp and Peter van Koppen and two anonymous reviewers for constructive comments on a previous version.

Neighbourhood Characteristics and Reporting Crime Effects of Social Cohesion, Confidence in Police Effectiveness and Socio-Economic Disadvantage

Abstract: Various scholars have suggested that neighbourhood social cohesion and confidence in police effectiveness influence the probability that victims report crime to the police, but this has never been properly tested. Neighbourhood socio-economic disadvantage is also often assumed to influence reporting, but empirical support is limited. This study examines the effects of these three characteristics on Dutch victims' reporting decision. Data from a large-scale victimization survey are merged with data on characteristics of neighbourhoods to test the hypotheses. Hierarchical logistic modelling is used to analyse the nested data. The results show that, in addition to crime and victim features, neighbourhood social cohesion and socio-economic disadvantage affect reporting. Neighbourhood confidence in police effectiveness does not have an effect.

Regression Diagnostics: Identifying Influential Data and Sources of Collinearity

Abstract: 1. Introduction and Overview. 2. Detecting Influential Observations and Outliers. 3. Detecting and Assessing Collinearity. 4. Applications and Remedies. 5. Research Issues and Directions for Extensions. Bibliography. Author Index. Subject Index.

A Treatise on the Family

Abstract: A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

Thinking fast and slow.

Abstract: In 1974 an article appeared in Science magazine with the dry-sounding title “Judgment Under Uncertainty: Heuristics and Biases” by a pair of psychologists who were not well known outside their discipline of decision theory. In it Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman introduced the world to Prospect Theory, which mapped out how humans actually behave when faced with decisions about gains and losses, in contrast to how economists assumed that people behave. Prospect Theory turned Economics on its head by demonstrating through a series of ingenious experiments that people are much more concerned with losses than they are with gains, and that framing a choice from one perspective or the other will result in decisions that are exactly the opposite of each other, even if the outcomes are monetarily the same. Prospect Theory led cognitive psychology in a new direction that began to uncover other human biases in thinking that are probably not learned but are part of our brain’s wiring.