Showing papers in "Journal of Quantitative Criminology in 2012"

Scaling criminal offending.

Abstract: This paper reviews a century of research on creating theoretically meaningful and empirically useful scales of criminal offending and illustrates their strengths and weaknesses. The history of scaling criminal offending is traced in a detailed literature review focusing on the issues of seriousness, unidimensionality, frequency, and additivity of offending. Modern practice in scaling criminal offending is measured using a survey of 130 articles published in five leading criminology journals over a two-year period that included a scale of individual offending as either an independent or dependent variable. Six scaling methods commonly used in contemporary criminological research are demonstrated and assessed using the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979: dichotomous, frequency, weighted frequency, variety, summed category, and item response theory ‘theta’. The discipline of criminology has seen numerous scaling techniques introduced and forgotten. While no clearly superior method dominates the field today, the most commonly used scaling techniques are dichotomous and frequency scales, both of which are fraught with methodological pitfalls including sensitivity to the least serious offenses. Variety scales are the preferred criminal offending scale because they are relatively easy to construct, possess high reliability and validity, and are not compromised by high frequency non-serious crime types.

Seasonal Cycles in Crime, and Their Variability

Abstract: Seasonal crime patterns have been a topic of sustained criminological research for more than a century. Results in the area are often conflicting, however, and no firm consensus exists on many points. The current study uses a long time series and a large areal sample to obtain more detailed seasonality estimates than have been available in the past. The findings show that all major crime rates exhibit seasonal behavior, and that most follow similar cycles. The existence of seasonal patterns is not explainable by monthly temperature differences between areas, but seasonality and temperature variations do interact with each other. These findings imply that seasonal fluctuations have both environmental and social components, which can combine to create different patterns from one location to another.

Space–Time Modeling of Insurgency and Counterinsurgency in Iraq

Abstract: The US and its Coalition partners concluded combat operations in Iraq in August 2010. Rather surprisingly, little empirical evidence exists as to the factors that contributed to the ebb and flow in levels of violence and the emergence and disappearance of hot spots of hostilities during the campaign. Building upon a tradition of criminology scholarship, recent work demonstrates that Improvised Explosive Device (IED) attacks are clustered in space and time and that these trends decay in a manner similar to that observed in the spread of disease and crime. The current study extends this work by addressing a key potential correlate of these observed patterns across Iraq—namely, the timing and location of a variety of Coalition counterinsurgency (COIN) operations. This is achieved by assessing the co-evolving space–time distributions of insurgency and counterinsurgency in the first 6 months of 2005. To do so, we employ a novel analytic technique that helps us to assess the sequential relationship between these two event types. Our analyses suggest that the number of COIN operations that follow insurgent IED attacks (moderately) exceeds expectation (assuming that events are independent) for localities in the vicinity of an attack. This pattern is more consistent than is observed for the relationship in the opposite direction. The findings also suggest that less discriminatory COIN operations are associated with an elevated occurrence of subsequent insurgency in the vicinity of COIN operations in the medium to long term, whilst for more discriminatory and capacity-reducing COIN operations the reverse appears to be true.

American Terrorism and Extremist Crime Data Sources and Selectivity Bias: An Investigation Focusing on Homicide Events Committed by Far-Right Extremists

Abstract: This paper examines the reliability of the methods used to capture homicide events committed by far-right extremists in a number of open source terrorism data sources. Although the number of research studies that use open source data to examine terrorism has grown dramatically in the last 10 years, there has yet to be a study that examines issues related to selectivity bias. After reviewing limitations of existing terrorism studies and the major sources of data on terrorism and violent extremist criminal activity, we compare the estimates of these homicide events from 10 sources used to create the United States Extremist Crime Database (ECDB). We document incidents that sources either incorrectly exclude or include based upon their inclusion criteria. We use a “catchment-re-catchment” analysis and find that the inclusion of additional sources result in decreasing numbers of target events not identified in previous sources and a steadily increasing number of events that were identified in any of the previous data sources. This finding indicates that collectively the sources are approaching capturing the universe of eligible events. Next, we assess the effects of procedural differences on these estimates. We find considerable variation in the number of events captured by sources. Sources include some events that are contrary to their inclusion criteria and exclude others that meet their criteria. Importantly, though, the attributes of victim, suspect, and incident characteristics are generally similar across data source. This finding supports the notion that scholars using open-source data are using data that is representative of the larger universe they are interested in. The implications for terrorism and open source research are discussed.

Spatial and Temporal Patterns of Terrorist Attacks by ETA 1970 to 2007

Abstract: Rational choice perspectives maintain that seemingly irrational behavior on the part of terrorist organizations may nevertheless reflect strategic planning. In this paper we examine spatial and temporal patterns of terrorist attacks by the Spanish group ETA between 1970 and 2007. Our analysis is guided by a public announcement by ETA in 1978 that the group would shift from emphasizing attacks in the Basque territory to instead launch attacks more widely in the hopes of exhausting the Spanish government and forcing it to abandon the Basque territory. This announcement suggests that prior to the end of 1978 ETA attacks were based mostly on controlling territory in the Basque region that they hoped to rule; and after 1978 the organization decided to instead undertake a prolonged war of attrition. Accordingly, we argue that before the end of 1978 ETA was mostly perpetrating control attacks (attacking only within the Basque territories) and that the diffusion of attacks between provinces was mostly contagious (spreading contiguously). After the 1978 proclamation, we argue that the attack strategy shifted toward attrition (attacking in areas outside of the Basque territories) and that the attacks were more likely to diffuse hierarchically (spreading to more distant locations). As predicted, we find that after ETA moved toward a more attrition based attack strategy, subsequent attacks were significantly more likely to occur outside the Basque region and to target non-adjacent regions (consistent with hierarchical diffusion). We also find that hierarchical diffusion was more common when a longer time elapsed between attacks (a likely consequence of the fact that more distant attacks require more resources and planning) and that attacks against Madrid were unlikely to be followed immediately by more attacks on Madrid or surrounding provinces. After ETA announced a shift in policy, they maintained a highly dispersed attack strategy even during their period of decline. Using information about where and when prior attacks occurred could provide useful information for policy makers countering groups like ETA.

Genetic and Environmental Overlap between Low Self-Control and Delinquency

Abstract: Low self-control has emerged as a consistent and strong predictor of antisocial and delinquent behaviors. Using the twin subsample of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health), genetic analyses were conducted to examine the genetic and environmental contributions to low self-control and offending as well as to their relationship with one another. The results revealed that low self-control and criminal behaviors are influenced by genetic and nonshared environmental factors with the effects of shared environmental factors being negligible. In addition, the co-variation between low self-control and criminal behaviors appears to be largely due to common genetic and nonshared environmental factors operating on both phenotypes. The implications of these findings on the current understanding of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime are discussed.

A Comparison of Ideologically-Motivated Homicides from the New Extremist Crime Database and Homicides from the Supplementary Homicide Reports Using Multiple Imputation by Chained Equations to Handle Missing Values

Abstract: This study took advantage of the new open-source Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) to overcome obstacles to studying domestic far-right terrorism from a criminological perspective. In the past, exclusive definitions and inclusion criteria have limited available data on violent crimes committed by domestic far-right terrorists, and official data on violent crimes fail to capture offenders’ links to domestic far-right terrorism and ideological motivation (e.g., anti-government, anti-abortion, anti-religion). Therefore, little is known about the nature of far-right terrorist violence and how such violence is similar to and different from routine or more common forms of violence. Focusing on homicides, this study addressed why and how open-source terrorism data and official crime data can be comparatively analyzed. In doing so, we also demonstrate the utility of synthesizing terrorism and official crime data sources. Data on 108 far-right terrorist homicides were taken from the ECDB. Data on 540 common homicides (five comparison homicides for each far-right terrorist homicide) were randomly sampled from the 2000 Supplementary Homicide Reports. Using multiple imputation by chained equations and logistic regression, we imputed missing values and estimated models to compare the two homicide types on 12 different victim, offender, and event characteristics. Relative to common homicides, we found that far-right terrorist homicides were significantly more likely to have white offenders, multiple victims, multiple offenders, and to occur between strangers, and they were significantly less likely to have white victims, to be carried out with a firearm, and to occur in cities with more than 100,000 residents.

Post-release Employment and Recidivism in Norway

Abstract: Investigate the transition from prison to employment and the relationship between post-release employment and recidivism. We use a sample of every person released from Norwegian prisons in 2003 (N = 7,476), and they are followed through 2006 with monthly measures. We estimate the time to recidivism using discrete time survival models, conditioning upon both pre-release characteristics and post-release time-varying covariates (employment, educational enrollment and participation in labor market programs). The majority of former inmates were employed at some point in our data window, but it took approximately 30 months for 30% of them to become employed. The hazard of recidivism is substantially lower (0.12, p < .001) when former inmates are employed compared with unemployed, although observable individual characteristics can account for a large share of this association (0.50, p < .001, after adjustment). The negative association between employment and recidivism remains when controlling for other post-release statuses. Although post-release employment periods are associated with a lower risk of recidivism for all categories of principal offence, the magnitude of the association varies. The association is smaller for those receiving social benefits. The findings are consistent with theories suggesting that employment reduces the risk of recidivism.

Racial Context and Crime Reporting: A Test of Black’s Stratification Hypothesis

Abstract: Contextual factors that contribute to race differences in reporting crime to the police are an important element in Donald Black’s theory of the behavior of the law, yet few studies have investigated whether these differences vary depending on social context. The present study investigates whether the relationships between victim and offender race and the reporting of crime are moderated by the level of racial stratification in a given place as Black’s stratification hypothesis would predict. Using victim survey data from 40 metropolitan areas, as well as data from other sources, we find results that are consistent with Black’s stratification hypothesis, namely, that victim and offender race are more strongly associated with the reporting of crime in those metropolitan areas where the gap in economic status between blacks and whites is larger and the groups are more residentially segregated. The theory, however, is unable to account for the high rates of reporting of black-on-black assaults found across the 40 metropolitan areas. The question of how the needs of black victims may outweigh their reluctance to call the police is an important issue for future research.

Exploratory Space–Time Analysis of Burglary Patterns

Abstract: This paper introduces two new methods for the exploratory analysis of the spatial and temporal dynamics of residential burglary patterns. The first is a conditional spatial Markov chain which considers the extent to which a location’s probability of experiencing a residential burglary in a future period is related to the prevalence of residential burglaries in its surrounding neighborhood in an initial period. The second measure extends this conditional perspective to examine the joint evolution of residential burglary in a location and its surrounding neighborhood. These methods are applied to a case study of residential burglary patterns in Mesa, Arizona over the period October 2005 through December 2009. Strong patterns of spatial clustering of burglary activity are present in each year, and this clustering is found to have an important influence on both the conditional and joint evolution of burglary activity across space and time.

Is Plea Bargaining in the “Shadow of the Trial” a Mirage?

Abstract: It has been well established that a “plea discount” or “trial penalty” exists, such that defendants who plead guilty receive significant sentencing discounts relative to what they would receive if convicted at trial. Theorists argue that the exact value of this plea discount is determined by bargaining “in the shadow of a trial,” meaning that plea decision-making is premised on the perceived probable outcome of a trial. In trials, the strength of the evidence against defendants greatly impacts the probability of conviction. In the present study, we estimate the probability of conviction at the individual level for those who pled guilty. We find that, contrary to the shadow of the trial model, evidentiary factors either do not impact or negatively impact the probability of conviction, which stands in stark contrast to the impact evidence has at trials. These findings suggest that plea bargain decision-making may not occur in the shadow of the trial.

“Because You’re Mine, I Walk the Line”? Marriage, Spousal Criminality, and Criminal Offending Over the Life Course

Abstract: This study is an analysis of the relationship between marriage and crime in a high-risk sample of Dutch men and women. Marriages are classified as to whether the spouse had been convicted of a crime prior to the marriage, in order to ascertain if one’s criminal career after marriage unfolds differently depending on the criminal history of one’s spouse. Data are from the Criminal Career and Life-Course Study, a random sample of all individuals convicted of a criminal offense in the Netherlands in 1977 (N = 4,615). Lifetime criminal histories for all subjects are constructed from age 12 to calendar year 2003. Official marriage records are also consulted, and the criminal history of all spouses are similarly constructed. Fixed-effects Poisson models are estimated to quantify the relationship between marriage, spousal criminality, and conviction frequency, controlling for age, parenthood, prior conviction, and prior incarceration. Among men, marriage reduces the frequency of criminal conviction, but only if the marriage is to a non-convicted spouse. Marriage to a convicted spouse, on the other hand, is indistinguishable from singlehood—it neither discourages nor promotes criminal behavior. Among women, marriage has a crime-reducing effect, regardless of the criminal history of the spouse. A set of preliminary follow-up analyses suggests further that men with more extensive criminal histories, and with more stable marriages, benefit in a more pronounced way from marriage to a non-convicted spouse. However, even unstable marriages to non-convicted spouses appear to reduce conviction frequency while they last. Marriage is indeed a salient transition in the criminal career, but there are important differences depending on the characteristics of the offender (gender, criminal history), the characteristics of the spouse (criminal history), and the characteristics of the marriage (duration). The authors conclude that while marriage matters, it does not necessarily mean the end of a criminal career, and that processes of both partner selection and partner influence deserve close attention by marriage-crime researchers. Qualifications of the study’s findings include the use of conviction data from official sources, the use of a sample of men and women who were all convicted of a crime at some point in their lives, the study of legal marriage in the Netherlands, and the inability to measure potential mechanisms for the observed marriage effects.

Patterns of Onset and Decline Among Terrorist Organizations

Abstract: Despite considerable speculation among terrorism researchers regarding the conditions leading to organizational desistance from terrorism, quantitative analysis of terrorism frequently focuses on terrorist attacks as the unit of analysis, resulting in a near complete absence of analyses of terrorist organizations themselves. Moreover, research on organizations that engage in terrorism has generally been limited to case studies of individual organizations. Toward a more general understanding of what conditions predict organizational desistance from terrorism, this study uses newly available data from the Global Terrorism Database to analyze the terrorist activity of 557 organizations that were active for at least 365 days between 1970 and 2008. Much like research on conventional crime, prior research on terrorism has focused almost exclusively on the onset of criminal behavior and has neglected determinants of declining activity. Here I use group-based trajectory models to investigate patterns of decline in organization-level terrorist activity. In particular I examine how patterns of onset relate to patterns of decline among these organizations. I first estimate the trajectory models for the organizations’ frequency of attacks, and then calculate the annual ratio of attacks to attacks-at-peak for each organization in order to isolate patterns of decline, independent of the magnitude of activity. I then repeat the trajectory analysis to determine if the relative shape of the organizational trajectory has significance beyond the overall frequency of attacks. I find that the speed and magnitude of an organization’s emergence are correlated with its longevity such that those organizations characterized by rapid onset are two to three times more likely than those characterized by moderate onset to reach moderate or high levels of attacks per year. Likewise, as the rate and overall volume of attacks at onset increase, so does the likelihood that the group will follow a persistent pattern of decline. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of patterns of decline among terrorist organizations for research and policy.

Microcycles of violence: evidence from terrorist attacks by ETA and the FMLN

Abstract: Recent research has demonstrated that individual crimes elevate the risk for subsequent crimes nearby, a phenomenon termed “near-repeats.” Yet these assessments only reveal global patterns of event interdependence, ignoring the possibility that individual events may be part of localized bursts of activity, or microcycles. In this study, we propose a method for identifying and analyzing criminal microcycles; groups of events that are proximate to each other in both space and time. We use the Global Terrorism Database (GTD) to analyze over 4,000 terrorist attacks attributed to the FMLN in El Salvador and the ETA in Spain; two terrorist organizations that were both extremely active and violent but differed greatly in terms of history, grievances and motives. Based on the definition developed, we find strong support for the conclusion that many of the terrorist attacks attributed to these two distinctive groups were part of violent microcycles and that the spatio-temporal attack patterns of these two groups exhibit substantial similarities. Our logistic regression analysis shows that for both ETA and the FMLN, compared to other tactics used by terrorists, bombings and non-lethal attacks are more likely to be part of microcycles and that compared to attacks which occur elsewhere, attacks aimed at national or provincial capitals or areas of specific strategic interest to the terrorist organization are more likely to be part of microcycles. Finally, for the FMLN only, compared to other attacks, those on military and government targets were more likely part of microcycles. We argue that these methods could be useful more generally for understanding the situational and temporal distribution of crime.

Race, Space, and Violence: Exploring Spatial Dependence in Structural Covariates of White and Black Violent Crime in US Counties

Abstract: To join the literature on spatial analysis with research testing the racial invariance hypothesis by examining the extent to which claims of racial invariance are sensitive to the spatial dynamics of community structure and crime. Using 1999–2001 county-level arrest data, we employ seemingly unrelated regression models, spatial lag models, and geographically weighted regression analyses to (1) compare the extent of racial similarity/difference across these different modeling procedures, (2) evaluate the impact of spatial dependence on violent crime across racial groups, and (3) explore spatial heterogeneity in associations between macro-structural characteristics and violent crime. Results indicate that spatial processes matter, that they are more strongly associated with white than black violent crime, and that accounting for space does not significantly attenuate race-group differences in the relationship between structural characteristics (e.g., structural disadvantage) and violent crime. Additionally, we find evidence of significant variation across space in the relationships between county characteristics and white and black violent crime, suggesting that conclusions of racial invariance/variation are sensitive to where one is looking. These results are robust to different specifications of the dependent variable as well as different units of analysis. Our study suggests the racial invariance debate is not yet settled. More importantly, our study has revealed an additional level of complexity—race specific patterns of spatially heterogeneous effects—that future research on social structure and racial differences in violence should incorporate both empirically and theoretically.

Hyperbolic Time Discounting, Offender Time Preferences and Deterrence

Abstract: Objectives This study examines the phenomena of intertemporal decision making—decisions involving costs and benefits that occur at different points in time. Two models of intertemporal time discounting are the exponential and hyperbolic models. Previous work in behavioral economics and psychology is relied on to make the case that the discounting of delayed outcomes (both gains and losses) may be hyperbolic rather than exponential.

Having a Bad Month: General Versus Specific Effects of Stress on Crime

Abstract: We examine whether particular types of stress are related to particular types of crime or whether all types of stress are related to all types of crime. Our estimates are based on analyses of within-individual change over a 36 month period among recently incarcerated offenders. We find that assault is most strongly related to family stress, suggesting that conflicts between family members lead to assault. Economic crimes (property crimes and selling illicit drugs) are most clearly related to financial stress, suggesting that these crimes often reflect attempts to resolve financial problems. On the other hand, crime is generally unrelated to stress from illness/injury, death, and work. The results support the idea that criminal behavior is a focused response to specific types of problems rather than a general response to stress. They are more consistent with explanations that focus on perceived rewards and costs (e.g., the rational-choice approach) than with explanations that portray negative affect as a generalized impetus toward violence or crime (e.g., frustration aggression approaches).

The Transcendence of Violence Across Relationships: New Methods for Understanding Men’s and Women’s Experiences of Intimate Partner Violence Across the Life Course

Abstract: The notion of transitions is an increasingly central concept in contemporary criminology and such issues are particularly significant in the study of intimate partner violence (IPV). Here, attention focuses on relationship dynamics and movement into and out of relationships for understanding long-term patterns of victimization over the life course. Still, a focus on transitions raises questions about how IPV is patterned over time and across relationships and how this contributes to stability and change in victimization risk over the life span. Our study examines this issue using data from the National Violence Against Women Survey. Findings from latent transition analyses reveal strong evidence for change in victimization experiences across the life course. Among women, those who experienced serious, multifaceted violence are most likely to transition out of relationships followed by transition into subsequent relationships characterized by conflict and aggression and a similar pattern is observed among men. At the same time, men who experience physical aggression in previous relationships are most likely to transition into non-violent relationships, while women with similar experiences are much less differentiated in the types of relationships they enter into. When we account for background characteristics (e.g., respondent’s race, education, and age) and childhood experiences of parental violence, the latter is particularly significant in accounting for exposure to serious IPV in later adulthood. Such findings extend our understanding of how life course transitions connect to violence and offending and highlight processes of continuity and change beyond the traditional focus on criminal offending.

Neighborhood Cultural Heterogeneity and Adolescent Violence

Abstract: A small number of scholars have attempted to reorient current thinking about the way cultural effects operate in poor neighborhoods. Scholars argue that socioeconomic disadvantage fosters heterogeneity in cultural models. Moreover, cultural heterogeneity theoretically plays an important role in shaping adolescent decision-making in poor neighborhoods, including decisions related to violent behavior. We test these assumptions using multilevel data comprised of a sample of African-American adolescents. Our findings lend support to these arguments. In particular, the results suggested that neighborhood structural disadvantage increases the degree of disagreement or heterogeneity regarding the inappropriateness of violence. Further, exposure to cultural heterogeneity increased adolescents’ involvement in violent behavior and had a moderating influence on the link between individual frames and adolescent violent behavior.

Does Self-Control Influence Maternal Attachment? A Reciprocal Effects Analysis from Early Childhood Through Middle Adolescence

Abstract: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study assesses the extent to which self-control and maternal attachment mutually influence one another. Second, it investigates whether this process continues to occur during adolescence. To date, studies of the etiology of self-control have yet to adequately address these issues, despite the fact that a number of theoretical perspectives emphasize the reciprocal nature of the parent-child relationship. The current study seeks to shed light on these issues by examining the relationship between self-control and maternal attachment using structural equation modeling for eight waves of data spanning a period of time that encompasses early childhood through middle adolescence. The results yield two findings bearing on the adequacy of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s model of self-control development. First, measures of self-control and maternal attachment were found to mutually influence one another during childhood. Second, these effects were reduced to nonsignificance during adolescence. This study finds that self-control emerges during childhood in a complex manner in which it both shapes and is shaped by parental attachment.

Cross-Classified Multilevel Models: An Application to the Criminal Case Processing of Indicted Terrorists

Abstract: This study provides an application of cross-classified multilevel models to the study of early case processing outcomes for suspected terrorists in U.S. federal district courts. Because suspected terrorists are simultaneously nested within terrorist organizations and criminal court environments, they are characterized by overlapping data hierarchies that involve cross-nested ecological contexts. Cross-classified models provide a useful but underutilized approach for analyzing such data. Using the American Terrorism Study (ATS), this research examines case dismissals, trial adjudications and criminal convictions for a sample of 574 terrorist suspects. Findings indicate that diverse factors affect case processing outcomes, including legal factors such as the number of counts, number of co-defendants, and statute of indictment, extralegal factors such as the ethnicity of the offender, and incident characteristics such as the type of terrorism target. Case processing outcomes also vary significantly across both terrorist groups and criminal courts and are partially explained by select group and court characteristics including the type of terrorist organization and the terrorism trial rate of the court. Results are discussed vis-a-vis contemporary research on terrorism punishments and future directions are suggested for additional applications of cross-classified models in criminological research.

Examining What Makes Violent Crime Victims Unique: Extending Statistical Methods for Studying Specialization to the Analysis of Crime Victims

Abstract: Objectives Much victimization research focuses on specific types of crime victims, which implies that the factors responsible for some victimization outcomes are distinct from others. Recent developments in victimization theory, however, take a more general approach, postulating that victimization regardless of type will share a similar basic etiology. This research examines how and whether the risk factors that are associated with violent victimization significantly differ from those that predict nonviolent victimization.

Cycles in Crime and Economy: Leading, Lagging and Coincident Behaviors

Abstract: In the last decades, the interest in the relationship between crime and business cycle has widely increased. It is a diffused opinion that a causal relationship goes from economic variables to criminal activities, but this causal effect is observed only for some typology of crimes, such as property crimes. In this work we examine the possibility of the existence of some common factors (interpreted as cyclical components) driving the dynamics of Gross Domestic Product and a large set of criminal types by using the nonparametric version of the dynamic factor model. A first aim of this exercise is to detect some comovements between the business cycle and the cyclical component of some typologies of crime, which could evidence some relationships between these variables; a second purpose is to select which crime types are related to the business cycle and if they are leading, coincident or lagging. Italy is the case study for the time span 1991:1–2004:12; the crime typologies are constituted by the 22 official categories classified by the Italian National Statistical Institute. The study finds that most of the crime types show a counter-cyclical behavior with respect to the overall economic performance, and only a few of them have an evident relationship with the business cycle. Furthermore, some crime offenses, such as bankruptcy, embezzlement and fraudulent insolvency, seem to anticipate the business cycle, in line with recent global events.

Non-response bias with a web-based survey of college students: differences from a classroom survey about carrying concealed handguns

Abstract: Internet-based and e-mail surveys represent viable administrative methods for efficiently collecting data. These methods appear to be particularly well-suited for studying college student populations, a group that has gained attention from criminologists interested in testing theories. An important concern with administering surveys with the Internet and via e-mail is that of non-response bias. Despite the appeal of online surveys, nonresponse bias associated with these methods has not been sufficiently investigated. The study described here estimates nonresponse bias associated with a web-administered survey that measured opinions about changing concealed handgun carrying laws on college campuses, items likely to elicit polarizing opinions. Results show important substantive differences between web-administered and in-class versions of the survey. Students who responded to the web survey expressed more extreme opinions and behavioral responses to a proposed policy that would allow concealed handgun carrying on campus. Survey researchers who utilize web-based administrative methods should consider using multiple sources of leverage when soliciting participation and must carefully evaluate sample representativeness.

Editor’s Introduction: Quantitative Approaches to the Study of Terrorism

Abstract: Although criminological research on terrorism has expanded dramatically since the 1970s, it has generally not been noteworthy as an area that has generated cutting edge methodological and statistical innovations. In an encyclopedic review of research on terrorism, Schmid and Jongman (1988:177) identified more than 6,000 published works but point out that much of the research is ‘‘impressionistic, superficial (and offers) ... far-reaching generalizations on the basis of episodic evidence.’’ More recently, Silke (2001) concluded that only three percent of articles in journals that reported terrorism research used inferential statistical analysis compared to 86% of articles in forensic psychology and 60% in criminology. Victoroff (2005:34) similarly concluded that there were more psychological terrorism theories than empirical studies, and ‘‘even the small amount of psychological research is largely flawed, rarely having been based on scientific methods using normal and validated measures of psychological states, comparing direct examination of individuals with appropriate controls, and testing hypotheses with accepted statistical methods.’’ Lum et al. (2006) reviewed more than 20,000 articles on terrorism published between 1971 and 2004 and found that only seven met their criteria of being moderately rigorous evaluation studies. But as the contributions to this special issue of the JQC illustrate, the situation with regard to quantitative approaches to the study of terrorism has begun to rapidly change. Spurred on by expanded funding opportunities, especially from the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate, the National Institute of Justice and the National Science Foundation, we are witnessing a huge growth in the depth and sophistication of the criminological research literature on terrorism. These developments have also been aided by the creation of DHS’s Centers of Excellence program, and more recently, by the Department of Defense funded Minerva program. Research on terrorism arguably represents one of the major growth areas in social science scholarship

Race and Women’s Imprisonment: Poverty, African American Presence, and Social Welfare

Abstract: Female imprisonment rates have increased proportionately more than male imprisonment rates over recent decades There are substantial race differences in women’s rates, as is the case for men Yet, there has been little quantitative research on the correlates of women’s imprisonment using data over time, or on potential race differences in those correlates The present research analyzes data on black and nonblack female imprisonment rates in the 50 states for the period 1981–2003 The analyses are guided substantively by existing research on race, social threat and criminal punishment, and theory and research on the penal-welfare hypothesis The study uses bivariate-response multilevel modeling to simultaneously examine the factors associated with black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates The results show that black female imprisonment rates increase when the concentration of African Americans in metropolitan areas and poverty rates grow, whereas nonblack female imprisonment rates are unaffected by poverty rates and actually decrease when African American populations become more concentrated in metro areas Both black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates increase when welfare spending declines The results are consistent with social threat perspectives and the penal-welfare hypotheses

Specialized Versus Versatile Intergenerational Transmission of Violence: A New Approach to Studying Intergenerational Transmission from Violent Versus Non-Violent Fathers: Latent Class Analysis

Abstract: This paper investigates whether fathers who have been convicted of a violent offense transmit criminal and violent behavior more strongly than fathers who were convicted, but never for violence. First, a more traditional approach was taken where offending fathers were divided into two groups based on whether they had a violence conviction. Secondly, Latent Class Analysis (LCA) was performed to identify two classes of fathers, one of which was characterized as violent. Sons of fathers in this class had a higher risk of violent convictions compared with sons whose fathers were in the other class.

Estimating Country-Level Terrorism Trends Using Group-Based Trajectory Analyses: Latent Class Growth Analysis and General Mixture Modeling

Abstract: Recent criminological research has used latent class growth analysis (LCGA), a form of group-based trajectory analysis, to identify distinct terrorism trends and areas of high terrorism activity at the country-level The current study contributes to the literature by assessing the robustness of recent findings generated by one type of group-based analysis, LCGA, to changes in measurement and statistical methodology Using data from the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), we consider the challenges and advantages of applying group-based analysis to macro-level terrorism data We summarize and classify country-level patterns of domestic and transnational terrorism using two types of group-based analyses, LCGA and an alternative yet similar modeling approach, general mixture modeling (GMM) We evaluate the results from each approach using both substantive and empirical criteria, highlighting the similarities and differences provided by both techniques We conclude that both group-based models have utility for terrorism research, yet for the purposes of identifying hot spots of terrorist activity, LCGA results provide greater policy utility

Integrated Theory and Crimes of Trust

Abstract: The integrated theory first proposed by Elliott et al. (1979), combining strain, social control, and social learning (and sometimes social disorganization) theories, has been repeatedly tested and consistently supported for a wide range of behaviors including licit and illicit substance use, violence, and other forms of illegal behavior. It has not, however, been tested for a class of illegal behaviors best described as crimes of trust, which include different types of fraud, workplace theft, and income tax evasion. This category of offending includes offenses commonly regarded as white collar crime, and also offenses that have been more or less marginal to the study of white collar crime. The present paper tests the integrated theory specifically for crimes of trust in the National Youth Survey Family Study, a national, multigenerational sample of individuals whose focal respondents were 11–17 years old in 1976–1977, and who are now in middle adulthood. Relying on structural equation modeling (SEM), parallel tests are performed for two generations, the focal respondents in early middle age (ages 38–45) and their adult offspring (ages 18–24) for the period 2002–2004.

The Moving Home Effect: A Quasi Experiment Assessing Effect of Home Location on the Offence Location

Abstract: Objectives This study aims to test whether the home location has a causal effect on the crime location. To accomplish this the study capitalizes on the natural experiment that occurs when offender’s move, and uses a unique metric, the distance between sequential offenses, to determine if when an offender moves the offense location changes.