Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper contributes to the literature assessing the relationship between community structural characteristics, community dynamics and crime by replicating and extending the work of Sampson et al. (1997). For this replication we use data incorporating census data, community survey data and police calls for service data. In the community survey used in this data collection, collective efficacy was measured with questions identical to those used in the PHDCN. With this measure, these data allow a replication and extension of the ecological model originally tested by Sampson et al. (1997). Replication of this work is critical in light of evidence demonstrating that the relationship between community dynamics and crime varies from community to community (Elliott et al. 1996). The data upon which the current work is based were drawn from Mesa Arizona a community with demographic characteristics clearly distinct from Chicago IL. Results based on these data will inform the generalizability of Sampson et al.’s (1997) results. In addition to replication, we also extend Sampson et al.’s ecological model by testing the relationship between community structural characteristics, collective efficacy and drug sales and use as well as property crime and violence.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The overall purpose of this study was to compare the role of four nationally influential print news sources (the New York Times, the Washington Post, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report) with the role of network TV news in accounting for variance in public perceptions of crime as “the most important problem facing this country today” (MIP) from 1980 through 2001. MIP data were obtained from 25 national Gallup Poll surveys. A Lexis-Nexis online-archive search produced 4,696 print media crime news stories for analysis. An existing database of network TV news stories (Lowry, Nio & Leitner, 2003) was also used. Results indicated that print media crime stories accounted for a significant proportion of variance in MIP from 1980 to 1993, but not from 1994 to 2001. The subjective reality of crime was influenced significantly more by network TV crime coverage than it was by either (a) the crime coverage of four influential print media or (b) actual real-world crimes.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Most of the research conducted on sexual homicide and sexual murderers have focused on those individuals who killed an adult woman. Because of the difficulties related to collecting information on these offenders, very few empirical studies have looked specifically at sexual homicide of children. Three studies comparing sexual murderers of children to other groups (nonhomicidal child molesters, nonoffenders, incest offenders) have been conducted (Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg, Larose, & Curry, 1998; Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg, & Larose, 1997; Firestone, Bradford, Greenberg, & Nunes, 2000). Although these studies found interesting differences between homicidal child molesters and the other groups on psychological variables (e.g., PCL-R, deviant arousal, paraphilias, personality disorders), no comparisons were made on factors related to the crime. Moreover, Firestone and colleagues (1998) reported that “there is a limited amount of psychological research available on men who commit sexual murders, and no distinction has been made between those who have victimized adults and those who victimized children” (p. 306). Therefore, in order to better understand specifically sexual murderers of children (N = 11), comparisons with a group of sexual murderers of adult women (N = 66) on pre-crime, crime, and post-crime factors, were performed using bivariate statistics. Although the two groups present much more similarities than differences as to their crime, some of the significant differences and implications of the results will be discussed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Recent studies point to the potential theoretical and practical benefits of focusing police resources on crime hot spots. However, many scholars have noted that such approaches risk displacing crime or disorder to other places where programs are not in place. While much attention has been paid to the idea of displacement, methodological problems associated with its measurement have often been overlooked. Our study sought to fill these gaps in our measurement and understanding of displacement and the related phenomenon of diffusion of crime control benefits. Our main focus is on immediate spatial displacement or diffusion of crime to areas near the targeted sites of an intervention. Do focused crime prevention efforts at places simply result in a movement of offenders to areas nearby targeted sites—“do they simply move crime around the corner?” Or conversely, will a crime prevention effort focusing on specific places lead to improvement in areas nearby—what has come to be termed a diffusion of crime control benefits? Our data are drawn from a controlled study of displacement and diffusion in Jersey City, New Jersey. Two sites with substantial street-level crime and disorder were selected to be targeted and were carefully monitored during an experimental period. Two neighboring areas were selected to serve as “catchment areas” in order to assess immediate spatial displacement or diffusion. Intensive police interventions were applied to each target site but not applied to the catchment areas. Over 6,000 twenty-minute social observations were conducted in the target and catchment areas during the study period. These data were supplemented by interviews and ethnographic field observations. Our study shows that, at least for crime markets involving drugs and prostitution, crime does not simply move around the corner. Indeed, our study supports the position that the most likely outcome of such focused crime prevention efforts is a diffusion of crime control benefits to nearby areas.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The advertising blurb for a DVD series called “Straight from the Projects: Rappers that live the lyrics” boasts that “3 people were shot while our cameras were rolling...7 people...were shot and killed before the film was completed. This is the realest ghetto sh*t ever filmed!” In a dark irony, C-Murder, one of the rappers featured in the DVD, has since been sentenced to life in prison for murder and his police mug shot is prominently displayed on the March 2004 cover of hip hop magazine, The Source, along with the mug shots of nine other rap artists. The issue, “Hip-Hop Behind Bars: Are Rappers the New Target of America’s Criminal Justice System?”, describes the legal troubles of no fewer than thirty rappers, many of whom are multi-platinum selling artists that have been incarcerated, or who are awaiting sentencing for charges such as aggravated assault, gun possession, sexual assault, selling crack cocaine, robbery, and murder. Almost thirty years into America’s era of mass incarceration in which “6.5 million Americans are under criminal justice supervision representing one adult male in twenty, one black man in nine, and one young black man (ages 18 to 35) in three,” success for rap artists requires that they stand at the intersection of two industries: crime control and entertainment. Taking the rap music industry as a site of cultural production, this paper will explore the ways in which this industry produces a certain kind of discourse about the relationship between crime and the entertainment industry.