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The absence of a consistent positive effect of the unemployment rate on the crime rate is perplexing, but it may be partly due to the countervailing effect of guardianship. Using weekly state-level data and a pooled cross-sectional time-series research design, we investigate whether the unemployment rate influences residential burglary. This study contributes to the extant literature by distinguishing between weekday residential burglaries, or those burglaries that occur between the hours of 6 am to 6 pm on weekdays, from weeknight/weekend burglaries. If unemployment increases guardianship because previously employed individuals are now at home during the workday protecting their possessions, the expectation is that the unemployment rate will have an instantaneous negative effect on residential burglaries that transpire during normal working hours. Results buttress the logic associated with the guardianship thesis in that a rise in the unemployment rate only engenders a decrease in weekday residential burglaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While past research has considered the effects of police organizational characteristics on various outcomes, including arrest rates, relatively little research has explored the role of the racial composition of the police and its association with race-specific arrest rates. Furthermore, no research has explored the association between arrest probabilities for Black and White offenders and police organizational factors. Using data from the 2000 National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the 2000 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), and the 2000 decennial Census, the present exploratory study employs multilevel modeling to examine the association between police organizational factors including the percentage of the police force that is Black and arrest probabilities for offenders involved in 19,099 aggravated assaults and 100,859 simple assaults across 105 small cities. Results show that for simple assaults, the relative size of the Black police force is associated with the risk of arrest for both Black and White offenders. Furthermore, departments with relatively more Black police officers are found to have the largest gap in the arrest probabilities for White and Black offenders, although Whites are more likely to be arrested for assaults than Blacks, regardless of the racial composition of the police. Results also show those departments with more written policy directives, relatively larger administrative component, a higher educational-level requirement, and centralized police departments have the highest arrest probabilities. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between gender and criminal sentencing is examined by using longitudinal data from the State of Minnesota. Employing regression time-series analysis, we test whether gender-specific levels of prison crowding interact with mitigated departures from Minnesota's sentencing guidelines in mediating the relationship between gender and rate of imprisonment. Results suggest that legally mandated sentencing factors are important in determining severity of sanction for both males and females, but that male offenders are more likely than females to receive mitigated departures when crowding levels are high in male prisons. This relationship exists even though the women's prison in Minnesota is actually more overcrowded than the male prisons. Such findings, which contradict previous research on determinate sentencing, highlight the complexity and difficulty of isolating the effect of gender on criminal sentencing. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]