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Domestically and internationally, two prominent contemporary discourses arise in law and society. First, we live in a time of tremendous uncertainty about the nature and function of criminal justice. In the United States, we chronicle mass incarceration, while the international community weighs war crimes prosecutions in Ukraine. Second, we live in a time of polarization, both at home and abroad. Cultural and political division is elevated domestically, while the international community debates fragmentation in a multipolar world. This symposium contribution to the Fordham Urban Law Journal's 'Future of Prosecution' symposium asks: what does it mean to prosecute in a time of polarization? This contribution describes a prosecution-polarization dynamic, wherein criminal cases may foster polarization domestically and internationally. In making this argument, this symposium contribution will survey theories of philosophy, psychology, and sociology that show the complexity of social meaning. It argues that this dynamic thus complicates scholarly notions that criminal justice should do reparative work Domestically, some scholars argue that criminal justice should restore harmed victims or reconstruct torn community norms after a moral breach. Internationally, scholars contend that criminal tribunals should effecttransitional justice, promoting accountability for atrocity crimes--genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes--in order to heal post-conflict societies. And yet, often, indictment and prosecution have the opposite effect, fostering polarization and alienation., Introduction 1118 I. The Prosecution-Polarization Dynamic 1120 A. Defining Polarization 1120 B. Three Stages of Polarization 1123 II. Theorizing Social Meaning and Prosecution 1127 III. Justifying Democratization and Decriminalization 1132 [...]

We are, for a number of reasons, in an interesting moment for those focused on how societies govern crime, punishment, and security. First, in the last several years, these phenomena [...]

This article uses a new method to gauge eighteenth-century crime. It counts the crimes committed against metropolitan London's justices noted in newspapers and in the Old Bailey Sessions Papers, and finds crime more prevalent than current historiography acknowledges. The article contests current claims that the manner in which newspapers noted crime constructed their readers' perception of crime, making their readers believe crime was much more horrific, and the judicial system much more just, than readers would otherwise have thought they were. The article also argues that some crimes were attacks on the powerful because they were powerful. DOI: 10.1080/03071022.2010.510289

Byline: Peter Kitchen (1), Allison Williams (1) Keywords: Quality of life; Perceptions of crime, neighbourhood; Social cohesion Abstract: This article investigates the relationship between crime and quality of life in Saskatoon, Canada. The city has one of the highest crime rates in the country and has been referred to as the 'Crime Capital of Canada', a label that comes as a surprise to many residents and causes considerable concern among others. The aim of this research is to penetrate beyond sensational news headlines and bald crime statistics. The paper evaluates how perceptions of crime and safety affect the quality of life of residents living in neighbourhoods of different socio-economic status and geographic location. Both quantitative and qualitative time series data is analyzed in a sample of neighbourhoods over the period 2001--2004--2007. The findings of the data analysis are interpreted with respect to issues relating to the fear of crime, avoidance behaviour, risk minimization, social cohesion and community building. Author Affiliation: (1) McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada Article History: Registration Date: 19/01/2009 Received Date: 17/12/2008 Accepted Date: 19/01/2009 Online Date: 03/02/2009

Crime fell substantially in the United States between the early 1990s and 2005. This article examines the size and nature of crime reductions that occurred in cities and their surrounding suburbs and identifies the characteristics of cities experiencing greater declines. The authors then explore two questions: how these changes altered existing disparities in safety (or exposure to crime) among particular groups and the extent to which these reductions increased the relative attractiveness of cities and ultimately led to city growth. The authors find that reductions in crime contributed to the ability of cities to retain households that might otherwise have moved to the suburbs, although the measurable impact on overall city growth is modest at best. Additionally, reductions in crime clearly changed the geography of crime and dramatically reshaped differential exposure to crime among demographic groups. At the city and neighborhood level, the authors find that the distribution of crime reductions was highly 'progressive,' disproportionately benefiting historically disadvantaged groups. Keywords: crime; city growth; poverty; race DOI 10.1177/0002716209343547

One of the unintended consequences of decades-long public housing policy has been to concentrate the poor within communities that are at the extreme end of economic disadvantage. More than in other types of disadvantaged communities, living in public housing can sharply circumscribe the social world of its residents and isolate them from people and social institutions in surrounding areas. This study draws on the concepts of social isolation from urban sociology and offending 'awareness space' from environmental criminology to explain why violence rates are dramatically higher in public housing compared to otherwise disadvantaged nonpublic housing neighborhoods and, moreover, whether residents or outsiders are responsible for the violence. Using homicide data for the Southeast Policing Area of Los Angeles (1980 through 1999), and relating the location of homicides within and outside of public housing to the places of residence of both victims and offenders, our research reveals that public housing developments are hotbeds of violence involving predominantly local residents. There is no evidence that public housing serves as either a magnet for violence by drawing in nonlocal offenders, or a generator of violence in surrounding neighborhoods. We conclude that this social isolation from the larger community can both escalate violence between residents inside public housing, but also limit their offending awareness space, such that the violence is contained from spreading beyond the development. Keywords: public housing, social isolation, homicide, community, offender mobility.

Criminogenic conditions of Tallin, Estonia are described with regard to its development from a planned to a market-oriented economy. Theft, which displayed a geography that was similar to expressive crimes, is more frequent in Tallin than in the rest of the country. Patterns of expressive and acquisitive offenses in Tallin are analyzed using regression models, geographic information system and spatial statistical techniques.

A disjuncture between the reality of crime and its perception has created a culture of fear within South Africa that bolsters gated community development and an accompanying fear industry that supports media, private security companies, and a number of other industries that provide security apparatuses. Is the establishment of gated communities an irrational response to perceptions of crime in South Africa in the twenty-first century? Or, are they deemed necessary in a perceived culture of violence that exists in the country? The article explores these questions through ethnographic research with residents of a gated community and the security company hired to provide security for the estate reflecting on the reality and perceptions of crime in the 'New' South Africa. KEYWORDS: gated communities, South Africa, fear, crime, ethnography, Suburbs are surrounded by conceptual and real barriers, both by their history and their continued development throughout the world. Although not initially conceived as a popular destination to escape the [...]

Intense interest in disturbing child abductions by the mass media, public safety organizations, and the public has helped sustain a socially constructed mythology and sporadic 'moral panic' about the presumed pervasiveness of this threat to children. The result has often been reactionary 'memorial' legislation enacted in response to sensational cases. A recent example is the America's Missing Broadcast Emergency Response (AMBER) Alert system, which is designed to interrupt serious child kidnappings in progress by soliciting citizen tips to help officials quickly rescue victims. Drawing on available empirical evidence and theoretical considerations, the authors contend that AMBER Alert has not achieved and probably cannot achieve the ambitious goals that inspired its creation. In fact, AMBER Alert is arguably an example of what could be called crime control theater. It is a socially constructed 'solution' to a socially constructed problem, enabling public officials to symbolically address an essentially intractable threat. Despite laudable intentions, AMBER Alert exemplifies how crime control theater can create unintended problems, such as public backlash when the theatrical policy fails and a distorted public discourse about the nature of crime. Considerations for the future of AMBER Alert in particular, and the concept of crime control theater in general, are discussed. Keywords: AMBER Alert; child abduction; moral panic; social constructionism; crime control; crime control theater

This review of empirical research into the effects of media violence examines what has been learned from evidence and to what extent the evidence can be accepted at face value. This article reexamines debates about different data types, different methodologies, theoretical and explanatory models, directions of effect, and value of aggregated data sets. Limitations and weaknesses are identified in relation to the various methodological approaches and sources of evidence that have been featured in academic discussions and debates about media policy and content regulation. Although not dismissing the empirical research on this subject as valueless, this critique advises caution in accepting blanket conclusions about harmful effects of media violence, instead calling for a targeted approach that recognizes that some media consumers may be more susceptible than others to media effects and that media depictions of violence can vary in the risks they represent as potential triggers of unpleasant or harmful reactions among media consumers. Keywords: media violence; behavioral effects; violent entertainment; crime and media

This study examines the impact of criminal mobility on criminal earning patterns in a sample of incarcerated offenders who reported their criminal experiences over a three-year period. Criminal mobility is indicated by an individual's offending perimeter and not the traditional journey-to-crime measure. Findings reveal that the offending perimeter length is a factor of criminal achievement in that mobile offenders reported higher financial earnings from crime than immobile offenders. Greater distances traveled for crime were also generally associated with higher criminal earnings, but this was more salient for predatory offenders than market offenders. Keywords: spatial mobility; social network; criminal achievement

This longitudinal study evaluated associations among official rates of neighborhood crime, academic performance, and aggression in a sample of 581 children in 1st--3rd grade (6.3-10.6 years old). It was hypothesized that the influence of crime depends on children's unsupervised exposure to the neighborhood context through self-care. Average weekly hours in self-care were trichotomized into low (0-3), moderate (4-9), and high (10-15). Moderate and high amounts of self-care were linked to increased aggression and decreased academic performance for children from high-crime areas (11,230 crimes per 100,000 persons) but not average-crime areas, when the authors controlled for neighborhood, family, and child covariates. In high-crime areas, academic outcomes were more favorable when self-care occurred in combination with after-school program participation. Keywords: neighborhood, crime, after-school program, self-care, middle childhood

A growing body of research lends support to opportunity theory and its variants, but has yet to focus systematically on a number of specific offenses and contexts. Typically, the more crimes and contexts to which a theory applies, the broader its scope and range, respectively, and thus generalizability. In this paper, we focus on agricultural crime victimization--including theft of farm equipment, crops, livestock, and chemicals--an offense that opportunity theory appears well-situated to explain. Specifically, we examine whether key dimensions of the theory are empirically associated with the likelihood of victimization and also examine factors associated with farmers' use of guardianship measures. In contrast to much previous research, we combine multiple individual-level measures of these dimensions. We conclude that the theory partially accounts for variation in agricultural crime victimization, depending on the type of crime, and that greater work is needed investigating how key dimensions of opportunity theory should be conceptualized and operationalized in rural contexts. The study's implications for theory and practice are discussed.

Byline: Antoinette Louw (1) Keywords: crime; crime trends; fear of crime; public perceptions of crime; violence Abstract: Crime has become central to any discussion about the consolidation of democracy in South Africa. Concerns about crime intensified in the years after 1994, as the country attempted to grapple with the apparent 'crime wave' that accompanied the transition. A decade later crime is still a priority for government and a concern among citizens, but the clamour that characterised both state and civil society responses in the early years of democracy has receded (See the article by the author in Social Indicators Research 41: 137--168, 1997). This may relate to the decrease in crime levels as reflected by various statistical sources. It is also possible that those whose voices were heard most loudly on the issue -- the middle classes -- have taken all available measures to protect their property and lives from crime. In all likelihood, South Africans have become accustomed to living in a violent society, and one in which other equally serious problems now require attention. Although the national obsession with crime has waned, the available data nevertheless indicate that the problem still affects many thousands of lives. The impact of crime -- in terms of the costs of victimisation, negative perceptions and fear, and the cost of responding to crime -- remains high for South African society. This paper considers how crime levels and perceptions about crime and safety have changed over the past decade, and what these trends tell us about the country 10 years into our democracy. Author Affiliation: (1) Institute for Security Studies, Block C, Brooklyn Court, New Muckleneuk, Pretoria, 0075, South Africa Article History: Registration Date: 21/04/2006 Accepted Date: 21/04/2006 Online Date: 29/07/2006

The trend of American Indians setting up casinos as a means of livelihood leads to an examination of the positive and negative vocalization in the state of New Mexico and the interrelation on crime.

Nightlife has historically been identified as a social problem. In the contemporary context, however, this perspective competes with the promotion of the 'night-time economy' as a source of economic regeneration and extended licensing as a means to establish a more genteel 'cafe society'. However, these changes have concealed a reconfiguration of differentiating strategies. This article explores this neglected issue through two cases studies, one based in London and one in Manchester, and examines the fate of black cultural forms, venues and licensees in contemporary nightlife. It will argue that, due to the historical criminalization of black youth, music and residential areas, black cultural spaces have been subject to a process of exclusion in the new playgrounds of the night-time economy. The implications of this for social cohesion will be examined. Keywords: Night-time economy; nightlife; licensing; cultural regeneration; exclusion; cultural diversity.

This article integrates arguments from three perspectives on the relationship between communities and crime - constrained residential choices, social capital, and street context perspectives - to specify a conceptual model of community disadvantage and the violence of individual adolescents. Specifically, we propose that status characteristics (e.g., race, poverty, female headship) restrict the residential choices of families. Residence in extremely disadvantaged communities, in turn, increases the chances of violent behavior by youths by influencing the development and maintenance of community and family social capital, and by influencing the chances that youths are exposed to a criminogenic street context. We assess our conceptual model using community contextual and individual-level data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. Our findings suggest that individual or family status characteristics influence violence largely because of the communities in which disadvantaged persons and families reside. Although we find that community social capital does not predict individual violence, both family social capital and measures of an alternative street milieu are strong predictors of individual violence. Moreover, our street context variables appear to be more important than the social capital variables in explaining how community disadvantage affects violence.

Despite simultaneous increases in democratization and violent crime rates in many countries during the second half of the twentieth century, the authors could find no prior studies that have directly examined possible connections between these two processes. The civilization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will decline along with the civilizing effects of democratization, the conflict perspective predicts that violent crime rates will increase along with the brutalizing effects of the market economies that so far have universally accompanied democratization, and the modernization perspective predicts that violent crime rates will initially increase with the transition to democracy but then decline as democracies mature. Our analysis of data from forty-four countries from 1950 to 2000 shows the most support for a modernization perspective: violent crime rates are highest for transitional democracies. However, as predicted by the conflict perspective, we also find that during the second half of the twentieth century homicide rates gradually increased for full democracies. Keywords: democracy; violent crime; modernization; conflict; transitional democracies; homicide; civilization perspective

Abstract The paper investigates the relationship between social capital and crime in rural Australia. First the paper outlines the conceptualisation of social capital which has informed this research. It suggests [...]

This article reflects on the progress of research on developmental and life-course criminology, comments on the status of some unresolved issues, and offers recommendations for the future. The first sections relate these articles and the current status of the field to two themes from the criminal careers debate of the 1980s and 1990s: generalization versus disaggregation as approaches to advancing science and continuous versus categorical conceptions of variation in criminal careers. The article also discusses the use of the growth curve models that are so prominent in developmental and life-span research, emphasizing the aspects of change that they do and do not capture, pointing out implications of that limitation for the need for expanding theories and models of change, and explaining the simple steps needed to enhance growth curve models to accomplish that purpose. Keywords: life course; developmental criminology; growth curves; trajectories; criminal careers; crime; delinquency

This article assesses 'interactional theory' and recent developmental research based on that theory. The author argues that the unique contributions of interactional theory would be enhanced by greater for-realization of the theory and comparisons of the theory's hypotheses to other developmental and criminological theories. Patterns of offending across the life course would be better understood if more longitudinal data sets were made accessible to investigators with other perspectives and areas of expertise. Keywords: interactional theory; longitudinal data; assessment

Iran was noisy with the news about Ali Asghar Borujerdi, the murderer who had confessed to having sexual intercourse and subsequently killed thirty-three adolescent boys. In June 26, 1934, Borujerdi was detained by the police and was tried, convicted, and was hung in front of an immense crowd in Tehran's Sepah Square.

The origin and enforcement of criminal law are central to the sociological study of crime, yet we know relatively little about how the coercive apparatus of criminalization is actualized through prosecutorial and court practices. We use Bourdieu's extension of Weber's analysis of law to develop a perspective on fields of practice, the juridical field and the force of law at The Hague Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Our research is based on four years of prosecutor interviews, courtroom observations and analyses of trials covering four prosecutorial regimes. Successive and competitive practices have created an interlocking and cumulative force that is a prerequisite to promoting international humanitarian law., I. Introduction Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion defended Adolf Eichmann's controversial Israeli trial for crimes against the Jewish people by insisting that 'Israel does not need the protection of an International [...]

The effects of social interaction variables in the probability of an individual engaging in different types of illegal behavior . A model to verify the empirical relationship between social interaction and crime is presented. A case study of brazil in this context is discussed.

Spanish racial thought in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is explored, concentrating specifically on its application in criminological practice. An attempt is made to demonstrate both how malleable the idea of race was in Spain and the variety of purposes to which it was put.

This study is an analysis of the impact of the opening or closure of a new urban casino on crime and disorder, and house sales and prices in its neighbourhood. The two sets of time-series data were the calls to the police about three types of offences and the house sales through the Multiple Listing Service in two neighbourhoods near the casinos in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Temporally, the weekly numbers of offences and the mean monthly house prices were oscillating almost randomly around their respective declining or stationary long-term averages with no impulse from when a casino either opened or closed. Geographically, only two types of offences increased in number nearer to a casino site, but their respective distance decays neither moderated nor steepened after a casino had closed or opened. Even so, the conclusion is premature that the open or closed casinos have had benign effects on offences and house sales in the neighbourhoods. La presente etude analyse l'impact de l'ouverture et de la fermeture d'un nouveau casino urbain sur le crime, le desordre public, et la vente et les prix des maisons dans son voisinage. Nous avons analyse deux series chronologiques de donnees, a savoir: le nombre d'appels d la police concernant trois types d'infractions, et les ventes de maisons au moyen du Multiple Listing Service, dans deux quartiers proches des casinos a Windsor (Ontario), Canada. Mesures dans le temps, les chiffres hebdomadaires des infractions et les moyennes mensuelles du prix des maisons ont oscille presque au hasard tout en restant proches de leurs moyennes, stables ou baissantes, sans que l'ouverture ou la fermeture d'un nouveau casino les influence. Mesures dans l'espace, deux types d'infractions seulement ont augmente pres d'un casino, mais l'ouverture ou la fermeture de celui-ci n'a ni modere ni accuse leur gradient incidence-distance. Il est pourtant premature de conclure que les casinos, ouverts ou fermes, n'ont aucun effet sur le nombre d'infractions et le prix des maisons., Introduction A new urban casino's external effects on its neighbourhood are modelled from two theories about people's activities and their effects on the locations and timings of either crime and [...]

Social disorganization at the neighborhood and community levels has been consistently linked to various forms of criminal activity. However, a very much smaller body of literature addresses the effects of crime on community organizations. In some studies, crime appears to energize communities while in others, crime leads to withdrawal from community life. Using department of health crime victimization data and interviews with 2,985 low-income inner city residents living in 487 multi-family dwellings, a multi-level model examined the relationships among crime victimization, social organization, and participation in neighborhood organizations. Social organization at the individual and building levels was measured using recent formulations of social capital theory. Findings regarding crime suggested more signs of a chilling effect on participation than of an energizing effect, especially at the building level. Social capital at the building level was more strongly and consistently related to participation in community organizations than was crime. KEY WORDS: crime; social capital; community organization; tenant organizing; urban; multi-level model.

This article compares offense patterns at two points in time in Oresund, a Scandinavian border region that spans Sweden and Denmark. The aim of the analysis is to contribute to a better understanding of the relationships between crime and demographic, socioeconomic, and land use covariates in a border atea that has been targeted with long-term investments in transport. The changes effected by the construction of the Oresund bridge might be expected to have an impact on both the levels and the geographies of different offenses by creating new sites for offending and new, more vulnerable, transient groups. The article focuses on identifying and explaining changes in the geography of crime before and after the bridge was built. Spatial statistical techniques and GIS underpin the methodology employed. The article shows that there have been changes in the levels and the geography of some offenses. Crime in border regions is likely to be of growing interest in Europe as a result of European Union (EU) enlargement and increasing intra-European cross-border movement facilitated by improved communication systems. Key Words: crime trends, border region, spatial statistics and GIS.

A model shows how reputation concerns can support widespread street crime, a street culture, where the direct incentives for such behavior are weak. There are social benefits to street reputations, but those benefits are dominated when reputation concerns draw into crime those who obtain no direct gain from it, The model matches facts about violent crime that a standard model cannot easily explain including low monetary returns, disproportionate victimization of the young and poor, and high variance in rates across small distances. The model generates novel implications for policy and social science, including a negative effect of social capital.

In the first half of the twentieth century criminologists, sociologists and social reformers had successfully challenged some of the old biological positivisms of the nineteenth century. They asserted that crime […]

Byline: Nuno Garoupa (1) Keywords: Crime; Punishment; Norms Abstract: In this paper, we develop a general equilibrium model of crime. It is shown that law and norms are substitutes in achieving a stable equilibrium. Here we offer a new interpretation of different theories of social norms in the context of crime and deterrence. The law and economics theory is presented as an 'opportunism-limiting' approach to norms whereas the evolutionary theory is presented as an 'opportunity cost' approach. Author Affiliation: (1) Faculdade de Economia, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Campus de Campolide, 1099-032, Lisbon, Portugal Article History: Registration Date: 01/01/2003 Article note: Received: January 2003, Accepted: July 2003, JEL Classification: Paper presented at the 3rd annual meeting of SPIE Portuguese Association for Research in Economics, June 22-23, 1998, Braga and at the 15th annual meeting of the European Association of Law and Economics, September 24-26, 1998, Utrecht. I am grateful to two referees and the editor for helpful comments that much improved the paper, and to Dorothea Kubler, Eric Posner, Dieter Schmidtchen, and Stergios Skaperdas for suggestions that much improved this paper, and to Kelly Markva for research assistantship. The author acknowledges the financial support of FCT, Lisbon, Portugal. Part of this paper was written while the author visited Stanford Law School. The usual disclaimer applies.

In this paper, an assessment is made of the extent to which proximity to 38 dispersed public housing sites opening in Denver during 1992-95 affected post-development levels and trends in neighbourhood crime rates. A new econometric specification incorporating pre- and post-controls for selection bias as well as spatial autocorrelation was employed to test for statistical relationships between the development of dispersed public housing sites and subsequent increases in various types of crime. The findings suggest that proximity to dispersed public housing was not associated with any post-development increase in reported crime of any type.

ABSTRACT/RESUME The issue of race and crime is one of the most controversial topics in Canada. This paper begins by exploring various theoretical models that have attempted to explain why [...]

Whether social deprivation is implicated in the occurrence of crime and how the law should respond if it is are questions that continue to spur debate among philosophers, social scientists, [...]