2008 Top 20 Crim Articles

Since 2008 is rounding down, I thought I'd post a list of my favorite journal articles that were published this year in top crim journals. At first I thought I'd just post my top ten articles and rank order them, but I quickly realized that I had so many favorite pieces this year and couldn't possible put them in any kind of order. The journals I'm including are Criminology, Criminology & Public Policy, Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Crime and Delinquency, Crime & Justice: A Review of Research, Justice Quarterly, Journal of Quantitative Criminology, Journal of Experimental Criminology, Journal of Criminal Justice, Criminal Justice & Behavior, The Prison Journal, and Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology. So here goes my top 20 in 2008:

1. "On The Relationship Between Family Structure and Antisocial Behavior: Parental Cohabitation and Blended Households" by Robert Apel and Catherine Kaukinen in Criminology (46,1).

2. "Targeted Enforcement and Adverse System Side Effects: The Generation of Fugitives in Philadelphia" by John Goldkamp and Rely Vilcica in Criminology (46, 2).

3. "Policing Crime and Disorder Hot Spots: A Randomized Controlled Trial" by Anthony Braga and Brenda Bond in Criminology (46, 3).

4. "The Victimization-Termination Link" by Scott Jacques and Richard Wright in Criminology (46, 4).

5. "Self Control Theory and the Concept of Opportunity: The Case for a More Systematic Union" by Carter Hay and Walter Forrest in Criminology (46, 4).

6. "Can and Should Criminological Research Influence Policy? Suggestions for Time-Series Cross-Section Studies" by Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody in Criminology & Public Policy (7, 3).

7. "Analyzing Criminal Trajectory Profiles: Bridging Multilevel and Group-Based Approaches Using Growth Mixture Modeling" by Frank Kreuter and Bengt Muthen in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (24, 1).

8. "Estimating Mean Length of Stay in Prison: Methods and Applications" by Evelyn Patterson and Samuel Preston in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (24, 1).

9. "Specifying the Relationship Between Crime and Prisons" by William Spelman in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (24, 2).

10. "Were Wolfgang's Chronic Offenders Psychopaths? On The Convergent Validity Between Psychopathy and Career Criminality" by Michael Vaughn and Matt Delisi in Journal of Criminal Justice (36, 1).

11. "Economists' Contribution to the Study of Crime and the Criminal Justice System" by Shawn Bushway and Peter Reuter in Crime & Justice (vol. 37).

12. "How Well Do Criminologists Explain Crime? Statistical Modeling in Published Studies" by David Weisburd and Alex Piquero in Crime & Justice (vol. 37).

13. "Inmate Social Ties and the Transition to Society: Does Visitation Reduce Recidivism?" by William Bales and Daniel Mears in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (45, 3).

14. "Evidence of Negligible Parenting Influences on Self-Control, Delinquent Peers, and Delinquency in a Sample of Twins" by John Wright, Kevin Beaver, Matt Delisi, and Michael Vaughn in Justice Quarterly (25, 3).

15. "Genetic Influences on the Stability of Low Self-Control: Results from a Longitudinal Sample of Twins" by Kevin Beaver, John Wright, Matt Delisi, and Michael Vaughn in Journal of Criminal Justice (36, 6).

16. "The Deterrent Effect of Executions: A Meta-Analysis Thirty Years after Ehrlich" by Bijou Yang and David Lester in Journal of Criminal Justice (36, 5).

17. "Offender Coercion in Treatment: A Meta-Analysis of Effectiveness" by Karen Parhar, J. Stephen Wormith, Dena Derkzen, and Adele Beauregard in Criminal Justice & Behavior (35, 9).

18. "Projecting Prison Populations Starting With Projected Admissions" by Pablo Martinez in The Prison Journal (88, 4).

19. "Estimating The Impact of Incarceration on Subsequent Offending Trajectories: Deterrent, Criminogenic, or Null Effect?" by Avinash Bhati and Alex Piquero in Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (Fall 2008)

20. "Scholarly Influence in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals in 1990-2000" by Ellen Cohn and David Farrington in Journal of Criminal Justice (36, 1).

I haven't sat down to think about a top list of books that came out this year, but two edited volumes come to mind that I particularly enjoyed this year: "Out Of Control: Assessing The General Theory of Crime" (edited by Erich Goode) and "The Long View of Crime: A Synthesis of Longitudinal Research" (edited by Akiva Liberman).

Hey, before I go, check out the below video. It's completely unrelated to this post but anyone who enjoys statistics will find this hilarious. It's been circulating the web for a while. I still laugh every time I watch it though:

A Minority Report and Clockwork Orange

I recently borrowed the movie "A Clockwork Orange" from my brother-in-law and watched it over the Thanksgiving break. I also recently rented the movie "Minority Report" at Blockbuster and was watching that movie the other night. Both of these movies got me to thinking. If we were actually able to develop and combine the futuristic criminal justice "tools" created in these two movies, wouldn't we have an absolutely perfect criminal justice system and a crime rate near zero? Maybe or maybe not.

The PA Department of Corrections (where I currently work) uses a three-pronged approach for maximizing our correctional resources in order to prepare offenders for successful return to the community: (1) assessment, (2) treatment, and (3) reentry. With a "precrime" unit like in Minority Report, we would have a perfect risk assessment tool with an error rate of zero. Our risk assessment process would leave nothing to chance. We would have no false positives or false negatives. We would know exactly who would and would not re-offend after serving their term in prison. So you might say at that point, "well then there's no need to go any further since we can perfectly predict who will re-offend and can just lock those offenders up permenantly". No need for our second our third prong (i.e., treatment or reentry), right? But wait, what if we had a "rehabilitation program" like in Clockwork Orange. This program would be perfectly successful and would have a recidivism rate of 0%. All participants in this program would be reformed. So now we're in even better shape because we have both a perfect assessment system and a perfect treatment system. At that point I can offer you a criminal justice system that will virtually eliminate crime and come at a bargain price to the taxpayers.

Here's how it works. Arrest rates go way down since all crimes are "foreseen" by the precrime unit and are thus quickly prevented. The need for an extensive police force goes way down since investigation is no longer a needed police tool. Some criminals will still get away with their crime though, since the police may simply not get there in time to prevent it (after all, the police are still human). Those who actually pull one off will get arrested and will go straight to prison to serve their sentence. "Wait", you say, "don't they have to go to court first"? Nope, we already know with 100% certainty that they did it. So criminal courts get eliminated. The only criteria necessary for determining guilt has already been foreseen by the precrime unit. So once they get to prison they receive another "precog assessment" from the precrime unit to determine if they will commit other crimes in the future after prison. If not, they get to serve out their time in a cheap, low-security community corrections center. We gotta punish them still (retribution won't go away), but no need for fancy security options since we know they're no risk of going anywhere or hurting anyone. For those who are going to re-offend, they spend their prison term in a Clockwork Orange-style "Ludovico Technique" treatment program. At the end of the program they're cured. In addition to their time served in prison for the treatment program, we tack on some additional retributive sentence for them to serve and then let them out of prison too. The average length of stay in prison goes way down and a large percentage of our would-be prison population are now in community correction centers, so we need a lot less prisons. We achieve a 0% recidivism rate so there's no need for a parole board or a community supervision period after prison. Just imagine the cost savings. One big state like Pennsylvania alone could save billions of dollars each year, all the while reducing crime at an exponential rate.

Is this system perfect though? Remember that both Minority Report and A Clockwork Orange ended on a sour note. In Minority Report, the pre-crime unit is corrupted by such an exceeding power. Tom Cruise's character is predicted to commit a crime, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophesy, with the prediction actually driving his act. The movie ends with the pre-crime unit being permenantly shut down. In Clockwork Orange, the movie ends with the main character so beaten down by his unsuccessful return to the community that he begins to fantasize of returning to crime (ah ha, so that third prong of reentry may still matter in the equation). The Anthony Burgess book (from which the Clockwork Orange movie is based on) actually goes into more detail about the main character's return to his life of crime. As an aside, interestingly enough near the end of the book the main character Alex runs into an old criminal friend Pete who is now a reformed married man. Maybe marriage is a better formula for success than the aversion therapy Ludovico Technique (criminologists Robert Sampson and John Laub would certainly agree with this).

So we should be careful what we wish for. Several criminologists have already written about the ethical dangers of criminal prediction (see Bernard Harcourt's work for example). And I believe that one of the things that the whole reentry literature implicitly points out is that we may be successful to a certain degree at rehabilitating individual offenders but have little power to control or change the community and inter-personal dynamics for which individual offenders return to after prison. Humans are social creatures who don't act in a vacuum.

It is an interesting thought experiment to take to its logical conclusion what would happen if the goals we work towards every day in the criminal justice system were actually realized. I could obviously spend a lot longer expounding on the themes of these two movies and envisioning that utopian criminal justice system, but I'm interested in others' thoughts. Or, just share your favorite scenes/lines from these two great movies. If you haven't seen them, go see them. I'm waiting to see the journal article entitled "A Minority Report, A Clockwork Orange, and the Ethics of Utopia in Criminology".