Ok, here goes...my second annual list of top 20 published articles in the field of criminology:
1. "The Dead Sea Scrolls and Criminological Knowledge: 2008 Presidential Address to the American Society of Criminology" by Robert Bursik in Criminology (47, 1)
2. "Does Dropping Out of School Mean Dropping Into Delinquency" by Gary Sweeten, Shawn Bushway, and Ray Paternoster in Criminology (47, 1)
3. "Redemption In The Presence of Widespread Criminal Background Checks" by Alfred Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura in Criminology (47, 2)
4. "Estimating a Dose-Response Relationship Between Length of Stay and Future Recidivism In Serious Juvenile Offenders" by Tom Loughran, Ed Mulvey, Carol Schubert, Jeff Fagan, Alex Piquero, and Sandra Losoya in Criminology (47, 3)
5. "Crime, Cash, and Limited Options: Explaining the Prison Boom" by William Spelman in Criminology & Public Policy (8, 1)
6. "Rational Choice Agency, and Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making: The Short and Long Term Consequences of Making Good Choices" by Ray Paternoster and Greg Pogarsky in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 2)
7. "Marriage and Desistance from Crime in the Netherlands: Do Gender and Socio-Historical Context Matter" by Bianca Bersani, John Laub, and Paul Nieuwbeerta in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 1)
8. "Do Returning Parolees Affect Neighborhood Crime? A Case Study of Sacramento" by John Hipp and Daniel Yates in Criminology (47, 3)
9. "Measuring Long Term Individual Trajectories of Offending Using Multiple Methods" by Shawn Bushway, Gary Sweeten, and Paul Nieuwbeerta in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 3)
10. "Predicting Trajectories of Offending Over the Life Course: Findings from a Dutch Conviction Cohort" by Bianca Bersani, Paul Nieuwbeerta, and John Laub in Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency (46, 4)
11. "Imprisonment and Reoffending" by Daniel Nagin, Francis Cullen, and Cheryl Lero Jonson in Crime & Justice: A Review of Research (vol. 38)
12. ***shameless self-promotion*** "But Some of Them Don't Come Back (to Prison!): Resource Deprivation and Thinking Errors as Determinants of Parole Success and Failure" by Kristofer Bret Bucklen and Gary Zajac in The Prison Journal (89, 3)
13. A Life-Course Theory and Long-Term Project on Trajectories of Crime" by Robert Sampson and John Laub in Journal of Criminology and Penal Reform
14. "Understanding the Relationship Between Onset Age and Subsequent Offending During Adolescence" by Sarah Bacon, Ray Paternoster, and Robert Brame in Journal of Youth and Adolescence (38, 3)
15. "Forecasting Murder Within a Population of Probationers and Parolees: A High Stakes Application of Statistical Learning" by Richard Berk, Lawrance Sherman, Geoffrey Barnes, Ellen Kurtz, and Lindsay Ahlman in Journal of the Royal Statistical Society (Series A)
16. "Effects of Getting Married on Offending: Results from a Prospective Longitudinal Survey of Males" by Delphine Theobald and David Farrington in European Journal of Criminology (6, 6)
17. "Work, Family, and Criminal Desistance: Adult Social Bonds in a Nordic Welfare State" by Jukka Savolainen in British Journal of Criminology (49, 3)
18. "Detecting Specialization in Offending: Comparing Analytic Approaches" by Christopher Sullivan, Jean McGloin, James Ray, and Michael Caudy in Journal of Quantitative Criminology (25, 4)
19. "Racial Discrimination and Hirschi's Criminological Classic: A Chapter in the Sociology of Knowledge" by James Unnever, Francis Cullen, Scot Mathers, Timothy McClure, and Maris Allison in Justice Quarterly (26, 3)
20. "Rediscovering Quetelet, Again: The "Aging" Offender and the Prediction of Reoffending in a Sample of Adult Sex Offenders" by Patrick Lussier and Jay Healey in Justice Quarterly (26, 4)
In addition, there was a special issue of Criminal Justice and Behavior on the topic of "Biological Criminology" which I thought I had several interesting pieces. And finally, hands down the best book of the year was Mark Kleiman's "When Brute Force Fails". It's ingenious in that the concepts in the book are nothing new (indeed the deterrence principles of certainty and swiftness of punishment are among the oldest ideas in criminology, dating back to at least the 1700s), but Kleiman does such a nice job of bringing new research together with old concepts in order to make them policy relevant for revamping community corrections. Keep an eye out for this book. My prediction is that this is a Hindelang Book Award winner at ASC next year...you heard it here first.
Saturday, December 19, 2009
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
Routine Activites Theory, Burglary Rates, and The Recession
I just posted a comment on a blog post on the Freakonomics website discussing a recent trend of declining burglary rates perhaps due to either: a) more people remaining home as a result of being unemployed, or b) less to steal due to increased foreclosures. The Freakonomics folks called for criminologists to weigh in. So here's what I had to say:
Here’s some insight from a criminologist. This observation (i.e., decreasing burglaries associated with increasing unemployment) is exactly what Routine Activities Theory hypothesizes. Routine Activities Theory is a criminological theory which posits that crime happens when: 1) a motivated offender, 2) a suitable target, and 3) a lack of a capable guardian converge in time and space. For example, according to Felson and Cohen’s (1979) first exposition of Routine Activities Theory, the increase of women in the workforce since the 1960s can explain a subsequent increase in burglary rates since more women in the workforce translates into more empty houses without a “guardian” at home to deter potential offenders. So it seems to me that these statistics are quite predictable based on Routine Activities theory.
As to the question of whether burglars turn to other kinds of crime when they can no longer burgle, this is a bit more tricky to examine. What we know from a longstanding body of research (see Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 for a good summary) is that offenders are more generalists than they are specialists. Thus, it is entirely conceivable that there could be a whole shift in offending patterns when burglary becomes no longer feasible. More recently, however, some criminologists have found more specialization in offending than was previously believed to be. This research is ground-breaking; it will be interesting to track its development. Combine this with the conclusion coming from some research within the Rational Choice camp of criminology which finds evidence of certain types of offenders tending to specialize (e.g., older offenders, property offenders), and it could also be possible that a large fraction of burglars will simply “retire” when burglary becomes no longer feasible. This is a dissertation waiting to happen. If I were doing the dissertation, I would also draw upon the “hot spots policing” literature which has examined the extent to which crime just “moves around the corner” when targeted police enforcement strategies are used. The tentative conclusion so far from the “hot spots policing” literature is that crime does not move around the corner, but instead there is typically a diffusion of crime control benefits to neighboring places.
Here’s some insight from a criminologist. This observation (i.e., decreasing burglaries associated with increasing unemployment) is exactly what Routine Activities Theory hypothesizes. Routine Activities Theory is a criminological theory which posits that crime happens when: 1) a motivated offender, 2) a suitable target, and 3) a lack of a capable guardian converge in time and space. For example, according to Felson and Cohen’s (1979) first exposition of Routine Activities Theory, the increase of women in the workforce since the 1960s can explain a subsequent increase in burglary rates since more women in the workforce translates into more empty houses without a “guardian” at home to deter potential offenders. So it seems to me that these statistics are quite predictable based on Routine Activities theory.
As to the question of whether burglars turn to other kinds of crime when they can no longer burgle, this is a bit more tricky to examine. What we know from a longstanding body of research (see Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990 for a good summary) is that offenders are more generalists than they are specialists. Thus, it is entirely conceivable that there could be a whole shift in offending patterns when burglary becomes no longer feasible. More recently, however, some criminologists have found more specialization in offending than was previously believed to be. This research is ground-breaking; it will be interesting to track its development. Combine this with the conclusion coming from some research within the Rational Choice camp of criminology which finds evidence of certain types of offenders tending to specialize (e.g., older offenders, property offenders), and it could also be possible that a large fraction of burglars will simply “retire” when burglary becomes no longer feasible. This is a dissertation waiting to happen. If I were doing the dissertation, I would also draw upon the “hot spots policing” literature which has examined the extent to which crime just “moves around the corner” when targeted police enforcement strategies are used. The tentative conclusion so far from the “hot spots policing” literature is that crime does not move around the corner, but instead there is typically a diffusion of crime control benefits to neighboring places.
Sunday, November 8, 2009
ASC 2009
Another great year at ASC! I wasn't thrilled about ASC being in Philly but I had a wonderful time. This was my sixth ASC. Here's a couple of highlights:
Best session hands down was an "author meets critic" session for Mark Kleiman's new book "When Brute Force Fails". Mark presented the book and then Al Blumstein and Jeremy Travis were the discussants. I'm all about this book! This book has been getting a lot of press coverage, from the NY Times to the Economist to Governing Magazine. The basic thesis of the book is nothing earth-shattering. We've known for a while that the certainty and swiftness of punishment are more effective than the severity of punishment. I think the timing of Mark's book is ripe though, given the correctional crisis of mass incarceration and the economic situation. It's the application of the basic principles of deterrence theory that are new and innovative to Mark's book. I see this as providing an exciting and promising new experiment for parole and community corrections to try out. I've long thought that deterrence can be made to work, especially for certain offenders. There's just so much about this book that excites me that I could go on forever. It will be interesting to see how much attention this book receives by policymakers over the next year, especially given the attention it's already received by criminologists and the media.
I went to a good session on correctional forecasting methods. Some of the big names in this field were presenting at this session. I got some good practical tips for doing projections. It was interesting too to hear a more details about the California projections model.
I went to a panel discussion on "evidence-generating" research. Akiva Leiberman presented his whole idea of "evidence-generating" practice in contrast to "evidence-based" practice. Akiva first outlined this idea in an issue of The Criminologist. I've blogged about this idea before and it's a concept I've been pushing.
Nicole Rafter's Sutherland Address was excellent. She's not a vibrant presenter but the content of her address was what I was interested in. She's one of those rare historians in our discipline. My readers know that I'm all about the history of our discipline. So I was awaiting in anticipation to hear what Rafter had to say. As might be expected, she called for more attention to our history as a way of strengthening our discipline. I couldn't agree more. I look forward to reading her address in Criminology next year when it's published.
I was at a session in which Jim Austin gave his typical critique of why treatment programming won't work for reducing the nation's correctional population. I have to say that I agree with his analysis. I thought his presentation was good.
I went to a good session on theory, with Michael Gottfredson, Robert Sampson, and John Hagan presenting. The room was packed (must have been close to 200 people crammed in the room)!! I was excited to see that even in a year where the theme of the conference was policy, that theory continues to excite folks in our field. It excites me. It's also quite relevant to policy in my opinion. Anyways, Gottfredson gave his typical defense of control theory and answered some recent critiques of the theory. It was a wonderful presentation. Rob Sampson gave a talk in which he challenged the notion that experimental design studies are the "gold standard". I somewhat disagreed with his conclusions but he was interesting to hear nonetheless. And John Hagan as the discussant posed some interesting and challenging questions to each of the presenters on the panel, but unfortunately the panel was over before each presenter could respond. I was really hoping for time for questions from the audience too, especially to hear some challenging debate between Gottfredson and those who always get fired up about his control theory.
My panel on parole violators turned out quite well I thought. This was a panel that I had been wanting to put together for the past several years. We had a decent turnout and the other presentations on the panel were interesting. I think I organized a panel of what is arguably the most important research that's being done in the area of parole violators. Maybe there's a follow-up panel to come at a future ASC??
I went to an excellent panel on risk assessment methods. Avi Bhati presented his concept of risk suppression, which is a problem with risk assessment validation that I got nailed on in a risk assessment validation paper that I did for my first stats class when I started my Ph.D. Shawn Bushway is another to point out the whole idea of "risk suppression" as a threat to the validity of a risk assessment validation study (he was the one to point this out to me in my paper for my first stats class). Bushway was the panel organizer for this panel. Also on the panel was Richard Berk. Berk is of course a statistical genius. His "random forest" approach to risk assessment is, in my opinion, going to revolutionize the risk assessment business. He's currently working in several states (including Pennsylvania and Maryland) on developing a risk assessment instrument to predict violence based on his approach. I've been working with him on the Pennsylvania project. It's an exciting endeavor. This panel of presenters on risk assessment was made up of top-notch statistical experts. I always feel dumb when I hear them present.
I'm sure that there were other sessions and highlights of the conference that I'm missing. I just hit a few of the big ones. Again, another great ASC conference. I'm looking forward to San Francisco next year (if I can find a way financially to make it out there).
Best session hands down was an "author meets critic" session for Mark Kleiman's new book "When Brute Force Fails". Mark presented the book and then Al Blumstein and Jeremy Travis were the discussants. I'm all about this book! This book has been getting a lot of press coverage, from the NY Times to the Economist to Governing Magazine. The basic thesis of the book is nothing earth-shattering. We've known for a while that the certainty and swiftness of punishment are more effective than the severity of punishment. I think the timing of Mark's book is ripe though, given the correctional crisis of mass incarceration and the economic situation. It's the application of the basic principles of deterrence theory that are new and innovative to Mark's book. I see this as providing an exciting and promising new experiment for parole and community corrections to try out. I've long thought that deterrence can be made to work, especially for certain offenders. There's just so much about this book that excites me that I could go on forever. It will be interesting to see how much attention this book receives by policymakers over the next year, especially given the attention it's already received by criminologists and the media.
I went to a good session on correctional forecasting methods. Some of the big names in this field were presenting at this session. I got some good practical tips for doing projections. It was interesting too to hear a more details about the California projections model.
I went to a panel discussion on "evidence-generating" research. Akiva Leiberman presented his whole idea of "evidence-generating" practice in contrast to "evidence-based" practice. Akiva first outlined this idea in an issue of The Criminologist. I've blogged about this idea before and it's a concept I've been pushing.
Nicole Rafter's Sutherland Address was excellent. She's not a vibrant presenter but the content of her address was what I was interested in. She's one of those rare historians in our discipline. My readers know that I'm all about the history of our discipline. So I was awaiting in anticipation to hear what Rafter had to say. As might be expected, she called for more attention to our history as a way of strengthening our discipline. I couldn't agree more. I look forward to reading her address in Criminology next year when it's published.
I was at a session in which Jim Austin gave his typical critique of why treatment programming won't work for reducing the nation's correctional population. I have to say that I agree with his analysis. I thought his presentation was good.
I went to a good session on theory, with Michael Gottfredson, Robert Sampson, and John Hagan presenting. The room was packed (must have been close to 200 people crammed in the room)!! I was excited to see that even in a year where the theme of the conference was policy, that theory continues to excite folks in our field. It excites me. It's also quite relevant to policy in my opinion. Anyways, Gottfredson gave his typical defense of control theory and answered some recent critiques of the theory. It was a wonderful presentation. Rob Sampson gave a talk in which he challenged the notion that experimental design studies are the "gold standard". I somewhat disagreed with his conclusions but he was interesting to hear nonetheless. And John Hagan as the discussant posed some interesting and challenging questions to each of the presenters on the panel, but unfortunately the panel was over before each presenter could respond. I was really hoping for time for questions from the audience too, especially to hear some challenging debate between Gottfredson and those who always get fired up about his control theory.
My panel on parole violators turned out quite well I thought. This was a panel that I had been wanting to put together for the past several years. We had a decent turnout and the other presentations on the panel were interesting. I think I organized a panel of what is arguably the most important research that's being done in the area of parole violators. Maybe there's a follow-up panel to come at a future ASC??
I went to an excellent panel on risk assessment methods. Avi Bhati presented his concept of risk suppression, which is a problem with risk assessment validation that I got nailed on in a risk assessment validation paper that I did for my first stats class when I started my Ph.D. Shawn Bushway is another to point out the whole idea of "risk suppression" as a threat to the validity of a risk assessment validation study (he was the one to point this out to me in my paper for my first stats class). Bushway was the panel organizer for this panel. Also on the panel was Richard Berk. Berk is of course a statistical genius. His "random forest" approach to risk assessment is, in my opinion, going to revolutionize the risk assessment business. He's currently working in several states (including Pennsylvania and Maryland) on developing a risk assessment instrument to predict violence based on his approach. I've been working with him on the Pennsylvania project. It's an exciting endeavor. This panel of presenters on risk assessment was made up of top-notch statistical experts. I always feel dumb when I hear them present.
I'm sure that there were other sessions and highlights of the conference that I'm missing. I just hit a few of the big ones. Again, another great ASC conference. I'm looking forward to San Francisco next year (if I can find a way financially to make it out there).
Thursday, October 8, 2009
Cain and Abel and Criminological Theory
I was doing some driving today and was listening to some old crim theory lectures on my Ipod (yeah I know, I'm a nerd). The lecture on social learning theory got me to thinking. It seems to me that the problem of some criminological theories is that they don't address a first cause (or "original cause") of crime. For example, one critique of social learning theory is that it treats humans as simply reactors and not as actors with agency and volition. Social learning theory has a particularly strong emphasis on "peer pressure" and on the learning of criminal/deviant behavior in the context of peer groups. But saying that someone has become a criminal as a result of spending a disproportionate amount of time hanging out with bad friends just pushes the problem of causal explanation one step backwards and does nothing to answer the question of original cause. Where did these bad friends learn to commit crimes or to hold to values supportive of criminal behavior? From other bad friends? If so, then where did these other bad friends learn to commit crimes or to hold to values supportive of criminal behavior? You can see how the search for an explanation can keep getting pushed backwards. If we pushed it back intergenerationally, we could push it all the way back to the first known crime- the Biblical account of the murder of Abel by his brother Cain. Where did Cain "learn" that it was acceptable to murder? According to the Biblical account, there was only one family in existence on the face of the earth at that time, so there were no peer groups. There was no media or entertainment to learn from. Why did Cain murder? Social learning theory seems to me to be a wholly inadequate theory for ultimately explaining this first known murder, and as a logical extention every murder (or crime) thereafter.To me, the best solution to this problem of "original cause" is the one taken by most of the theories that form the classical school of criminological thought. These theories would include social control, deterrence/rational choice, and routine activities theory. According to these theories, motivation towards crime (or at least towards pleasure maximimizing) is constant, is a part of human nature, and thus does not need to be explained. Therefore, the original cause of crime is something intrinsic to human nature. What needs to be explained by these theories then, is why all human beings do not act upon this human nature. Social learning can only fall back on human nature as an original cause if the only learning that occurs in life is in a positive direction, away from crime. Otherwise, learning is completely unnecessary if criminality is a part of human nature.
My favorite study in support of this viewpoint is the study by Dan Nagin and Pierre Tremblay on the shape of what I call the "age-aggression curve". I know I've blogged about this study before; it's one of my favorities to talk about. In their study, Nagin and Tremblay challenge the conventional wisdom concerning the age-crime curve peaking in the late teens to early 20's, which has been a sturdy finding in criminological research. The problem is that most criminologists have only examined crimes that are officially subjected to state sanctions. What Nagin and Tremblay find is that an aggregate plot of aggressiveness across age categories reveals that aggressive behavior actually peaks somewhere around age 2. While infants and toddlers don't go to jail for doing so, they spend a lot of time kicking, punching, hitting, pushing, taking toys, etc. And yet this happens before they even get to pre-school. It's all downhill after age 2. How can social learning theorists account for this finding? It seems that very little learning of aggressive behavior can possibly happen within the first two years of most infants' lives. Thus, this would strongly suggest to me that criminality is something we're all born with but that most of us grow out of.
Saturday, September 5, 2009
Connect The Dots
It's been quite a while since I've posted anything. Still trying to settle on a dissertation topic. I hope to get back in the swing and start posting more frequently.
2. "Fear and Trembling" by the 19th century Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
In the meantime, a little fun. Here's a challenge for anyone out there who cares...who can offer up a suggestion for a possible connection between the three books I'm currently reading and what they have to say about my criminological perspective? The three books I'm currently reading are:
1. a biography of the 16th century Protestant reformer John Calvin entitled "John Calvin: A Heart for Devotion, Doctrine, and Doxology" edited by Burk Parsons (an aside: I recently discovered that Burk Parsons was one of the original members of the Backstreet Boys and was later approached by producer Lou Pearlman to be the lead member of N'Sync but instead chose to go into the ministry)
2. "Fear and Trembling" by the 19th century Danish existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard
3. "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness", the New York Times bestseller by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein
Saturday, June 20, 2009
On Rehabilitation
The idea of offender rehabilitation was one of the primary reasons why I got into the business that I'm in. I've always believed that: a) human change is always possible, b) not much separates me from the common criminal when it comes right down to it (the old adage of "but by the grace of God there goes I"), and c) restorative justice generically speaking should be a core principle of our criminal justice system. As a young person growing up, I never wanted to follow in my father's footsteps to become a medical doctor, but what I did inherit from my dad was a passion to work towards the restoration of broken human beings. I personally believe that true human change can only come through divine intervention, but this should not stop us from working towards the restoration of broken human beings here on earth, whether it be a physical, mental, social, or spiritual type of restoration. Early in college I developed a particular vocational calling for a career within the criminal justice system, working to seek the healing of the specific forms of brokeness that result from criminal behavior. Indeed, much brokenness flows from crime in a society. Victims are broken, neighborhoods/comunities are broken, and yes even offenders are broken. As I advanced in my academic training and in my self-awareness of my abilities, I learned that the best way that I could make a difference in this area was not necessarily by being on the "front lines" but instead by using my mind/intellect to shape policy through the use of my apparent apptitude in the area of research and statistics.
This essay is not intended to be a narcissistic recounting of my career development. The previous paragraph is backdrop to the question I've tried to answer up to this point in my career, and that is "how is the brokeness that results from crime best addressed by a criminal justice system?" The most fashionable answer to this question within the context of a correctional environment is to promote offender rehabilitation. I think it's important to recognize at the forefront that nobody (or at least nobody that I know) approaches this subject neutrally. Everyone starts out wanting to believe deep down that offender rehabiliation either can work or cannot work. Everyone has a gut on this. My gut has always been that offender rehabilitation can work. But my gut matters little in terms of what science has to say about it (it may matter in terms of how I interpret science but I'll get to that later). So you can imagine my satisfaction when at the beginning of my career I learned of the supposed strong body of evidence in the research literature supporting offender rehabilitation. Ahhh, my gut was confirmed by science. But as I've learned more over the years, become more sophisticated in my thinking, and allowed my inquisitive mind to wander, I've come to a point of skepticism concerning much of the scientific evidence supporting offender rehabilitation. In short, I think offender rehabilitation has been oversold. To borrow a phrase from the title of a recent essay, I am "rethinking rehabilitation". I'm not giving up on rehabilitation. And it's certainly difficult to argue with the evidence in support of some types of well-implemented rehabilitation strategies. But again, skepticism has crept in. In certain circles within criminology, to even introducing such skepticism inevitably leads to labels such as "Robert Martison", "obstructionist", "anti-scientific", etc. This unfortunate result is yet another red flag to me that points to something else outside of or in addition to science going on. So at the risk of being labeled as the second coming of Robert Martison (who coincidentally was widely misunderstood and misrepresented), here are some of my thoughts on why we should be skeptical of the body of research promoting offender rehabilitation and why we should not oversell the utility of offender rehabiliation:
1. If offender rehabilitation is effective in reducing crime, why haven't recidivism rates dropped significantly over at least the past 20 years? Just looking at the Dept. of Justice's two published recidivism studies as well as recidivism rates within my own state, recidivism rates have been surprisingly stable despite an increased movement towards rehabilitation, evidence-based practice, and "what works". Some counter this argument by saying that recidivism rates would be even higher without evidence-based treatment, but to believe this we would logically have to conclude that either: a) institutional management and other system factors affecting recidivism have gotten worse in direct proportion to the degree that our treatment programs have gotten better, or b) we have made virtually no improvement or decline in either. In terms of aggregate recidivism rates, are our treatment programs simply balancing out the effect of an otherwise declining correctional system? Or, despite the increased emphasis on implementing evidence-based treatment programs over the past 20 years, has nothing changed? One of these cases may be a possibility. But I doubt that many who work within the corrections profession sincerely believe this to be the case. I just fail to see a strong case for why a system can supposedly increasingly support evidence-based rehabilitation programs that were found to reduce recidivism and yet not realize any significant aggregate decrease in recidivism rates. Why the homeostasis in recidivism rates if offender rehabilitation is the answer?
2. Why are crime rates relatively invariant to an emphasis on treatment? Obviously a lot of factors impact crime rates. But part of the "nothing works" mantra in the late 70's to early 80's was a result of the observation that crime rates were skyrocketing during the 70's despite a strong rehabilitation emphasis within the American correctional system during the same time. Maybe it was just that the wrong types of rehabilitation strategies were being used at the time. But this is an unknown.
3. Why haven't prison populations gone down despite an increased correctional emphasis on rehabilitation? Again, I recognize that many factors affect the size of a jurisdiction's correctional population. But if we measure recidivism in terms of reincarceration, shouldn't there be some effect over time on reducing the correctional population? Or does the relative invariance of aggregate recidivism rates, crime rates, and prison population rates despite an emphasis on rehabilitation mean that rehabilitation is just maintaining the status quo in order to keep things from getting worse? Do we really believe (or have evidence to believe) that these aggregate system measures would explode in a negative direction absent rehabilitation? If rehabilition programs can't make a dent in our aggregate crime or prison rates, what good are they ultimately to a society? It seems to me that a connection must be made at the macro level for rehabilitation strategies, moving beyond individual program evaluation results.
4. The primary methodology that has been used by rehabilitation advocates in summarizing the impact of rehabilitation across the body of evidence is the meta-analysis. Meta-analyses, as used, are problemmatic on several levels. I don't want to go into a methodological discussion here (e.g., issues of publication bias, reliance on statistical significance testing, etc.), but a recent paper by Richard Berk in the Journal of Experimental Criminology does a nice job of explaining some of these issues. One of the basic problems is that those who make use of the meta-analysis tend rely on the flawed logic that there is power in the number of studies alone. It's almost as if research becomes a popularity contest. If there are 20,000 studies/evaluations of rehabilitation interventions and 19,000 of them find that the intervention reduced reoffending then it must work. But what if the vast majority of these 19,000 studies were flawed or, to put it bluntly, garbage. The old adage of "garbage in/garbage out" applies. You can put a bunch of junk studies into a meta-analysis and find a strong aggregate effect size favoring rehabilitation but this hardly seems like the type of evidence we want to rely on. I've looked into a lot of the individual studies that make up many of these meta-analyses, and what I find is that there is a lot of garbage there. I'm not the only one to make this observation, although others haven't used my terms. I'm simply amazed when I go to some of the source studies and see the weak methodologies and flawed analysis conducted in many of them.
5. Another problem with rehabilitation is that systems tend to have a difficult time taking it "out of the laboratory" and moving it to scale. several studies have found that treatment programs demonstrate stronger effect sizes when done on a small scale and under the close eyes of evaluators than when implemented system-wide. Implementation seems to fall apart when taken to scale. So what good is it if we can't take these programs to scale? This would be akin to a scientist discovering a drug that was effective in treating laboratory rats but that had no impact when taken out of the laboratory and used on sick patients in the real world. Implementation problems are always pointed to when programs are found not to work. But at what point do we begin to doubt that we can implement any better? Maybe we just can't. Maybe we're pushing at the margins.
6. Another observation from research is that programs tend to demonstrate stronger positive effects in quasi-experiments than in true randomized controlled experiments. Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of program evaluations are indeed quasi-experiments. There is a whole host of potential issues with quasi-experiments that can cast a shadow of doubt on the results. This gets back to the issues relating to the quality of the studies going into meta-analyses. David Farrington has a nice discussion in a paper in Journal of Experimental Criminology of this observation that there are few true random experiments and that the effect sizes tend to be weaker in random experiments. This finding certainly rings true among the program evaluations conducted within my home state's correctional system. When randomized experiments were used, the results (even of supposed evidence-based program models) were mostly a null effect. Maybe so much research finds support for rehabilitation because it is weak research, and when we do it right we get a more realistic answer.
7. My observation is that there is a general liberal tendency within criminology, where our researchers come to the "laboratory" already wanting to believe and expecting to find that rehabilitation will work. This should be recognized, as it has the potential to produce strong biases. We need to recognize that ideology plays a role and that research never simply speaks for itself. The art of interpretation is where research results are often finessed. I'm not saying that the researcher should come to the "laboratory" completely disinterested. This is precisely opposite my point, since I believe that no researcher can come to the "laboratory" as a "clean slate". I'm saying that there needs to be more "putting our cards on the table" up front. As an aside, this is where theory plays an important role in program evaluation.
8. Intuitively to me, it seems more realistic to think that people will change their behavior as a result of a major life turning point such as marriage, a career, family, schooling, etc. rather than through a program (or even a stacking of programs). Criminals are not so different from non-criminals, and my observation of the non-criminals that surround my social world is that they haven't come to make major changes in their lives as a result of a program or class but more often it is as a result of major life events. I just think that this is a more realistic view of how life works and how change comes to occur. So I guess what I'm saying is that once I really started to think about it, intuitively it makes sense to expect the impact of a rehabilitation program to only be modest at best. Let's don't throw common sense out.
These are but a few of my thoughts guiding my questioning of rehabilitation. Again, I want to say that I'm not giving up on rehabilitation. I've simply come to the point where I think there needs to be realistic expectations of what it can accomplish. We try to instill realistic expectations in offenders before they are released from prison, but perhaps we could use some realistic expectations ourselves. What other opportunites might we be ignoring by over-emphasizing rehabilitation?
I would offer some preliminary suggestions for what we may be able to replace an over-emphasis on rehabilitation with. First, I think deterrence-based approaches should not be ignored. The rehabilitation folks are quick to qualify the circumstances under which a treatment program can be expected to work, and yet deterrence strategies are often summarily dismissed. As early as we are in our understanding of the impact of rehabilitation, we are even earlier in our understanding of the impact of deterrence. This presents a unique opportunity for criminologists though. Under what circumstances can we use a deterrence-based approach and see a real effect? Selective incapacitation is another goal that I believe is worth working towards as a system. Tied up in this, however, is the requirement of having good prediction tools in place. Again, a perfect opportunity for criminologists is presented. Let's don't settle for simple research, but let's instead press to advance our research to a whole new plain of understanding where possible. Let's examine if we can make selective incapacitation work. I think there are good institutional management strategies that can be focused on and improved as well. Finally, I think we can find innovative ways to support informal social control mechanisms (e.g., marriage, family, employment, etc.) for offenders once they are out of prison. We can't force ex-offenders to get married, to get a job, or to integrate into their community in a way that will provide a social control net, but to borrow the title of a recent bestselling book on reforming healthcare, perhaps we can "nudge" them in this direction. We have to ask what else is out there. I believe it was in a recent issue of The Criminologist that Akiva Liberman pointed out that instead of limiting ourselves exclusively to evidence-based practices, we should be open to evidence-generating practices. How can we experiment with new ideas and set our experimental ideas up so that they have the possibility of generating the evidence to support them if the evidence is there? Evidence-generating practices seem more important to me now, at a time when I question whether evidence-based practices are really as evidence-based as purported.
As always, many of my blogs on this site do not stray from controversy, so why should this one be any different. I'm curious to hear others' takes on rehabilitation. Have we put too many eggs in one basket? Are we over-selling? How can we best fix the array of brokenness that results from crime?
This essay is not intended to be a narcissistic recounting of my career development. The previous paragraph is backdrop to the question I've tried to answer up to this point in my career, and that is "how is the brokeness that results from crime best addressed by a criminal justice system?" The most fashionable answer to this question within the context of a correctional environment is to promote offender rehabilitation. I think it's important to recognize at the forefront that nobody (or at least nobody that I know) approaches this subject neutrally. Everyone starts out wanting to believe deep down that offender rehabiliation either can work or cannot work. Everyone has a gut on this. My gut has always been that offender rehabilitation can work. But my gut matters little in terms of what science has to say about it (it may matter in terms of how I interpret science but I'll get to that later). So you can imagine my satisfaction when at the beginning of my career I learned of the supposed strong body of evidence in the research literature supporting offender rehabilitation. Ahhh, my gut was confirmed by science. But as I've learned more over the years, become more sophisticated in my thinking, and allowed my inquisitive mind to wander, I've come to a point of skepticism concerning much of the scientific evidence supporting offender rehabilitation. In short, I think offender rehabilitation has been oversold. To borrow a phrase from the title of a recent essay, I am "rethinking rehabilitation". I'm not giving up on rehabilitation. And it's certainly difficult to argue with the evidence in support of some types of well-implemented rehabilitation strategies. But again, skepticism has crept in. In certain circles within criminology, to even introducing such skepticism inevitably leads to labels such as "Robert Martison", "obstructionist", "anti-scientific", etc. This unfortunate result is yet another red flag to me that points to something else outside of or in addition to science going on. So at the risk of being labeled as the second coming of Robert Martison (who coincidentally was widely misunderstood and misrepresented), here are some of my thoughts on why we should be skeptical of the body of research promoting offender rehabilitation and why we should not oversell the utility of offender rehabiliation:
1. If offender rehabilitation is effective in reducing crime, why haven't recidivism rates dropped significantly over at least the past 20 years? Just looking at the Dept. of Justice's two published recidivism studies as well as recidivism rates within my own state, recidivism rates have been surprisingly stable despite an increased movement towards rehabilitation, evidence-based practice, and "what works". Some counter this argument by saying that recidivism rates would be even higher without evidence-based treatment, but to believe this we would logically have to conclude that either: a) institutional management and other system factors affecting recidivism have gotten worse in direct proportion to the degree that our treatment programs have gotten better, or b) we have made virtually no improvement or decline in either. In terms of aggregate recidivism rates, are our treatment programs simply balancing out the effect of an otherwise declining correctional system? Or, despite the increased emphasis on implementing evidence-based treatment programs over the past 20 years, has nothing changed? One of these cases may be a possibility. But I doubt that many who work within the corrections profession sincerely believe this to be the case. I just fail to see a strong case for why a system can supposedly increasingly support evidence-based rehabilitation programs that were found to reduce recidivism and yet not realize any significant aggregate decrease in recidivism rates. Why the homeostasis in recidivism rates if offender rehabilitation is the answer?
2. Why are crime rates relatively invariant to an emphasis on treatment? Obviously a lot of factors impact crime rates. But part of the "nothing works" mantra in the late 70's to early 80's was a result of the observation that crime rates were skyrocketing during the 70's despite a strong rehabilitation emphasis within the American correctional system during the same time. Maybe it was just that the wrong types of rehabilitation strategies were being used at the time. But this is an unknown.
3. Why haven't prison populations gone down despite an increased correctional emphasis on rehabilitation? Again, I recognize that many factors affect the size of a jurisdiction's correctional population. But if we measure recidivism in terms of reincarceration, shouldn't there be some effect over time on reducing the correctional population? Or does the relative invariance of aggregate recidivism rates, crime rates, and prison population rates despite an emphasis on rehabilitation mean that rehabilitation is just maintaining the status quo in order to keep things from getting worse? Do we really believe (or have evidence to believe) that these aggregate system measures would explode in a negative direction absent rehabilitation? If rehabilition programs can't make a dent in our aggregate crime or prison rates, what good are they ultimately to a society? It seems to me that a connection must be made at the macro level for rehabilitation strategies, moving beyond individual program evaluation results.
4. The primary methodology that has been used by rehabilitation advocates in summarizing the impact of rehabilitation across the body of evidence is the meta-analysis. Meta-analyses, as used, are problemmatic on several levels. I don't want to go into a methodological discussion here (e.g., issues of publication bias, reliance on statistical significance testing, etc.), but a recent paper by Richard Berk in the Journal of Experimental Criminology does a nice job of explaining some of these issues. One of the basic problems is that those who make use of the meta-analysis tend rely on the flawed logic that there is power in the number of studies alone. It's almost as if research becomes a popularity contest. If there are 20,000 studies/evaluations of rehabilitation interventions and 19,000 of them find that the intervention reduced reoffending then it must work. But what if the vast majority of these 19,000 studies were flawed or, to put it bluntly, garbage. The old adage of "garbage in/garbage out" applies. You can put a bunch of junk studies into a meta-analysis and find a strong aggregate effect size favoring rehabilitation but this hardly seems like the type of evidence we want to rely on. I've looked into a lot of the individual studies that make up many of these meta-analyses, and what I find is that there is a lot of garbage there. I'm not the only one to make this observation, although others haven't used my terms. I'm simply amazed when I go to some of the source studies and see the weak methodologies and flawed analysis conducted in many of them.
5. Another problem with rehabilitation is that systems tend to have a difficult time taking it "out of the laboratory" and moving it to scale. several studies have found that treatment programs demonstrate stronger effect sizes when done on a small scale and under the close eyes of evaluators than when implemented system-wide. Implementation seems to fall apart when taken to scale. So what good is it if we can't take these programs to scale? This would be akin to a scientist discovering a drug that was effective in treating laboratory rats but that had no impact when taken out of the laboratory and used on sick patients in the real world. Implementation problems are always pointed to when programs are found not to work. But at what point do we begin to doubt that we can implement any better? Maybe we just can't. Maybe we're pushing at the margins.
6. Another observation from research is that programs tend to demonstrate stronger positive effects in quasi-experiments than in true randomized controlled experiments. Couple this with the fact that the vast majority of program evaluations are indeed quasi-experiments. There is a whole host of potential issues with quasi-experiments that can cast a shadow of doubt on the results. This gets back to the issues relating to the quality of the studies going into meta-analyses. David Farrington has a nice discussion in a paper in Journal of Experimental Criminology of this observation that there are few true random experiments and that the effect sizes tend to be weaker in random experiments. This finding certainly rings true among the program evaluations conducted within my home state's correctional system. When randomized experiments were used, the results (even of supposed evidence-based program models) were mostly a null effect. Maybe so much research finds support for rehabilitation because it is weak research, and when we do it right we get a more realistic answer.
7. My observation is that there is a general liberal tendency within criminology, where our researchers come to the "laboratory" already wanting to believe and expecting to find that rehabilitation will work. This should be recognized, as it has the potential to produce strong biases. We need to recognize that ideology plays a role and that research never simply speaks for itself. The art of interpretation is where research results are often finessed. I'm not saying that the researcher should come to the "laboratory" completely disinterested. This is precisely opposite my point, since I believe that no researcher can come to the "laboratory" as a "clean slate". I'm saying that there needs to be more "putting our cards on the table" up front. As an aside, this is where theory plays an important role in program evaluation.
8. Intuitively to me, it seems more realistic to think that people will change their behavior as a result of a major life turning point such as marriage, a career, family, schooling, etc. rather than through a program (or even a stacking of programs). Criminals are not so different from non-criminals, and my observation of the non-criminals that surround my social world is that they haven't come to make major changes in their lives as a result of a program or class but more often it is as a result of major life events. I just think that this is a more realistic view of how life works and how change comes to occur. So I guess what I'm saying is that once I really started to think about it, intuitively it makes sense to expect the impact of a rehabilitation program to only be modest at best. Let's don't throw common sense out.
These are but a few of my thoughts guiding my questioning of rehabilitation. Again, I want to say that I'm not giving up on rehabilitation. I've simply come to the point where I think there needs to be realistic expectations of what it can accomplish. We try to instill realistic expectations in offenders before they are released from prison, but perhaps we could use some realistic expectations ourselves. What other opportunites might we be ignoring by over-emphasizing rehabilitation?
I would offer some preliminary suggestions for what we may be able to replace an over-emphasis on rehabilitation with. First, I think deterrence-based approaches should not be ignored. The rehabilitation folks are quick to qualify the circumstances under which a treatment program can be expected to work, and yet deterrence strategies are often summarily dismissed. As early as we are in our understanding of the impact of rehabilitation, we are even earlier in our understanding of the impact of deterrence. This presents a unique opportunity for criminologists though. Under what circumstances can we use a deterrence-based approach and see a real effect? Selective incapacitation is another goal that I believe is worth working towards as a system. Tied up in this, however, is the requirement of having good prediction tools in place. Again, a perfect opportunity for criminologists is presented. Let's don't settle for simple research, but let's instead press to advance our research to a whole new plain of understanding where possible. Let's examine if we can make selective incapacitation work. I think there are good institutional management strategies that can be focused on and improved as well. Finally, I think we can find innovative ways to support informal social control mechanisms (e.g., marriage, family, employment, etc.) for offenders once they are out of prison. We can't force ex-offenders to get married, to get a job, or to integrate into their community in a way that will provide a social control net, but to borrow the title of a recent bestselling book on reforming healthcare, perhaps we can "nudge" them in this direction. We have to ask what else is out there. I believe it was in a recent issue of The Criminologist that Akiva Liberman pointed out that instead of limiting ourselves exclusively to evidence-based practices, we should be open to evidence-generating practices. How can we experiment with new ideas and set our experimental ideas up so that they have the possibility of generating the evidence to support them if the evidence is there? Evidence-generating practices seem more important to me now, at a time when I question whether evidence-based practices are really as evidence-based as purported.
As always, many of my blogs on this site do not stray from controversy, so why should this one be any different. I'm curious to hear others' takes on rehabilitation. Have we put too many eggs in one basket? Are we over-selling? How can we best fix the array of brokenness that results from crime?
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
U.S. News & World Report Rankings
The new U.S. News & World Report rankings for Criminology/Criminal Justice graduate school programs are out. University of Maryland holds on to its #1 ranking! It's great to be at the best school. Indulge me as I brag a little bit.Of course in briefly scanning some other CJ blogs, I noticed that everyone who's at a school that's not at the top of the list are complaining about the ranking methodology. Hey, I think U.S. News & World Report got it right. No complaints from me (ok, so I'm a little biased here). Granted there are many methods of ranking graduate school programs. Another blog site rightly points out that the Journal of Criminal Justice Education has published some good pieces ranking Criminology/CJ programs using different methodologies. The results don't substantively differ though. The same schools consistently come out on top. I can't remember if University of Maryland's program was #1 in all of the Journal of Criminal Justice Education pieces, but they were at least in the top 3.
I remember being a senior in high school and planning for where I wanted to go to college. I thought the U.S. News & World Report rankings were like the definitive source of college rankings. So maybe it's just a bit of nostalgia that I get excited about seeing my current school at the top of their list.
What do others think? Did U.S. News & World Report get it right? Who should have been ranked higher? Who should have been ranked lower? What ranking criteria do you think is most important? Should it be based on faculty publication counts? Publication counts only in prestigious journals? Faculty grants received? Peer rankings (as I believe the U.S. News & World Report rankings primarily relied on)? Service to the field (such as positions held at professional associations/societies like American Society of Criminology)? Counts of faculty citations in other publications? Or is all of this just a waste of time? Are we just massaging our collective ego's by doing these rankings? It may be difficult to obtain any high degree of objectivity in producing such rankings, but I don't tend to think that they're a waste of time. Again speaking from personal experience, I know they helped me decide on a graduate school when I was looking to get my Master's degree. I also think competition is good (stay tuned for a forthcoming posting on theory competition vs. theory integration).
Sunday, April 26, 2009
From Hellraiser to Family Man
A fair body of solid research tells us that there is a moderately strong relationship between marriage and desistance from crime. I've been thinking a lot about this issue recently, and about what the policy implications of it are. I'm even thinking this may be an area I want to tackle for my dissertation (yes, I still haven't picked a dissertation topic yet).
The obvious question that comes up when we talk about a correlation between marriage and crime is whether or not it's a causal relationship. Some hold that it's merely correlational; that those who desist from crime are also those who are more likely to get married. Thus, this underlying propensity is really predicting both factors. I tend to side more with the social control perspective, that something about marriage can actually have a causal impact upon future criminal behavior. Sampson and Laub have done some good work in this area. Their most recent paper in Criminology on the marriage-crime relationship indeed finds a causal relationship. They use what they call a counterfactual approach to control for the problem of self-selection into marriage. Obviously it would be nice if we could randomly assign a group of ex-offenders to get married or not to get married, but that's never going to happen. Absent a true randomized experiment, Sampson and Laub's paper comes the closest methodologically (I believe) to being able to determine causality. They find that marriage reduces the odds of recidivism by about 35%. Quite an impressive effect! I'm not surprised that they found this strong of a relationship though. To me it just makes intuitive sense. When those studying correctional rehabilitation find similar effects for treatment programming, why shouldn't we believe that a potentially life-changing event like getting married could have an impact in the same range. How many people experience genuine change in their life from a program vs. from a life-changing event? The potential for a stronger effect from a life-changing event just resonates with me more.
But there's many questions that remain unanswered. I'd like to raise just a few of them. First, does the marriage have to be a good marriage in order to lead to desistance from crime? Can a not-so-good or even downright bad marriage still produce desistance? My gut tells me that we might still see a significant impact on desistance from even a bad marriage, although the healthy marriage will probably generate a stronger impact.
This leads to my second question. What is it about marriage that produces desistance? Is it that marriage tends to produce a change in attitudes and values? Is is that the married person's routine activities change, thus keeping them out of trouble? Is it the "nagging of a good wife"? Is it a change in self-identity ("from hellraiser to family man")? Is it "love that conquers all"? What's in that "black box" of the marriage effect. Again, I tend to lean more towards believing the social control explanations (e.g., the "nagging of a good wife"), but I also think the routine activities explanation holds a lot of weight too. I think Sampson and Laub would agree here, and present evidence of this in their interviews with the Glueck men in "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives".
The third question I have about the marriage effect is whether or not one has to be legally married to benefit from this effect. Can someone in a committed yet unmarried relationship equally benefit from that relationship in terms of desistance? Can same sex partners benefit? Obviously holding to a conservative Christian worldview as I do, I would expect to see that marriage in the traditional sense will produce the strongest effect. But if I'm intellectually honest then I must admit that ultimately it's an empirical question that has not yet been answered by research. Again, falling back on theory, it just makes too much sense to me to believe that traditional marriage would have the strongest effect. Remember in Hirschi's social control theory that the four elements of control are attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. In marriage, I think that one of the factors generating the marriage effect is commitment. Obviously marriage itself is a long-term commitment that holds a lot of serious legal implications. How much of a commitment really is a "committed unmarried relationship"? It would seem that on average you will find less real commitment in such relationships, and to the extend that you do then you would expect to find less of a controlling effect of marriage on criminal behavior. As far as same sex relationships, it would make for an interesting study but practically speaking it seems that it would be very difficult to be able to identify a large enough sample size of criminals who define themselves as being in a same sex relationship.
Maybe I'm being naive about that last point. But this leads to my fourth line of questioning. Has, as some have speculated, the institution of marriage changed so much in our culture that we should not expect to see a positive marriage effect on crime any longer? Admittedly, much of the research that finds a relationship between marriage and crime are longitudinal studies that examine a sample of individuals who came of age a decades ago. Is there a period effect related to marriage? How has cultural shifts in marriage impacted the relationship between marriage and crime? Once again going with my gut, I don't expect to find that much has changed. Think about it...marriage has been around since the beginning of time and across many cultures. I think we might be seeing an assault on traditional marriage but I think marriage and its concomitant benefits are here to stay.
Fifth, what about having children? Do we see an interaction effect or a confounding effect? Is what appears to be a marriage impact really an impact of being a parent? Or does being a parent add another protective factor in the mix, further strengthening the probability of desistance? I would love to see some research on this. We need to disentangle the impact of being a parent from the impact of being married.
Sixth, are there situations in which marriage can actually increase future criminal behavior? I'm thinking here particularly of domestic violence. I believe it was in a chapter in Blumstein's book on the crime drop (I think the chapter was by Rosenfeld) in which he finds that homicide rates have dropped because less people are getting married. He examines the types of homicides that contributed to the drop in homicides and found that domestic homicides had a particularly large effect on the drop. So how does this finding jive with other findings on the positive impacts of marriage?
These questions just touch the surface. There are many other questions that could be raised. What interests me is the policy implications of this research. I currently work for the PA Department of Corrections. What are we to do with a finding that there is a relationship between marriage and crime? We can't force our inmates to get married. But maybe we can provide informational sessions on marriage and also marriage counseling. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is doing just that. I am very much interested to see the results of the evaluations that are being done on the Oklahoma program. John Laub has turned me on to the idea that maybe we can't force offenders to get married but maybe we can "nudge" them in that direction. He takes this concept of "nudging" from the title of a recent book by Thaler and Sunstein called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness". I haven't read the book, but apparently in this book the authors discuss the idea that we can't force people to live healthier lives in order to reduce health care costs, but there are ways that we can nudge them in the direction of healthier living. Laub thinks there might be promise for applying this same concept to marriage.
Whatever future research may find in this area, I can certainly speak from personal experience. I know the marriage effect has worked for me. From hellraiser to family man! Better run, dinner is on the table. Coming Honey...(ha ha)
The obvious question that comes up when we talk about a correlation between marriage and crime is whether or not it's a causal relationship. Some hold that it's merely correlational; that those who desist from crime are also those who are more likely to get married. Thus, this underlying propensity is really predicting both factors. I tend to side more with the social control perspective, that something about marriage can actually have a causal impact upon future criminal behavior. Sampson and Laub have done some good work in this area. Their most recent paper in Criminology on the marriage-crime relationship indeed finds a causal relationship. They use what they call a counterfactual approach to control for the problem of self-selection into marriage. Obviously it would be nice if we could randomly assign a group of ex-offenders to get married or not to get married, but that's never going to happen. Absent a true randomized experiment, Sampson and Laub's paper comes the closest methodologically (I believe) to being able to determine causality. They find that marriage reduces the odds of recidivism by about 35%. Quite an impressive effect! I'm not surprised that they found this strong of a relationship though. To me it just makes intuitive sense. When those studying correctional rehabilitation find similar effects for treatment programming, why shouldn't we believe that a potentially life-changing event like getting married could have an impact in the same range. How many people experience genuine change in their life from a program vs. from a life-changing event? The potential for a stronger effect from a life-changing event just resonates with me more.
But there's many questions that remain unanswered. I'd like to raise just a few of them. First, does the marriage have to be a good marriage in order to lead to desistance from crime? Can a not-so-good or even downright bad marriage still produce desistance? My gut tells me that we might still see a significant impact on desistance from even a bad marriage, although the healthy marriage will probably generate a stronger impact.
This leads to my second question. What is it about marriage that produces desistance? Is it that marriage tends to produce a change in attitudes and values? Is is that the married person's routine activities change, thus keeping them out of trouble? Is it the "nagging of a good wife"? Is it a change in self-identity ("from hellraiser to family man")? Is it "love that conquers all"? What's in that "black box" of the marriage effect. Again, I tend to lean more towards believing the social control explanations (e.g., the "nagging of a good wife"), but I also think the routine activities explanation holds a lot of weight too. I think Sampson and Laub would agree here, and present evidence of this in their interviews with the Glueck men in "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives".
The third question I have about the marriage effect is whether or not one has to be legally married to benefit from this effect. Can someone in a committed yet unmarried relationship equally benefit from that relationship in terms of desistance? Can same sex partners benefit? Obviously holding to a conservative Christian worldview as I do, I would expect to see that marriage in the traditional sense will produce the strongest effect. But if I'm intellectually honest then I must admit that ultimately it's an empirical question that has not yet been answered by research. Again, falling back on theory, it just makes too much sense to me to believe that traditional marriage would have the strongest effect. Remember in Hirschi's social control theory that the four elements of control are attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief. In marriage, I think that one of the factors generating the marriage effect is commitment. Obviously marriage itself is a long-term commitment that holds a lot of serious legal implications. How much of a commitment really is a "committed unmarried relationship"? It would seem that on average you will find less real commitment in such relationships, and to the extend that you do then you would expect to find less of a controlling effect of marriage on criminal behavior. As far as same sex relationships, it would make for an interesting study but practically speaking it seems that it would be very difficult to be able to identify a large enough sample size of criminals who define themselves as being in a same sex relationship.
Maybe I'm being naive about that last point. But this leads to my fourth line of questioning. Has, as some have speculated, the institution of marriage changed so much in our culture that we should not expect to see a positive marriage effect on crime any longer? Admittedly, much of the research that finds a relationship between marriage and crime are longitudinal studies that examine a sample of individuals who came of age a decades ago. Is there a period effect related to marriage? How has cultural shifts in marriage impacted the relationship between marriage and crime? Once again going with my gut, I don't expect to find that much has changed. Think about it...marriage has been around since the beginning of time and across many cultures. I think we might be seeing an assault on traditional marriage but I think marriage and its concomitant benefits are here to stay.
Fifth, what about having children? Do we see an interaction effect or a confounding effect? Is what appears to be a marriage impact really an impact of being a parent? Or does being a parent add another protective factor in the mix, further strengthening the probability of desistance? I would love to see some research on this. We need to disentangle the impact of being a parent from the impact of being married.
Sixth, are there situations in which marriage can actually increase future criminal behavior? I'm thinking here particularly of domestic violence. I believe it was in a chapter in Blumstein's book on the crime drop (I think the chapter was by Rosenfeld) in which he finds that homicide rates have dropped because less people are getting married. He examines the types of homicides that contributed to the drop in homicides and found that domestic homicides had a particularly large effect on the drop. So how does this finding jive with other findings on the positive impacts of marriage?
These questions just touch the surface. There are many other questions that could be raised. What interests me is the policy implications of this research. I currently work for the PA Department of Corrections. What are we to do with a finding that there is a relationship between marriage and crime? We can't force our inmates to get married. But maybe we can provide informational sessions on marriage and also marriage counseling. The Oklahoma Department of Corrections is doing just that. I am very much interested to see the results of the evaluations that are being done on the Oklahoma program. John Laub has turned me on to the idea that maybe we can't force offenders to get married but maybe we can "nudge" them in that direction. He takes this concept of "nudging" from the title of a recent book by Thaler and Sunstein called "Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness". I haven't read the book, but apparently in this book the authors discuss the idea that we can't force people to live healthier lives in order to reduce health care costs, but there are ways that we can nudge them in the direction of healthier living. Laub thinks there might be promise for applying this same concept to marriage.
Whatever future research may find in this area, I can certainly speak from personal experience. I know the marriage effect has worked for me. From hellraiser to family man! Better run, dinner is on the table. Coming Honey...(ha ha)
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Criminology Wall of Fame
I am a huge criminological history buff. I've written about this interest of mine before. On the wall of my office at work I compiled a collage of photos of "pioneer criminologists", which is my tribute to the greats of the discipline who have paved the way. I like my "wall of fame". It reminds me of the tradition of this relatively young yet strong discipline of ours. Obviously like any top list, my list of top criminologists will differ from others. I was interested to hear Bob Bursik's presidential address at ASC last year, where he highlighted some of the lost "dead sea scrolls" of our discipline by criminologists that we talk little about, such as Solomon Kobrin and Herbert Bloch (just read the text of Bursik's address in my new issue of Criminology). I admit that I knew little about Solomon Kobrin and Herbert Bloch (I read John Laub's interview with Sol Kobrin and I knew there was a Herbert Bloch ASC award but that's about it). My list of top criminologists is pretty much "textbook". Some might not strictly be considered criminologists, but have had such an impact on the discipline (or at least I think they have). So I thought I'd recreate my office "wall of fame" on my blog site here. So here goes those who I consider to be the pioneers of our discipline:
EDWIN SUTHERLAND
CESARE BECCARIA
ALFRED BLUMSTEIN
TRAVIS HIRSCHI
Hirschi is my absolute favorite criminologist. His theoretical work is unparalleled in my opinion. He's a criminologist in the truest sense of the word, so much so that there's an entire book dedicated to his career entitled "The Craft of Criminology". He is another one who's wo
n about every prestigious award out there in the discipline. His two best known works, "Causes of Delinquency" and "A General Theory of Crime", are consistently at the top of lists of most significant books in the field. He holds a unique position in criminology in that he is a pioneer of two prominent theories over the course of his career- Social Control (or Social Bonding) theory, and Self-Control theory. The link between the two is that he is a control theorist, which I also consider myself to be. I go back and forth as to whether I like his formulation of social control or self-control better. Both have had an enormous impact on my thinking. Hirschi is also my intellectual "grand-father", in that he was the Dissertation Chair for John Laub, who is currently my Dissertation Chair. Of course it's no secret that there was no love lost between Hirschi and my grad school mentor Blumstein during the "great debate" in the 80's. As John Laub says, the debate between these two giants made all criminology grad school students at the time anxious to read the new issue of Criminology to see what was going to be said next. I'm devious in that I always put Blumstein and Hirschi side by side in my list of top criminologists. Hirschi "went to war" with several other criminologists besides Blumstein, however. He famously took Strain theorists and Social Learning theorists to task. He's been criticized by many for his Self-Control theory. But I admire his stubborness. I admire his rejection of theoretical integration in favor of theoretical competition, and his vigorous debate of ideas with other criminologists. There's a lot more that I admire about Hirschi but let me move on.
RONALD AKERS
JAMES Q. WILSON
DAVID MATZA
Speaking of my theory professor, Ray Paternoster, he's next on my list. Actually I'm pairing him together with Dan Nagin, my former statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon. While each of these two individually have made enormous contributions, I perhaps like their work that they've done together the best. What they've contributed together is a better understanding and improved testing of deterrence/rational choice theory. Their 1991 article where they lay out the "urn analogy" for explaining the relationship between past and current offending is a classic. I'm a big fan of the "urn analogy". Their students (Piquero, Pogarsky, etc.) have carried the banner of deterrence/rational choice research as well. I hold high hopes for the future of deterrence/rational choice theories and as such I think Nagin and Paternoster have really progressed this area. A short word about each individually now...Nagin is perhaps Al Blumstein's most well-known student. He is a statistical genius. His formulation of the "semi-parametric group-based" modeling approach has become an important technique for quantitatively testing life course theories and conducting longitudinal studies. Another piece of work of Nagin's that I'm a big fan of is his longitudinal study with Tremblay. What I find fascinating about Nagin and Tremblay's work is that they find that the 
aggression peaks somewhere before 2 years old, not in the late teens or early 20's like most criminological research postulates. I think this has powerful implications for the classical school assumption that what needs to be explained is conformity and not delinquency/crime. I think it's also potentially damning to social learning theory. Aside from Paternoster's work with Nagin, Paternoster does best (I believe) at testing criminological theory. His textbook on theory is probably one of the best. He's done some good testing of labeling theory. I've already mentioned is work on testing deterrence/rational choice. Paternoster is also recognized for his research on capital punishment. I can't say that I'm that familiar with his work in this area. I know he's done a fair bit of work in this area though.
Speaking of dynamic duo's, here's another pair. Laub and Sampson have done an incredible amount of work together. John is my current advisor/dissertation chair so obviously I'm gonna have good things to say. These two criminologists where in the same cohort of students in the criminology program at Albany. Hirschi has referred to their cohort as the golden age of that program. Clearly Sampson and Laub best known for rediscovering the Glueck's "Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency" longitudinal study. In doing so, they've established the longest longitudinal study in criminology to date. Their book "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives" represents a 50 year follow-up of the Glueck boys. I think I like "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives" the best because it focuses on desistance, which is a primary interest of mine. Theoretically speaking, their first book "Crime in the Making", in which they lay out their age-graded theory of informal social control, is the important work of their's to read. As their former teacher Travis Hirschi moved on to self-control theory, Sampson and Laub have carried the banner of social control theory. 
They've also introduced "life-course criminology" to the discipline. Sampson and Laub are "life-course criminology". They've spent a career (to date) of improving our understanding of continuity and change in criminal behavior across the life-course. On his own, Sampson has done a lot of work in the area of community factors related to crime and social disorganization theory. Most recognize that Sampson, along with Robert Bursik, are responsible for the resurgence of social disorganization theory in criminology. Sampson's notion of "collective efficacy" has been popular in recent years. Laub's individual work has been in the area of juvenile delinquency and also on the history of criminology. I particularly admire Laub's championing of the history of criminology. His knowledge of the history of the discipline is amazing. I've written before about his "Criminology in the Making" book, in which he interviewed several well-known criminologists. I've always said that I'd like to do something like a "Criminology in the Making Part II" with interviews from a current cohort of criminologists. Perhaps this would include interviews with Sampson and Laub themselves.
DAVID FARRINGTON
ALBERT COHEN
Sherman is another one of those "jack of all trades" in the field. I think most know him for his work on policing. But more generally, he's been championing evidence-based approches to criminal justice policy for some time now. His famous Minneapolis Domestic Violence study (with Richard Berk) illustrates his career-long dedication to using rigorous methods for program
evaluation such as randomized-controlled experiments. He is also the author of defiance theory, which meshes labeling theory, social control theory, and procedural justice theory. Defiance theory hasn't really received nearly the attention that it should, in my opinion. I think it's a plausible theory for explaining how punishment more generally and prison specifically can have differential effects on different types of offenders. I've never personally met Sherman, but from what I've heard and from the impression I get he is extremely knowledgable about many different areas of the discipline (theory, practice, corrections, policing, etc.), as a true criminologist should be in my opinion. You can't be an expert in everything, but if you're going to profess this discipline then you should know as much about the different areas it covers as possible. This is the sense I get of Sherman. I think he'll continue to champion evidence-based approaches to crime policy too, as demonstrated by the "what works, what doesn't, what's promising" study that he spearheaded while at Univ. of Maryland.
EDWIN SUTHERLANDOf course any list must have this guy on it, the father of American criminology. Sutherland is also the father of Differential Association theory (which is a predecessor theory to Social Learning theory). His work developed out of the "Chicago School" of sociological criminology. It is well-known that he saw sociology as the proper parent discipline for criminology. I disagree with his position on this. Most interesting to me personally was his debate of ideas with Sheldon and Eleanor Glueck. While I tend to side with the Glueck's position in the Sutherland/Glueck debate, I certainly recognize the great contribution of Sutherland to the discipline. His is one of the first names that any freshman criminology student learns. He is also memorialized by the American Society of Criminology's coveted Sutherland Award.
ADOLPH QUETELET 
This 19th century Belgian astronomer/mathematician might be unrecognized by some. But surely all criminologists have heard of the well-established age-crime curve. Quetelet was the first to point to the age-crime curve. He was a positivist criminologist who gathered/analyzed a host of social statistics from which he made many observations about apparent correlates of crime, some of which we take for granted today. Some of the correlates of crime he observed were age, gender, climate, poverty, education, and substance abuse patterns. Given the degree of debate that has been generated in the field by those seeking to understand the age-crime curve, I have to include Quetelet on my list. He was ahead of his time (wouldn't it be great to have Quetelet still around and hear him weigh in on the Blumstein vs. Gottfredson/Hirschi age-crime curve debate).
This 19th century Belgian astronomer/mathematician might be unrecognized by some. But surely all criminologists have heard of the well-established age-crime curve. Quetelet was the first to point to the age-crime curve. He was a positivist criminologist who gathered/analyzed a host of social statistics from which he made many observations about apparent correlates of crime, some of which we take for granted today. Some of the correlates of crime he observed were age, gender, climate, poverty, education, and substance abuse patterns. Given the degree of debate that has been generated in the field by those seeking to understand the age-crime curve, I have to include Quetelet on my list. He was ahead of his time (wouldn't it be great to have Quetelet still around and hear him weigh in on the Blumstein vs. Gottfredson/Hirschi age-crime curve debate).
CESARE BECCARIAThis Italian criminologist is the father of the Classical School of criminology. I consider myself a classical criminologist, so I like this guy. His important work to the field is his treatise entitled "On Crimes and Punishment" (1764). He believed that motivation for criminal behavior was constant. He mostly focused on the utility of punishment, saying that it needed to be proportionate to the crime. He was influential to Jeremy Bentham and the later Utilitarian view of punishment- that punishment needs to be certain, severe, and swift in order to be effective. Modern day deterrence theory is also an extension of Becarria's work.
CESARE LOMBROSO
While the other "Cesare" is often considered the father of the Classical School of criminology, this "Cesare" is often considered the father of the Positivist School of criminology. He was a biological positivist who is famous for his idea of
the "born criminal". From his study of human heads, he developed what he called the atavistic criminal type, which he associated with facial features such as large jaws, a low-sloping forehead, and high cheekbones. His ideas have largely been disproven today but his postivistic approach to the study of crime continues. I think that many in the field feared (probably rightly so) the implications of his work, and have thus largely abandoned biological contributions to criminology over the last century or so. I see this changing though, as we now recognize that there is an interaction effect between biological factors such as genetics and social environment. I'm a big fan of seeing a return to biological criminology. I also like that Northeastern University's resident historian of criminology, Nicole Rafter, recently translated Lombroso's "Criminal Man" from Italian to English.
the "born criminal". From his study of human heads, he developed what he called the atavistic criminal type, which he associated with facial features such as large jaws, a low-sloping forehead, and high cheekbones. His ideas have largely been disproven today but his postivistic approach to the study of crime continues. I think that many in the field feared (probably rightly so) the implications of his work, and have thus largely abandoned biological contributions to criminology over the last century or so. I see this changing though, as we now recognize that there is an interaction effect between biological factors such as genetics and social environment. I'm a big fan of seeing a return to biological criminology. I also like that Northeastern University's resident historian of criminology, Nicole Rafter, recently translated Lombroso's "Criminal Man" from Italian to English.
ALFRED BLUMSTEINWhat can I say? Al Blumstein is simply genius. Oh yeah, in the interest of full disclosure, I had the extreme honor of studying under him and working with him as his research assistant for two years at Carnegie Mellon. Most would consider Al to be on their short list of the greatest modern American criminologists, even though Al's formal training was in Engineering and Operations Research. His influence has been felt across many areas of the discipline, from theory to policy to quantitative methods. His vigorous debate with Hirschi/Gottfredson during the mid 1980s over the meaning of the age-crime curve is labeled by some as the "great debate" in criminology. He is the father of the "criminal career" paradigm, which helped paved the way for much of the longitudinal research that is popular in criminology today. He's done important analysis of U.S. crime trends and of the American crime drop during the mid to late 1990s. He's also done important analysis of U.S. incarceration trends, including some ongoing work that I was involved in on disaggregating the racial disproportionality in incarceration rates. In my current work, I've benefited from his work on prison population projections modeling. He's won just about every prestigious award in the discipline. He's been so effective in bridging the gap between research, policy and politics. He's been so effective as a teacher/mentor that his students and his students' students are now big names in the discipline (think Nagin, Bushway, Dugan, Pogarsky, among others).
TRAVIS HIRSCHI
Hirschi is my absolute favorite criminologist. His theoretical work is unparalleled in my opinion. He's a criminologist in the truest sense of the word, so much so that there's an entire book dedicated to his career entitled "The Craft of Criminology". He is another one who's wo
n about every prestigious award out there in the discipline. His two best known works, "Causes of Delinquency" and "A General Theory of Crime", are consistently at the top of lists of most significant books in the field. He holds a unique position in criminology in that he is a pioneer of two prominent theories over the course of his career- Social Control (or Social Bonding) theory, and Self-Control theory. The link between the two is that he is a control theorist, which I also consider myself to be. I go back and forth as to whether I like his formulation of social control or self-control better. Both have had an enormous impact on my thinking. Hirschi is also my intellectual "grand-father", in that he was the Dissertation Chair for John Laub, who is currently my Dissertation Chair. Of course it's no secret that there was no love lost between Hirschi and my grad school mentor Blumstein during the "great debate" in the 80's. As John Laub says, the debate between these two giants made all criminology grad school students at the time anxious to read the new issue of Criminology to see what was going to be said next. I'm devious in that I always put Blumstein and Hirschi side by side in my list of top criminologists. Hirschi "went to war" with several other criminologists besides Blumstein, however. He famously took Strain theorists and Social Learning theorists to task. He's been criticized by many for his Self-Control theory. But I admire his stubborness. I admire his rejection of theoretical integration in favor of theoretical competition, and his vigorous debate of ideas with other criminologists. There's a lot more that I admire about Hirschi but let me move on. 
RONALD AKERSSpeaking of people Hirschi has debated, here's another one. Akers is the pioneer in what we know today as the Social Learning extension of Differential Association theory in criminology. I think Social Learning theory is probably the most formidible competitor to Control theories (but of course I still come down on the side of Control theory). Akers has advanced Sutherland's Differential Association in important ways, especially by specifying the learning mechanisms involved. In addition to Akers academic contributions, you have to love the Ron Akers Bluegrass Band that plays at ASC each year. Gotta love it.
MARVIN WOLFGANG
This Univ. of Pennsylvania professor is another early pioneer of the kinds of longitudinal studies that are now popular in criminology. His "Delinquency in a Birth Cohort" and "Subculture of Violence" books are his most important works. He's famous for the finding that a small percentage of delinquents (about 6%) are responsible for about half of all delinquency. Of course many have used his Philadelphia Birth Cohort dataset from which he generated this finding to conduct a lot of other important work in the field. I really like his "Subculture of Violence" book, particularly the first part of the book where sets out to define a criminologist and the proper domain of criminology (I always thought it was kind of weird how he worked this into his book on a theory of the subculture of violence but to me it's perhaps the best part of the book). Forget Elijah Anderson (no disrespect intended to Anderson), it was Wolfgang's "Subculture of Violence" and Fox Butterfield's "All God's Children" that turned me on to subcultural/cultural deviance theory. Wolfgang is another one who tops many peoples' lists of prominent American criminologists. As with all of the others on my list here, a lot more could be said about Wolfgang.
JAMES Q. WILSONAh yes, the conservative political criminologist. I identify myself as a conservative, so I tend to align with Wilson. His conservative ideas are what a lot of folks don't like about this criminologist. Along with Blumstein, I think Wilson has done about as much as anybody out there in the field to promote criminology in public policy. His whopping long book "Crime and Human Nature" is probably my favorite of his pieces. Most consider the theory outlined in this book to be a biological theory of crime. It's a criminal propensity theory that shares a lot of commonality with Gottfredson/Hirschi's Self-Control theory. One area that I absolutely disagree with Wilson on is his proposition that criminological theory is mostly irrelevant to public policy. But I don't have to see eye to eye with Wilson (or many of the others on my list here) in order to respect his work and contribution to the field.
CLIFFORD SHAW
Shaw is author of "The Jackroller", a great book that brings qualitative methods into play in criminology. In "Jackroller", he presents "a delinquent boy's own story". His sample size of one might be criticized by the quantitative purists, but the depth and richness of the story of Stanley in "Jackroller" is genius (and just plain interesting to read). Of course Shaw is also known for his work with McKay and the Chicago School in promoting sociological postivism and pioneering Social Disorganization theory. Being a control theorist, I'm particularly a fan of the macro-level social control elements in Shaw and McKay's Social Disorganization theory.
DAVID MATZATo me, Matza compares classical school criminology to positive school criminology better than anyone else. His "embarrassment of riches" critique of positive school criminology is excellent. "Delinquency and Drift" is a great book too. Some people classify Matza's work as subcultural theory, but I side with those who view his work as control theory. Matza (along with Sykes) also formulated the whole "techniques of neutralization" idea, which is drawn upon a lot in current correctional rehabilitation work. Matza's whole concept of drift in and out of delinquency/crime (similar to Glaser's "zig-zag" concept) is a really intriquing line of inquiry as well. I remember my theory professor (Ray Paternoster) saying that in his opinion Matza writes with more technical perfection than any other criminologist. I'm not sure I necessarily share this view, but Paternoster definitely turned my on to Matza's work. Even for those not interested in criminological theory, Matza is certainly a good writer to read and emulate if you want to improve your own writing.
DANIEL NAGIN & RAY PATERNOSTER
Speaking of my theory professor, Ray Paternoster, he's next on my list. Actually I'm pairing him together with Dan Nagin, my former statistics professor at Carnegie Mellon. While each of these two individually have made enormous contributions, I perhaps like their work that they've done together the best. What they've contributed together is a better understanding and improved testing of deterrence/rational choice theory. Their 1991 article where they lay out the "urn analogy" for explaining the relationship between past and current offending is a classic. I'm a big fan of the "urn analogy". Their students (Piquero, Pogarsky, etc.) have carried the banner of deterrence/rational choice research as well. I hold high hopes for the future of deterrence/rational choice theories and as such I think Nagin and Paternoster have really progressed this area. A short word about each individually now...Nagin is perhaps Al Blumstein's most well-known student. He is a statistical genius. His formulation of the "semi-parametric group-based" modeling approach has become an important technique for quantitatively testing life course theories and conducting longitudinal studies. Another piece of work of Nagin's that I'm a big fan of is his longitudinal study with Tremblay. What I find fascinating about Nagin and Tremblay's work is that they find that the 
aggression peaks somewhere before 2 years old, not in the late teens or early 20's like most criminological research postulates. I think this has powerful implications for the classical school assumption that what needs to be explained is conformity and not delinquency/crime. I think it's also potentially damning to social learning theory. Aside from Paternoster's work with Nagin, Paternoster does best (I believe) at testing criminological theory. His textbook on theory is probably one of the best. He's done some good testing of labeling theory. I've already mentioned is work on testing deterrence/rational choice. Paternoster is also recognized for his research on capital punishment. I can't say that I'm that familiar with his work in this area. I know he's done a fair bit of work in this area though.JOHN LAUB & ROBERT SAMPSON
Speaking of dynamic duo's, here's another pair. Laub and Sampson have done an incredible amount of work together. John is my current advisor/dissertation chair so obviously I'm gonna have good things to say. These two criminologists where in the same cohort of students in the criminology program at Albany. Hirschi has referred to their cohort as the golden age of that program. Clearly Sampson and Laub best known for rediscovering the Glueck's "Unraveling Juvenile Delinquency" longitudinal study. In doing so, they've established the longest longitudinal study in criminology to date. Their book "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives" represents a 50 year follow-up of the Glueck boys. I think I like "Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives" the best because it focuses on desistance, which is a primary interest of mine. Theoretically speaking, their first book "Crime in the Making", in which they lay out their age-graded theory of informal social control, is the important work of their's to read. As their former teacher Travis Hirschi moved on to self-control theory, Sampson and Laub have carried the banner of social control theory. 
They've also introduced "life-course criminology" to the discipline. Sampson and Laub are "life-course criminology". They've spent a career (to date) of improving our understanding of continuity and change in criminal behavior across the life-course. On his own, Sampson has done a lot of work in the area of community factors related to crime and social disorganization theory. Most recognize that Sampson, along with Robert Bursik, are responsible for the resurgence of social disorganization theory in criminology. Sampson's notion of "collective efficacy" has been popular in recent years. Laub's individual work has been in the area of juvenile delinquency and also on the history of criminology. I particularly admire Laub's championing of the history of criminology. His knowledge of the history of the discipline is amazing. I've written before about his "Criminology in the Making" book, in which he interviewed several well-known criminologists. I've always said that I'd like to do something like a "Criminology in the Making Part II" with interviews from a current cohort of criminologists. Perhaps this would include interviews with Sampson and Laub themselves.TERRIE MOFFITT
Moffitt has postulated one of the most intriguing developmental theories of crime- the "dual taxonomy" theory. I love this theory for one simple reason- it's parsimonious (which is reason I like Gottfredson and Hirschi's self-control theory as well). A couple of years ago, Moffitt (along with Blumstein) won the coveted Stockholm Prize in Criminology. This recently established award is intended to be akin to a nobel prize in criminology. Moffitt, like many other of the greats in the field, comes to us from outside of criminology. She in fact has never been on faculty in a criminology department as far as I am aware. Most students of criminology will have to read her work though.
JOAN MCCORD
McCord is well-recognized for her use of a longitudinal-experimental design in the Cambridge-Somerville study, in which she was one of the first to empirically demonstrate that some 
programs/interventions can have a negative impact on delinquency/criminal behavior. Her early use of a longitudinal-experimental design set a high bar for program evaluation. It was also an important finding that programs can actually have a negative impact. I particularly like McCord's work on family factors. Her and David Farrington have probably done as much if not more research than anyone in the field on family factors as related to crime/delinquency. McCord had a long and distinguished career. I've heard several personal stories about her from my friends at Temple University. I also remember attending a panel session which was a tribute to her life and work, at the ASC conference the year after she passed away. I remember being impressed by what I learned about her career.
programs/interventions can have a negative impact on delinquency/criminal behavior. Her early use of a longitudinal-experimental design set a high bar for program evaluation. It was also an important finding that programs can actually have a negative impact. I particularly like McCord's work on family factors. Her and David Farrington have probably done as much if not more research than anyone in the field on family factors as related to crime/delinquency. McCord had a long and distinguished career. I've heard several personal stories about her from my friends at Temple University. I also remember attending a panel session which was a tribute to her life and work, at the ASC conference the year after she passed away. I remember being impressed by what I learned about her career. 
DAVID FARRINGTONFarrington is another with a long and distinguished career. His research has covered several different areas. He's done a fair bit of work with Rolf Loeber on developmental research using the Pittsburgh Youth Study. He's done some good work on the age-crime curve and later with Blumstein and company on the criminal career paradigm. He is co-author (along with Blumstein and Piquero) of a recent book that is credited for bringing about a resurgence of the criminal career paradigm. It is one of several books/publications that he's written on the results of his longitudinal baby- the Cambridge Study in Delinquency Development. As I mentioned under McCord's section above, he's also done some good work on family factors related to delinquency/crime. Farrington has even taken a crack at putting together his own theory (which I'm not personally a fan of- it's the opposite of parsimonious). I think Farrington is best at promoting a risk factor approach to developmental criminology. I'm not a big fan of the risk factor approach but it's hard to ignore Farrington's work.
STEVE LEVITT
Steve Levitt is not a criminologist. He's an economist. He's written on a lot of topics other than crime, but his research on public policy issues related to crime is so good that many criminology students will have to read it. Of course he's author of the best-selling book "Freakonomics" (check out his freakonomics blog online too...there are some good posts on 
there). His contribution to criminology is not in the area of theory, but instead in the area of methodology. He is very sophisticated methodologically. He has been a champion for using "instrumental variables" as a way to break the problem of endogeneity in relationships such as the relationship between incarceration rates and crime. He is a leading researcher on the incapacitative impact of prison. He has made use of time-series approaches to examine the relationship between prison and crime and the relationship between police force size and crime. He's written an excellent piece analyzing factors that do and don't explain the American crime drop of the '90s. His most provocative work is his research in which finds that legalization of abortion was partially responsible for the crime drop. Again, I respect Levitt most for his methodological approach (not necessarily for his findings). I also appreciate that Levitt has been instrumental in making room for economists to delve into criminology. I'm a fan of having economists in criminology (I'm thinking Marvel & Moody, Reuter, Bushway, etc.) and also of econometric approaches to criminological research.
there). His contribution to criminology is not in the area of theory, but instead in the area of methodology. He is very sophisticated methodologically. He has been a champion for using "instrumental variables" as a way to break the problem of endogeneity in relationships such as the relationship between incarceration rates and crime. He is a leading researcher on the incapacitative impact of prison. He has made use of time-series approaches to examine the relationship between prison and crime and the relationship between police force size and crime. He's written an excellent piece analyzing factors that do and don't explain the American crime drop of the '90s. His most provocative work is his research in which finds that legalization of abortion was partially responsible for the crime drop. Again, I respect Levitt most for his methodological approach (not necessarily for his findings). I also appreciate that Levitt has been instrumental in making room for economists to delve into criminology. I'm a fan of having economists in criminology (I'm thinking Marvel & Moody, Reuter, Bushway, etc.) and also of econometric approaches to criminological research.ROBERT MERTON
I have no particulary affinity for strain theory, but those who are will owe a major debt to the work of Robert Merton. He's the modern father of strain theory, just as Hirschi is the modern father of social control theory and Ron 
Akers is the modern father of social learning theory. Merton developed strain theory out of Durkheim's notion of "anomie". Interestingly enough, both strain theorists such as Merton and social control theorists such as Hirschi point to the work of Durkheim as part of their foundation, even thought these two theories in their modern form are largely incompatible in my view. Strain theory is still quite popular among criminologists, with offshoots such as "institutional strain theory" and "general strain theory" showing up in the literature in recent years. Again, you can't be a strain theorist and ignore the work of Robert Merton. I'm not totally at odds with Merton's version of strain theory either, particularly the cultural deviance elements of the theory.
Akers is the modern father of social learning theory. Merton developed strain theory out of Durkheim's notion of "anomie". Interestingly enough, both strain theorists such as Merton and social control theorists such as Hirschi point to the work of Durkheim as part of their foundation, even thought these two theories in their modern form are largely incompatible in my view. Strain theory is still quite popular among criminologists, with offshoots such as "institutional strain theory" and "general strain theory" showing up in the literature in recent years. Again, you can't be a strain theorist and ignore the work of Robert Merton. I'm not totally at odds with Merton's version of strain theory either, particularly the cultural deviance elements of the theory. 
ALBERT COHENI think Al Cohen has to be well into his 90's in age, but he still shows up at ASC conferences. I want to be like that...still intellectually curious and involved with the discipline when I reach 90. Cohen is famous for his "Delinquent Boys" book, which is a classic that is on the "must-read" list for crim students taking theory. He is another pioneer of strain theory. I won't beat up the fact that I'm not a fan of strain theory. But I admire the career and work of Al Cohen. I prefer his version of traditional strain theory over that of Merton's and of Cloward & Ohlin's.
LARRY SHERMAN
Sherman is another one of those "jack of all trades" in the field. I think most know him for his work on policing. But more generally, he's been championing evidence-based approches to criminal justice policy for some time now. His famous Minneapolis Domestic Violence study (with Richard Berk) illustrates his career-long dedication to using rigorous methods for program
evaluation such as randomized-controlled experiments. He is also the author of defiance theory, which meshes labeling theory, social control theory, and procedural justice theory. Defiance theory hasn't really received nearly the attention that it should, in my opinion. I think it's a plausible theory for explaining how punishment more generally and prison specifically can have differential effects on different types of offenders. I've never personally met Sherman, but from what I've heard and from the impression I get he is extremely knowledgable about many different areas of the discipline (theory, practice, corrections, policing, etc.), as a true criminologist should be in my opinion. You can't be an expert in everything, but if you're going to profess this discipline then you should know as much about the different areas it covers as possible. This is the sense I get of Sherman. I think he'll continue to champion evidence-based approaches to crime policy too, as demonstrated by the "what works, what doesn't, what's promising" study that he spearheaded while at Univ. of Maryland. Whew, what a list. I could write a lot more about each of the above individuals and probably add a lot of other individuals to the list. But I'm gonna stop here because I want to hear what other's think. Who are your top 10 (or top 20) criminologists? Who have I missed here? What distinguishing facts about those on my list have I missed? Would you take anyone off this list? Let me hear what you have to say.
Sunday, February 22, 2009
Dissertation Ideas
I passed my comp exam! I'm ABD now! So now it's time for the dissertation. I'm trying to keep the momentum going, since I want to get my dissertation done as soon as possible. As a first step, I decided to blog about some of my various potential ideas for a dissertation. Over the next few weeks, I plan to take a couple of these ideas and write concept papers. Here's what I'm looking at.
In general, my interest for a dissertation is along the lines of desistance. In Laub and Sampson's (2004) book, they identify several common underlying factors to turning points that lead to criminal desistance: 1) a change in routine activities, 2) a "knifing off" of previous behavior, 3) monitoring coupled with support, 4) human agency, and 5) a change in identity. They find that social institutions like marriage and employment tend to serve these functions in leading to desistance. I thought about examining these factors in light of other unexamined social institutions such as education or religion, to see if the same underlying factors are there and if in the presence of these factors these new social institutions lead to criminal desistance. In other words, the dissertation would further examine the "black box" of what specifically causes age-graded informal social controls to work, and identify more social institutions which have these "black box" factors in common.
Another interesting debate is between external factors (sociological) and internal factors (psychological) in the context of desistance. What role do each play? This would in essence be another examination of the age-old nature versus nurture debate. As we now know in the area of genetic versus environmental influences, the debate is not an "either/or" debate, but instead an examination of interaction effects. So I would expect that sociological and psychological effects would interact to impact desistance. Both would be important. But it would be interesting to find out which one holds relatively more importance and in what context each is important. Many life-course theories, particularly the social control strains, tend to focus on sociological factors. Many correctional rehabilitation theories, however, tend to focus on psychological factors. Such a dissertation could help theoretical criminologists to think more about psychological factors while helping correctional professionals to think more about sociological factors.
Another interesting dissertation would be to examine the antecedents of technical parole violations. It is often implicitly assumed that the predictors of technical parole violations that are not new criminal behavior are the same predictors as those of criminal behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) would almost certainly support such a view, saying it's all self-control. But this may not be the case. Technical rule violations may have different antecedents. In that case, what are they? This is very much along the lines of teh parole violator study that I've already conducted. I could build upon this study to write this dissertation.
Here's an interesting data situation that is begging for a dissertation. As I've previously blogged, in Pennsylvania we recently encountered a parole moratorium due to a string of police shootings in Philadelphia. For nearly two months, parole releases were prohibited. In a system that paroles approximately 1,000 parolees per month, this moratorium had an impact on a sizable group of offenders. This is also a perfect "natural experiment". How can I manipulate the desirable methodological properties of this natural experiment to address a substantive issue. One possibility would be to use this natural experiment to identify the impact of the moratorium on crime in two big cities in Pennsylvania with sizable monthly parole returns: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. How did crime rates change before, during, and after the moratorium? Of course I would have to control for changing police practices before, during, and after the moratorium if using police arrest records as my crime rate indicator. This would be an interesting study. Another suggested study would be to examine the impact of the moratorium on the institutions, as far as safety, security, overcrowding, etc. There could be other possibilities here too for a dissertation.
Finally, there are a couple of specific areas of interest to me that I could see building into a dissertation. One area of interest is the whole role of motivation in promoting desistance. Is it a necessary condition? How can motivation be built or supported? Another are of interest is criminal risk assessment. How does actuarial assessment compare to clinical judgment? What is the state of science in our current ability to predict future criminal behavior? How much further can we improve upon our current ability? What facilities better predictions? There are a number of other questions related to criminal risk assessment that would make for an interesting dissertation.
So these are some preliminary ideas. As my advisor says, many people enter the dissertation stage with a bunch of questions but no data or with a lot of data but no questions. I have both. In a sense this makes my situation more difficult. I have to find something that I can settle with and that will keep me excited over the next couple of years, without getting bogged down in trying to find the perfect dissertation that will define the rest of my career. It will be an interesting journey. More to come.
In general, my interest for a dissertation is along the lines of desistance. In Laub and Sampson's (2004) book, they identify several common underlying factors to turning points that lead to criminal desistance: 1) a change in routine activities, 2) a "knifing off" of previous behavior, 3) monitoring coupled with support, 4) human agency, and 5) a change in identity. They find that social institutions like marriage and employment tend to serve these functions in leading to desistance. I thought about examining these factors in light of other unexamined social institutions such as education or religion, to see if the same underlying factors are there and if in the presence of these factors these new social institutions lead to criminal desistance. In other words, the dissertation would further examine the "black box" of what specifically causes age-graded informal social controls to work, and identify more social institutions which have these "black box" factors in common.
Another interesting debate is between external factors (sociological) and internal factors (psychological) in the context of desistance. What role do each play? This would in essence be another examination of the age-old nature versus nurture debate. As we now know in the area of genetic versus environmental influences, the debate is not an "either/or" debate, but instead an examination of interaction effects. So I would expect that sociological and psychological effects would interact to impact desistance. Both would be important. But it would be interesting to find out which one holds relatively more importance and in what context each is important. Many life-course theories, particularly the social control strains, tend to focus on sociological factors. Many correctional rehabilitation theories, however, tend to focus on psychological factors. Such a dissertation could help theoretical criminologists to think more about psychological factors while helping correctional professionals to think more about sociological factors.
Another interesting dissertation would be to examine the antecedents of technical parole violations. It is often implicitly assumed that the predictors of technical parole violations that are not new criminal behavior are the same predictors as those of criminal behavior. Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990) would almost certainly support such a view, saying it's all self-control. But this may not be the case. Technical rule violations may have different antecedents. In that case, what are they? This is very much along the lines of teh parole violator study that I've already conducted. I could build upon this study to write this dissertation.
Here's an interesting data situation that is begging for a dissertation. As I've previously blogged, in Pennsylvania we recently encountered a parole moratorium due to a string of police shootings in Philadelphia. For nearly two months, parole releases were prohibited. In a system that paroles approximately 1,000 parolees per month, this moratorium had an impact on a sizable group of offenders. This is also a perfect "natural experiment". How can I manipulate the desirable methodological properties of this natural experiment to address a substantive issue. One possibility would be to use this natural experiment to identify the impact of the moratorium on crime in two big cities in Pennsylvania with sizable monthly parole returns: Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. How did crime rates change before, during, and after the moratorium? Of course I would have to control for changing police practices before, during, and after the moratorium if using police arrest records as my crime rate indicator. This would be an interesting study. Another suggested study would be to examine the impact of the moratorium on the institutions, as far as safety, security, overcrowding, etc. There could be other possibilities here too for a dissertation.
Finally, there are a couple of specific areas of interest to me that I could see building into a dissertation. One area of interest is the whole role of motivation in promoting desistance. Is it a necessary condition? How can motivation be built or supported? Another are of interest is criminal risk assessment. How does actuarial assessment compare to clinical judgment? What is the state of science in our current ability to predict future criminal behavior? How much further can we improve upon our current ability? What facilities better predictions? There are a number of other questions related to criminal risk assessment that would make for an interesting dissertation.
So these are some preliminary ideas. As my advisor says, many people enter the dissertation stage with a bunch of questions but no data or with a lot of data but no questions. I have both. In a sense this makes my situation more difficult. I have to find something that I can settle with and that will keep me excited over the next couple of years, without getting bogged down in trying to find the perfect dissertation that will define the rest of my career. It will be an interesting journey. More to come.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Economic Stimulus and Crime
I'm back, after not having posted for several weeks. The reason for my absense was that I was studying to take a comprehensive exam as part of the Ph.D. program I'm in. I took the exam last Saturday! I didn't feel that confident, but it's over and that's all that really matters to me right now. Whew, what a process. If I pass this one then I'm ABD and it should be smooth sailing from here.
In any case, what I wanted to write about today was President Obama's proposed economic stimulus bill. If anyone hasn't taken a look at it yet, this 647 page bill has plenty of pork in it. Further, much of the proposed spending has little to do with stimulating the economy (call me crazy but I thought that was the primary purpose of an economic stimulus bill).
Obviously I was most interested to see if there was any crime-related spending in the bill. I was somewhat surprised to see that there was. The bill includes a proposed $3 billion to be spent for "state and local law enforcement assistance" in order to continue the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. Byrne JAG grants provide funding to states and localities to conduct a broad range of crime control/prevention activity. This funding stream replaces what was previously called the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) Program. The impact of LLEBG grants was the subject of a recent issue of Criminology & Public Policy (Volume 7, Number 3). While the primary paper by John Worrall presented results supporting the conclusion that LLEBG grants had a significant impact on lower subsequent crime rates, two other papers in this same issue provided a critical response. The paper by Al Blumstein points out that LLEBG funding is so broad and that the heterogeneity of programs/initiatives funded should be examined to determine what specifically is worth funding and what is not. It could be that some LLEBG-funded programs in some particular localities have a null impact or, even worse, actually increase crime. The aggregate impact may mask important differences.
The other paper by Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody points out that this is the first study to specifically examine the impact of LLEBG on crime, and that one study is hardly definitive. They point to the methods used by Worrall and show several examples of how other authors have used similar econometric methods and come to widely varying conclusions on a number of other criminological topics. As a prime example, Marvell and Moody point to Community Oriented Policing (COP) funding in the 1990s. According to an initial study on the impact of COP funding on crime rates (Zhao et. al., 2002), Community-Oriented Policing was found to have positive effects. However, a couple of later studies (including one conducted by Worrall himself) came to contradictory conclusions on the impact of COP funding. So we can hardly say that this one study on LLEBG provides conclusive evidence that further LLEBG/JAG funding will have a postive impact on reducing crime. It's way too early to make such a conclusion, and certainly to put $3 billion worth of trust in such a conclusion. One final historical point on LLEBG...it was implemented at a time when most cities nationwide were experiencing unprecedented drops in crime rates. This also complicates Worrall's findings. I'm not sure that he adequately accounted for this general drop, which may have occurred (even at the same rate) regardless of LLEBG funding.
And speaking of Community-Oriented Policing, President Obama's economic stimulus bill also includes a proposed $1 billion to continue funding COP. We've already seen that the existing studies on the impact of COP funding are mixed. Also mixed are the findings on the impact of COP practices. Several reviews, including a recent review of policing practices by the National Academy of Sciences (2004), conclude that community-oriented policing mostly has a null impact on crime. These studies and reviews also point out the wide degree of variability in what is considered COP practices, which makes program evaluation all the more difficult. The research is hardly exciting for the prospects of community-oriented policing. Especially when more promising, evidence-based policing innovations exist, like Hot Spots Policing and Problem-Oriented Policing, why is the Obama administration proposing to pour $1 billion into COP funding?
So bottom line is that President Obama is proposing to pour $4 billion into criminal justice initiatives that we don't know work. This is a shame when we have evidence of some concrete criminal justice practices/programs that have a demonstrated track-record of effectiveness. But even this is missing the broader picture here. Does it bother anybody else that this proposed funding is tacked on to an economic stimulus bill? What does this have to do with economic stimulus? Today's news was full of other examples of proposed funding in this bill that is unrelated to the economy (e.g., funding for STD prevention, etc.). I don't care if the proposed funding is for effective criminal justice practices or not...don't tack it on to an economic stimulus bill and try to sell us on the need for this bill to help turn our economy around. This is just crazy.
And the late breaking news this evening is that the bill has now successfully passed in the House, despite not one single Republican voting in favor of it (so much for bi-partisanship). I know, I know, you may say that a poor economy leads to rising crime rates and thus reducing crime is an important bi-product of an economic stimulus package. The evidence on this is tenuous, however. Any relationship between the economy and crime rates is a moderate one at best. In Al Blumstein's book "The Crime Drop in America", he examines several explanations for the large crime drop in the late 1990s. One chapter is on the impact of an improving economy on the crime drop. In this chapter, the author concludes that it was not so much that the economy writ large had an impact, but that an improving legitimate labor market combined with the increasing cost posed by illegal crack markets in terms of violence led to a shift from illegal employment to legal employment for a large group of young males. Thus the relationship is highly contextualized to what was occuring with the crack epidemic of the 90s and didn't represent a simple relationship between the economy and crime. Further, the impact was moderate compared to other factors examined in Blumstein's book. In another recent article by Steve Levitt (2004), he examines explanations that can and cannot explain the crime drop of the 90s. One of the six explanations he finds cannot explain the crime drop was a strong economy. He points out that from previous research, any identified relationship between the economy and crime is a very small relationship. He further points out that it is probably only reasonable to believe that certain types of crime would theoretically be impacted by the economy, particularly economically-motivated property crimes and drug markets. Certainly there may be indirect effects, such as found from the experience of waning crack markets, but targeting the economy should still be a very small component of any systematic attempt to reduce crime rates. It definitely isn't worth $4 billion in crime fighting or prevention outcomes.
So what gives? Is anybody else bothered by this? Why don't they ever listen to us criminologists when they want to throw money out? I can think of much better ways to spend that money if we're gonna spend it on crime. Or better yet, let's don't spend at all until we get a handle on this economy. Our government spending is out of control and we're not gonna spend our way out of it. Don't get me wrong, I think a core function of government is to protect its citizens, and I'm glad I've made a career in a policy area (criminal justice) that seeks to meet this core function. But when things are tight, spending has to tighten up.
In any case, what I wanted to write about today was President Obama's proposed economic stimulus bill. If anyone hasn't taken a look at it yet, this 647 page bill has plenty of pork in it. Further, much of the proposed spending has little to do with stimulating the economy (call me crazy but I thought that was the primary purpose of an economic stimulus bill).
Obviously I was most interested to see if there was any crime-related spending in the bill. I was somewhat surprised to see that there was. The bill includes a proposed $3 billion to be spent for "state and local law enforcement assistance" in order to continue the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program. Byrne JAG grants provide funding to states and localities to conduct a broad range of crime control/prevention activity. This funding stream replaces what was previously called the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant (LLEBG) Program. The impact of LLEBG grants was the subject of a recent issue of Criminology & Public Policy (Volume 7, Number 3). While the primary paper by John Worrall presented results supporting the conclusion that LLEBG grants had a significant impact on lower subsequent crime rates, two other papers in this same issue provided a critical response. The paper by Al Blumstein points out that LLEBG funding is so broad and that the heterogeneity of programs/initiatives funded should be examined to determine what specifically is worth funding and what is not. It could be that some LLEBG-funded programs in some particular localities have a null impact or, even worse, actually increase crime. The aggregate impact may mask important differences.
The other paper by Thomas Marvell and Carlisle Moody points out that this is the first study to specifically examine the impact of LLEBG on crime, and that one study is hardly definitive. They point to the methods used by Worrall and show several examples of how other authors have used similar econometric methods and come to widely varying conclusions on a number of other criminological topics. As a prime example, Marvell and Moody point to Community Oriented Policing (COP) funding in the 1990s. According to an initial study on the impact of COP funding on crime rates (Zhao et. al., 2002), Community-Oriented Policing was found to have positive effects. However, a couple of later studies (including one conducted by Worrall himself) came to contradictory conclusions on the impact of COP funding. So we can hardly say that this one study on LLEBG provides conclusive evidence that further LLEBG/JAG funding will have a postive impact on reducing crime. It's way too early to make such a conclusion, and certainly to put $3 billion worth of trust in such a conclusion. One final historical point on LLEBG...it was implemented at a time when most cities nationwide were experiencing unprecedented drops in crime rates. This also complicates Worrall's findings. I'm not sure that he adequately accounted for this general drop, which may have occurred (even at the same rate) regardless of LLEBG funding.
And speaking of Community-Oriented Policing, President Obama's economic stimulus bill also includes a proposed $1 billion to continue funding COP. We've already seen that the existing studies on the impact of COP funding are mixed. Also mixed are the findings on the impact of COP practices. Several reviews, including a recent review of policing practices by the National Academy of Sciences (2004), conclude that community-oriented policing mostly has a null impact on crime. These studies and reviews also point out the wide degree of variability in what is considered COP practices, which makes program evaluation all the more difficult. The research is hardly exciting for the prospects of community-oriented policing. Especially when more promising, evidence-based policing innovations exist, like Hot Spots Policing and Problem-Oriented Policing, why is the Obama administration proposing to pour $1 billion into COP funding?
So bottom line is that President Obama is proposing to pour $4 billion into criminal justice initiatives that we don't know work. This is a shame when we have evidence of some concrete criminal justice practices/programs that have a demonstrated track-record of effectiveness. But even this is missing the broader picture here. Does it bother anybody else that this proposed funding is tacked on to an economic stimulus bill? What does this have to do with economic stimulus? Today's news was full of other examples of proposed funding in this bill that is unrelated to the economy (e.g., funding for STD prevention, etc.). I don't care if the proposed funding is for effective criminal justice practices or not...don't tack it on to an economic stimulus bill and try to sell us on the need for this bill to help turn our economy around. This is just crazy.
And the late breaking news this evening is that the bill has now successfully passed in the House, despite not one single Republican voting in favor of it (so much for bi-partisanship). I know, I know, you may say that a poor economy leads to rising crime rates and thus reducing crime is an important bi-product of an economic stimulus package. The evidence on this is tenuous, however. Any relationship between the economy and crime rates is a moderate one at best. In Al Blumstein's book "The Crime Drop in America", he examines several explanations for the large crime drop in the late 1990s. One chapter is on the impact of an improving economy on the crime drop. In this chapter, the author concludes that it was not so much that the economy writ large had an impact, but that an improving legitimate labor market combined with the increasing cost posed by illegal crack markets in terms of violence led to a shift from illegal employment to legal employment for a large group of young males. Thus the relationship is highly contextualized to what was occuring with the crack epidemic of the 90s and didn't represent a simple relationship between the economy and crime. Further, the impact was moderate compared to other factors examined in Blumstein's book. In another recent article by Steve Levitt (2004), he examines explanations that can and cannot explain the crime drop of the 90s. One of the six explanations he finds cannot explain the crime drop was a strong economy. He points out that from previous research, any identified relationship between the economy and crime is a very small relationship. He further points out that it is probably only reasonable to believe that certain types of crime would theoretically be impacted by the economy, particularly economically-motivated property crimes and drug markets. Certainly there may be indirect effects, such as found from the experience of waning crack markets, but targeting the economy should still be a very small component of any systematic attempt to reduce crime rates. It definitely isn't worth $4 billion in crime fighting or prevention outcomes.
So what gives? Is anybody else bothered by this? Why don't they ever listen to us criminologists when they want to throw money out? I can think of much better ways to spend that money if we're gonna spend it on crime. Or better yet, let's don't spend at all until we get a handle on this economy. Our government spending is out of control and we're not gonna spend our way out of it. Don't get me wrong, I think a core function of government is to protect its citizens, and I'm glad I've made a career in a policy area (criminal justice) that seeks to meet this core function. But when things are tight, spending has to tighten up.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)