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

Of 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).

CESARE BECCARIA

This 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.

ALFRED BLUMSTEIN

What 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 won 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

Speaking 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. WILSON

Ah 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 MATZA

To 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.

DAVID FARRINGTON

Farrington 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.

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.

ALBERT COHEN

I 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.

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.

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.

2008 Top 20 Crim Articles

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Minority Report and Clockwork Orange

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

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

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

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

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

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

Desistance

Desistance. This is a word that consumes much of my thinking. It's a fancy word for stopping or quitting, and when referenced in criminology it refers to the process of stopping or quitting criminal behavior. Various frameworks within criminology, including lifecourse criminology, developmental criminology, and the criminal career paradigm, attempt to provide explanations for desistance.

So what factors lead to desistance among active criminal offenders? Typical answers that have been expounded upon in the desistance literature to date include factors such as a quality marriage, employment, military service, or a cognitive transformation. I read two recent articles that explore interesting new factors that may be related to desistance. These two articles currently have me excited.

The first article was published this year in Social Science Research and is entitled "Desistance from Delinquency: The Marriage Effect Revisited and Extended". This piece by Kevin Beaver et. al. explores whether there is a genetic component to desistance. Sounds like a crazy idea at first glance doesn't it? Kevin Beaver and colleagues have been championing biosocial explanations for criminal behavior (and now quitting criminal behavior), and they generally find that the interaction between biological and sociological factors are the strongest predictors. So each has a small impact in and of itself, but the interaction between the two often demonstrates a larger impact. In this particular article they confirm previous findings that marriage in and of itself does significantly influence desistance. But they also find that some genetic polymorphisms also predict desistance and that the interaction between marriage and these genetic polymorphisms also predicted desistance. Thanks to Beaver and colleagues biology is back in criminology, and I think this is a good thing!

The second article I recently read on desistance was in my new issue of Criminology that came in the mail a couple of days ago. This piece is by Scott Jacques and Richard Wright and is entitled "The Victimization-Termination Link". What they basically find here is that some offenders desist from criminal behavior when they eventually become a victim themselves. This victimization in a sense causes them to rethink their criminal lifestyle. This is very interesting to me. We've know for some time that offenders are more likely to also be victims, primarily because of their lifestyles or routine activities (see Hindelang, Gottfredson, and Garofalo, 1978). It's interesting though to think of this victimization risk in a longitudinal perspective, as a factor potentially leading to desistance.

Of course neither of these findings lend themselves to any real policy implications. I'm no medical scientist but I don't believe we can change people's genetic makeup. I don't think we want to implement a policy that makes offenders become victimized either. But from a risk factor/prediction approach, these two factors might at least improve our understanding of criminal desistance. I don't think we should just limit our independent variables to dynamic factors that we can change or manipulate (neither do I think that there is any serious movement to suggest this, since age has always been on the table as an important predictor of offending). I'll end with one last thought. It occurs to me that particularly harsh, deterrence-based punishment in a sense might generate a victimization effect among offenders. What implications does the piece on the victimization-termination link have for the deterrence literature?

Happy Thanksgiving!

ASC 2008

I just got back from the American Society of Criminology's (ASC) Annual Meeting in St. Louis. This is my fifth year attending ASC. It was another exciting conference. I always look forward to this time of year. This is one of the most exciting and intellectually stimulating part of my year. I still remember the first year that I went to ASC. I was like a kid in the candy store as I stood in awe of all of the famous criminologists that I had read about in textbooks and now was seeing and hearing in person. I still get as excited as I was my first year there.

Several themes/sessions stuck out this year. The first session I attended was one on biosocial predictors of crime. I attended a session on this last year. Kevin Beaver and John Wright were the presenters. They have really been championing this topic among criminologists. I think it's important because biological factors have long been ignored within the discipline. I like what one of the presenters on this panel said (can't remember which one) when he said that "we are building a mythical knowledge base in criminology by ignoring biological factors". It's clear from their research that biological factors don't have a large impact when observed alone but do have a large impact when they interact with sociological factors.

I went to an "author meets critic" session on a new book by Rolf Loeber on the Pittsburgh Youth Study. I'm looking forward to reading this book. It appears that they spend some time in this book trying to sort out risk factors from protective factors. I think it is an interestng concept that protective factors don't have to necessarily be just the opposite of risk factors. I'll probably put this book on my Christmas list.

The "criminal career paradigm" is alive and well. I went to a session on that. Shawn Bushway gave a presentation on "late bloomers", which I remember John Laub saying in my 'Crime & The Life Course' class that this is an ignored group of offenders. There was also a presentation on youth and employment. Dan Nagin gave a very informative review of the literature on the relationship between imprisonment and crime.

Steve Belenko gave an interesting presentation on the relationship between drugs and crime, which I just caught the tail end of. Based in inmate records, he was able to recreate a blood-alcohol content (BAC) level at the time at which the offender's crime was created. Congrats too to Steve Belenko for becoming a fellow of the Academy of Experimental Criminology at ASC. I'm glad we're partnering with Steve on future AOD evaluations at the PA Dept. of Corrections; I think he's a top-notch researcher.

Speaking of the Academy of Experimental Criminology, David Weisburd gave the Joan McCord lecture in which he argued for the use of experimental designs in criminal justice evaluations. He suggested that many researchers try to make the case that quasi-experimental designs are "good enough" but laid out several reasons why this is not the case. Very interesting.

I went to two sessions on the "origins of American criminology". Apparently Frank Cullen is putting some sort of book on the subject. Several presenters during these sessions described the personal and professional lives and development of several important American criminologists across different theoretical traditions. You know I'm a big fan of the history of our field so I really enjoyed these sessions.

Speaking of the history of criminology, I thought Bob Bursik gave an excellent presidential address this year in which he talked about resurrecting the "dead sea scrolls" of important yet forgotten older criminological works. He criticized the field for being selectively biased towards the work of more recent and "popular" criminologists. He also criticized the idea of having the number of publications being a measure of success for academics in the field. Give me a research with just four important publications, he says, and I'll take that person any day over one who pumps several out each year. The way I'd interpret it is that he was calling for criminologists to temper their egos and remember the Biblical words that "there is nothing new under the sun". He talked about several examples of forgotten criminologists such as Solomon Kobrin, Herbert Bloch (for whom he says actually anticipated most of the ideas of Sampson and Laub interestingly enough), and Ruth Shonle Cavan. I can't wait to read his speech when it appears in the issue of Criminology.

Again, another successful year of ASC. It was intellectually stimulating, exciting, tiring, and fun all at the same time. I have many more thoughts and there were several other interesting sessions and topics that I heard but time permits me from going on tonight. I may write more on my thoughts on this year's ASC in another blog. I'm looking forward to ASC 2009 in Philadelphia!