School of Criminal Justice

Shock incarceration facilities, or boot camp prisons, for young adults are being developed in city, county, state, and federal jurisdictions. This report focuses on one state's program. Two key components of this boot camp program include substance abuse education and a therapeutic approach which seeks to support successful reintegration of inmates into the community. The program emphasizes treatment as a means of promoting public safety. It seeks to build character, instill responsibility, and promote a positive self-image so that nonviolent offenders can return to society as law-abiding citizens. Discussed here are the eligibility and selection criteria for the program, staff training, phase one of the program (incarceration) and phase two (intensive community supervision), and outcomes. Evaluations of the program have reached several conclusions: (1) the program saves the state money by reducing expenditures for care and custody and by avoiding new prison construction; (2) shock incarceration graduates increase their reading and math scores by about one grade level during their 6 month confinement; and (3) return to prison rates for program graduates were lower than those who would have been eligible for the program but who did not enter shock treatment or who dropped out. Caveats about the conclusions are offered. (RJM)

Treatment theory in residential treatment centers (RTCs) is conceived as a two-stage process of first engaging the client and then delivering services or interventions aimed at presenting problems. This treatment logic has been criticized for "creaming clients" or reserving services for clients easier to engage or more amenable to treatment but less in need. The present study examines whether higher early levels of engagement by youth in RTCs leads to more intervention and compares the relative effects of engagement and seriousness of presenting problems on the quantity of services provided by the mid-point in the adolescents' stay. Data come from interviews with a clinical sample of 71 male and 59 female adolescents in two RTCs in an eastern state. Findings indicate that higher level of engagement predicts more treatment interventions. Treatment staff delivered higher dosages of services to youth with more current behavioral problems, not those with problematic behaviors at intake. Youth with positive peer group backgrounds also received more services. Findings extend knowledge of how treatment staff provide treatment to clients and the role engagement plays in RTC service delivery.

Police and community residents share a common concern for maintaining safe, quality neighborhoods. Practitioners and researchers assume that the police and groups in the communities in which the police work can "jointly produce" certain public safety outcomes, such as feelings of safety or fear, levels of disorder and crime, and levels of trust and cooperation. There is sufficient research on policing impacts to suggest that the police, even working alone, can effect crime, disorder, fear, and satisfaction with the police, for limited periods of time. This same research indicates that police alone cannot maintain those temporary improvements in communities unless something else occurs in the neighborhood. The ultimate goal in police-community collaboration is getting that "something else" to occur. 1 That something else that sustains a community over the long-term is known as "community capacity". We think of community capacity as, "the extent to which members of a community can work together effectively, including their abilities to develop and sustain strong relationships, solve problems and make group decisions, and collaborate effectively to identify goals and get work done". 3 Another way of thinking about community capacity is the old saying about the hungry peasant, "give him a fish, and he is full today but hungry again tomorrow; teach him to fish, and he need never be hungry again." Neighbors observing the police reduce crime is not the same as neighbors gaining experience in controlling crime with the police. Some things that the police do to reduce or prevent crime may promote dependency of the citizenry on the police and thereby reduce the strength of civic institutions, even if they have short term positive effects on crime. Other things the police may do to reduce or prevent crime may promote

Research applications using journey to crime (JTC) data are popular and becoming more prevalent in criminology and crime mapping analysis. JTC data present unique challenges for modeling and visualization not encountered with typical data that is only georeferenced at one point in space. This article reviews useful cartographic and data visualization techniques to explore JTC flow data. The article also provides supplementary material demonstrating and implementing several of the techniques discussed in the article.

Pre-print at SSRN:  http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2275379

Published at CaGIS: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15230406.2014.890545

Tricia Wachtendorf Carla Russell 2004 Disaster Research in the Social Sciences: Lessons Learned, Challenges, and Future Trajectories* Havid?n Rodr?guez, Ph.D. Tricia Wachtendorf, Ph.D. Carla Russell Disaster Research Center (DRC) Department of Sociology and ...

University of Delaware at a particularly historical moment for the DRC and the field of disaster studies. This conference not only provided a stimulating intellectual environment but it also presented an opportunity to celebrate DRC's 40 th anniversary and to examine the impact and contributions of the Center to the field of disaster research both nationally and internationally. Moreover, during the two-day event, conference participants had an opportunity to pay tribute to Enrico L. Quarantelli and Russell R. Dynes, two of the founding fathers of DRC and disaster research from a social science perspective.

Achtergrond woensdag 4 december 2013 Dit is een publicatie van Kennislink/NSCR Rondhangen en jeugdcriminaliteit Veel rondhangen op straat stimuleert crimineel gedrag onder jongeren Rondhangende jongeren plegen vaker criminaliteit dan jongeren die nooit rondhangen, dat is al langer bekend. Maar maakt het ook uit waar jongeren rondhangen? Zorgt rondhangen op straat bijvoorbeeld meer voor crimineel gedrag dan rondhangen in een winkelcentrum? Onderzoekers van het Nederlands Studiecentrum Criminaliteit en Rechtshandhaving (NSCR) onderzochten dit op basis van tijdsbestedingsonderzoek onder ruim 600 Nederlandse jongeren. door Evelien Hoeben Jongeren vinden contacten met leeftijdsgenoten belangrijk en ze brengen dan ook een groot deel van hun vrije tijd door met leeftijdsgenoten. Meestal is dit vooral gezellig en bovendien helpt het jongeren bij het ontwikkelen van sociale vaardigheden en empathie. De omgang met leeftijdsgenoten geeft jongeren een gevoel van eigenwaarde tijdens een turbulente levensfase; een periode waarin ze zich losmaken van hun ouders en een eigen identiteit ontwikkelen.

Achtergrond  0 Reacties dinsdag 25 november 2014 Dit is een publicatie van Nederlands Studiecentrum Criminaliteit en Rechtshandhaving (NSCR) Misdaaddagboeken NSCR brengt risicovolle situaties met hulp van jongeren in kaart Zelfs voor onverbeterlijke criminelen is misdaad geen dagtaak. Ze plegen af en toe een misdrijf, maar houden zich meestal aan de wet. Ook bij mensen die regelmatig slachtoffer worden van misdrijven gaat het om incidenten. Ze worden niet continu door criminelen belaagd. Blijkbaar roepen sommige situaties misdaden op. Wat kenmerkt die situaties? Onderzoekers van het Nederlands Studiecentrum Criminaliteit en Rechtshandhaving (NSCR) zochten het uit. Met een dagboek in de hand vroegen ze jongeren het hemd van het lijf over hoe zij de afgelopen dagen hadden doorgebracht. Wat waren hun bezigheden, waar vonden die plaats en met wie? Ook vroegen de onderzoekers aan de jongeren of zij op die dagen als dader of als slachtoffer bij misdrijven betrokken waren geweest.

The relationship between unstructured socializing (peer-oriented activity without supervision) and adolescent delinquency is widely established and recognized, but less is known about why this relationship exists. The present study integrates the unstructured socializing perspective with insights from social learning theory and other theoretical perspectives on peer influence and empirically investigates four possible explanatory processes. The study applies time diary data to operationalize accurately the concept of unstructured socializing and survey data to capture mediating variables and self-reported delinquency (a general frequency measure of various offenses, as well as specified measures for violence, theft, and vandalism). Data were collected longitudinally with two waves of surveys and space–time budget interviews among 610 adolescents (11 to 20 years of age). A multilevel-path model was estimated to analyze within-individual changes over time. The findings indicate that three of the four proposed explanatory processes contribute to the explanation of the relationship between unstructured socializing and delinquency.

Using longitudinal survey and space-time budget data from adolescents in the Netherlands, this study examines whether the code of the street affects violent delinquency and victimization, and whether these effects vary by lifestyle.  Values similar to the code (i.e., conflict positioning) were related to higher risk for violent delinquency; this relationship was stronger when involvement in public unstructured socializing was high.  No relationship was found between these values and victimization.  The findings suggest a nuanced relationship between the code of the street and violent delinquency and speak to the code of the street theory’s applicability outside the United States.

Yardley, Wilson, and Lynes (2014), in their study of British family annihilators between 1980 and 2012, established four profiles of familicide offenders: self-righteous, disappointed, anomic, and paranoid. This paper located 39 cases of familicide within the United States between 2009 and 2019 using LexisNexis. Familicide is defined as a domestic crime where a father murders at least one of his biological children and the children's mother. Cases were categorized by analyzing the relationship between the offenders' primary motives and features of the crime and offender. Primary motives were family breakdown, appearance, financial distress, mental illness, and protection. Features included domestic violence, financial distress, mental illness, divorce, affairs, custody disputes, jealousy, and substance use. The behaviors of the offender after the familicide, such as completed or attempted suicide, denial, or fleeing, were also considered. From this analysis, two new profiles of familicide emerged: the self-preserving offender who is triggered by a threat to their individual well-being and the mentally ill offender who is triggered by a serious mental disorder or disability. Understanding each profile and the associated features of familicide can help protect at-risk families by identifying the warning signs and intervening before the crime takes place.