Abstract not found

This paper analyzes the influence that juvenile offenders serving time in the same correctional facility have on each other’s subsequent criminal behavior. The analysis is based on data on over 8,000 individuals serving time in 169 juvenile correctional facilities during a two-year period in Florida. These data provide a complete record of past crimes, facility assignments, and arrests and adjudications in the year following release for each individual. To control for the non-random assignment to facilities, we include facility fixed effects, thereby estimating peer effects using only within-facility variation over time. We find strong evidence of peer effects for various categories of theft, burglary, and felony drug and weapon crimes; the influence of peers primarily affects individuals who already have some experience in a particular crime category. We also find evidence that peer effects are stronger in smaller facilities and that the predominant types of peer effects differ in residential versus non-residential facilities; effects in the latter are consistent with network formation among youth serving time close to home.

In the 1960s Blacks and Whites chose relatively similar first names for their children. Over a short period of time in the early 1970s, that pattern changed dramatically with most Blacks (particularly those living in racially isolated neighborhoods) adopting increasingly distinctive names, but a subset of Blacks actually moving toward more assimilating names. The patterns in the data appear most consistent with a model in which the rise of the Black Power movement influenced how Blacks perceived their identities. Among Blacks born in the last two decades, names provide a strong signal of socioeconomic status, which was not previously the case. We find, however, no negative relationship between having a distinctively Black name and later life outcomes after controlling for a child’s circumstances

Twentieth-century theoretical developments in four categories are reviewed: theories of individual differences in offending, theories of variation in offending through the lifecycle, theories of diversity of crime rates among social entities, and theories of differences among social situations in criminal outcomes. The essay notes temporal changes and shows integrative trends and cross-fertilization. It concludes that criminological theorists have made large strides, particularly in the past two decades, and as a result are now able to broadly outline the causes of crime-relevant phenomena. However, much work remains, particularly in more effectively articulating theories for precise explanations and predictions. Favorable trends suggesting continued improvement are identified.

(PRWORA), policymakers, academics, and philanthropic foundations have been actively engaging in discussions on the role of divorced or unmarried low-income fathers in the lives of their children. 1 Five bills on the subject have been introduced in either the House of Representatives or the Senate since 1999. 2 Discussions have focused most particularly on the emotional and financial role of these fathers in their children’s lives, and much attention has focused on the desirability of increased involvement of unmarried low-income fathers by marrying the mothers of their children. This concern has been based on the presumption that noncustodial fathers have not been involved in their children’s lives. Yet research on low-income noncustodial fathers over the last five years has challenged this, showing that they are indeed involved with their children and that basing policy on the presumption that they are not is problematic. 3 1 The author gratefully acknowledges the following people for their assistance in the production of this

Abstract not found

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report:

The author(s) shown below used Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice and prepared the following final report: Document Title:

A theater project situated within an Alternative to Incarceration Program (ATIP), the Insight Project provided a venue for youth to engage in storytelling and dramatic performance, and allowed for those stories to find diverse and interested audiences. For the young men and women involved, authoring occurred at multiple instances and in multiple ways, and through the engagement of multiple cultural artifacts. Traditional scripts about youth, justice, and education were rewritten, not only through the writing of two plays, but also within the various types of authoring that were ongoing, performed, and embodied throughout the Insight Project. In this article, we discuss the various types of authoring that occurred within the theater project and we embed multimedia performance excerpts in order to elucidate six sites of authoring enacted by the participants at critical moments of the process: improvisation; focused storytelling sessions; composing scripts; rehearsals; performances; and talk-backs.

This paper develops a model of crime analyzing how such behavior is associated with individual and neighborhood poverty. The model shows that even under relatively minimal assumptions, a connection between individual poverty and both property and violent crimes will arise, and moreover, "neighborhood " e¤ects can develop, but will di¤er substantially in nature across crime types. A key implication is that greater economic segregation in a city should have no e¤ect or a negative e¤ect on property crime, but a positive e¤ect on violent crime. Using IV methods, I show this implication to be consistent with the empirical evidence.