Adam M. Watkins

Patterns of Gun Acquisition, Carrying, and Use Among Juvenile and Adult Arrestees: Evidence from a High‐Crime City

Researchers continue to examine the macrolevel trends of gun crime but little consensus exists regarding the microlevel determinants of gun behaviors. Moreover, little is known if patterns of gun behavior vary between adults and juveniles. This research examines patterns of gun possession, carrying, and use across adult and juvenile arrestees. This research moves beyond descriptive studies of aggregate gun patterns and explores the demographic and perceptual correlates that may inhibit or facilitate gun behaviors. Current results illustrate the prevalence of gun‐involved behaviors among adults and juveniles, though juveniles were more likely to carry and fire a gun. Results also suggest that gun behaviors among juveniles are largely driven by gang membership, while ready access to guns, fear of the street, and the risks of arrest influence adult behaviors. Present findings have implications for gun policy, particularly as it relates the role of deterrence‐based programming and demand‐side initiatives.

The Effect of Self-Control on Unit and Item Nonresponse in an Adolescent Sample

In A General Theory of Crime, Gottfredson and Hirschi dispute whether valid self-report data can be collected among respondents lacking self-control. This research tests this argument by examining two processes that undermine the validity of self-report data: unit and item nonresponse. Specifically, this research addresses two questions: Within a longitudinal self-report study, are respondents with lower self-control less likely to be retained in annual follow ups? And are respondents with lower self-control less likely to complete a self-report survey in its entirety? These questions are examined with an adolescent sample from the National Evaluation of the Gang Resistance and Education Training Program. Current findings reveal that, after adjusting for the influence of student sociodemographic characteristics, self-control is unrelated to sample retention during four annual waves of data, but current findings do reveal that lower-self-control adolescents are more likely to leave survey items unanswered. Implications for the testing of self-control theory are explored.

Examining the Disparity between Juvenile and Adult Victims in Notifying the Police: A Study of Mediating Variables

Extant research has found that crimes against juveniles are substantially less likely than crimes against adults to come to the attention of the police. Few studies, however, have attempted to systematically examine variation in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims. With assault and robbery data from the 1994-2001 National Crime Victimization Survey, this research explores this issue by addressing whether victim, offender, and situational characteristics of crime are effective in mediating the disparity in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims. Current findings indicate that the relationship between juvenile victims and police reporting was only attenuated, in part, after controlling for school victimizations and crimes perpetrated by juvenile offenders. Current findings also reveal that distinguishing crimes reported to nonpolice officials had no effect, attenuating variation in police reporting between juvenile and adult victims.

Latino and Asian Students' Perceptions of the Quality of Their Educators: The Role of Generational Status and Language Proficiency.

Extant research has primarily assessed the quality of the American school experience for immigrant students by focusing on performance-based outcomes (e.g., grade point average [GPA]). Unlike such research, the current study examines the impact of generational status and language proficiency on Latino and Asian students’ ( n = 2,261) attitudes regarding the quality of their educators, a nonperformance outcome. Multivariate findings of data from two waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study reveal that first- and second-generation immigrant students offered similar appraisals of the quality of their educators, whereas students fluent in an ethnic language generally expressed more favorable impressions of the quality of their school officials than did exclusively English-speaking students. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Effects of Community, School, and Student Factors on School-Based Weapon Carrying

Extant research has theorized that community conditions affect the level of student violence in and around schools, yet few studies have tested this proposition directly. This research does so by assessing whether social conditions in a schools attendance area affect the likelihood of students bringing weapons to school. Current results indicate that the level of economic disadvantage, residential mobility, and violent crime in a schools attendance area are unrelated to student-level weapon carrying. The implications of these findings are discussed.

Bad Medicine The Relationship Between Gang Membership, Depression, Self-Esteem, and Suicidal Behavior

Research on the risk factors associated with gang joining suggests that the best predictor of gang membership is the accumulation of risk factors across a number of domains. These same risk factors are also associated with poor mental health and suicide, suggesting that gang members may be at risk for these outcomes. The current study utilized a nationally representative sample to examine two related issues. First, do youth who later become gang involved report levels of self-esteem, depression, suicidal thoughts, and attempted suicide that are substantively different than the general population? Second, how does gang membership affect these indicators of mental health? Results suggest that youth who become gang involved have significantly higher levels of depression and report a substantively higher rate of suicidal thoughts and behaviors than comparison youth. Furthermore, membership in gangs exacerbates these underlying problems, creating higher levels of depression and a higher prevalence of suicidal thoughts and actions.

Older, wiser, and a bit more badass? Exploring differences in juvenile and adult gang members' gang-related attitudes and behaviors

Concerns regarding older gang members have persisted for nearly a century, and yet, these members have received minimal attention from gang scholars. Drawing conceptually from Thornberry, Krohn, Lizotte, Smith, and Tobin’s enhancement model and recent research on gang embeddedness, this study uses data from active gang members (N = 99) to qualitatively compare juvenile and adult gang members’ gang-related attitudes and behaviors. This research finds considerable overlap in the responses of juvenile and adult gang members. Both groups defined the gang in social terms and expressed a willingness to violently defend gang turf. Adult members, however, reported greater ownership of multiple firearms, supporting Spergel’s contention that lethal violence is more common among adult members due to greater availability of “sophisticated” weapons. The theoretical and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Rethinking the study of juveniles’ attitudes toward the police

Research on juveniles’ attitudes toward the police has been instrumental in finding that youths generally hold less favorable opinions of the police than do adults. However, a concern is that often the exact identity of ‘the police’ is never made explicitly known to juveniles. We argue in this paper that presuming a global definition of the police is problematic because of the increased use of both school resource officers and private security personnel in recent decades. The implication is that drawing firm conclusions or generalizations about juveniles’ attitudes toward the police is difficult, if not impossible, if researchers do not explicitly define what they mean by the police (e.g. patrol or beat officers on the street). Until researchers precisely identify the source of juvenile respondents’ attitudes toward the police, it will remain difficult to draw strong inferences from research on the topic.

Patterns of Homicide in East St. Louis

Existing research examining recent homicide trends is dominated by studies of national, cross-national, state, or large-city homicide patterns. Often absent from this research are studies exploring homicide trends in smaller U.S. cities. This study addresses the absence of such research by examining patterns of homicide in East St. Louis, Illinois, from 1976 to 2002. More specific, this research examines whether recent homicides trends in East St. Louis are comparable to national homicide trends. Current findings uncover similarities between the United States and East St. Louis in recent homicide patterns, but important differences are revealed that caution against categorizing homicide trends as corresponding to all U.S. cities.

The Nature of Crime by School Resource Officers

School resource officers (SROs) have become a permanent presence in many K-12 schools throughout the country. As a result, an emerging body of research has focused on SROs, particularly on how SROs are viewed by students, teachers, and the general public. This exploratory and descriptive research uses a different focus by examining the nature of crimes for which SROs were arrested in recent years with information gathered from online news sources. The current findings are encouraging insofar as they reveal that SROs are rarely arrested for criminal misconduct. When SROs were arrested, however, they are most often arrested for a sex-related offense involving a female adolescent. These sex-related incidents generally occurred away from school property or during nonschool hours and rarely involved the use of physical force. The implications of these findings for SRO programs are discussed.