Charles W. Dean

Generality, Continuity, and Change in Offending

A number of criminological theories make either implicit or explicit predictions about the empirical relationship between prior and future offending behavior. Some argue that time-stable characteristics such as criminal propensity should account for any positive correlation between past and future criminal behavior for all individuals. Others contend that the positive association between offending behavior at different points in time are partly causal and partly spurious. Still others anticipate that different patterns will emerge for different groups (distinguished by their ciminal propensity) of individuals. Using a longitudinal data set comprised of 848 training school releasees, we test various hypotheses emanating from these different theoretical perspectives. The results indicate that (1) both stability and change have causal implications for ones offending behavior and (2) with but one exception, these effects do not vary between high and low criminal propensity groups.

The Failure of Arrest to Deter Spouse Abuse

In this article the authors present the results of an experiment conducted to test the relative effectiveness of three police responses to spouse abuse: (a) advising, and possibly separating the couple; (b) issuing a citation to the offender; and (c) arresting the offender. Cases that met specified eligibility criteria were randomly assigned to one of the three treatments and were then tracked for a period of at least 6 months to discern whether recidivism had occurred. Measures of recidivism were obtained through use of both official police records and victim interviews. Analysis of prevalence, incidence, and time to failure rates indicated that arrest was no more effective than the other two treatments at deterring subsequent abuse.

Review essay on the law enforcement response to spouse abuse: Past, present, and future

In this review article the authors critically assess the role of law enforcement in spouse abuse. After discussing definitional issues and tracing the evolution of attitudes and treatment of the physical abuse of wives, they examine the extent to which spouse abuse occurs. The role of law enforcement then is examined from both a historical and a theoretical perspective, and research studies of the law enforcement response are evaluated. Particular attention is paid to current pro-arrest policies. The article concludes with a discussion of policy issues and suggestions for the future.

The Forward Specialization Coefficient: Distributional Properties and Subgroup Differences

For both public policy and theoretical reasons, criminologists have been interested in the degree to which criminal offenders specialize in particular crimes. Traditionally, offense specialization has been measured with the forward specialization coefficient (FSC). Recently, the FSC has been criticized for being interpretationally obtuse and having no known sampling distribution. In this paper we examine both the interpretational and the statistical properties of the FSC. We conclude that (1) it has an intuitive interpretation that is no less useful than either a standard correlation coefficient or its competitors, (2) its sampling distribution is approximately normal, and (3) the conventional formula for the estimated standard error of the FSC may underestimate the true standard error in some circumstances. With these results behind us, we propose and illustrate both a parametric statistical test for the difference between two independent FSCs and two nonparametric alternatives.

Juvenile Curfews and Race: A Cautionary Note

During the 1990s, the United States experienced a rise in the popularity of nocturnal juvenile curfews as a method of crime prevention. Prior research has not, however, found curfews to be particularly effective in achieving their goals, and concerns have been raised about discriminatory enforcement. In this article we examine the implementation of a juvenile curfew in a large southern city, Charlotte, North Carolina, and investigate its impact on different racial groups. The background characteristics of curfew violators were found to mirror those of juvenile offenders in general, and different types of violators were cited in different areas of town. However, although the curfew had a positive or at least a neutral effect on some offenders, it had an escalation effect on Asian and Hispanic youth. The policy implications of the findings are discussed.

The relative cost-effectiveness of citation and arrest

With crime rates increasing faster than resources, there is a need for more efficient utilization of these resources. In this article, the use of field citation as an alternative to traditional arrest is examined. Citation utilization rates are reviewed and citation is compared with arrest on the dimensions of cost and offender failure to appear rates. Unlike previous studies, an experimental design is employed to examine the differences between arrest and citation on these two dimensions.

Minorities and Juvenile Case Dispositions

Disposition data were collected in ten counties to examine ov err epresentation in the North Carolina justice system of juveniles from minority racial groups. The analysis proceeded in two phases. The first phase examined whether minority juveniles were at greater risk of adjudication than their white counterparts. The second phase assessed the probability of confinement in a Division of Youth Services training school facility by race. In both instances, offender characteristics such as gender, age, type of offense, and prior official offending record were held constant. In the commitment analysis, an array of other control variables were available for study as well. Four primary findings emerged: 1 ) About half of the juveniles referred to intake were African-American, although African-Americans only comprised about one-fourth of the juvenile population in the community; 2) The racial distribution of those juveniles who were adjudicated was similar to the racial distribution of those juveniles who were referred to intake; 3) African-Americans made up about two thirds of the population of juveniles who were committed even though they comprised less than half of the population of those referred to intake and those who were actually adjudicated; 4) The use of control variables had little effect on these results and the conclusions described above were relatively stable across the various counties included in the study.