Deborah Baskin

The Situational Context of Violent Female Offending

The study examines the elements involved in female perpetration of robbery and aggravated assault including motive, victim precipitation, victim-offender relationship, accomplices, precipitating circumstances, preparation, and use of weapons. The data suggest that there are clear underlying differences in the perpetration of violent crimes. They show that robbery is more frequently planned, more impersonal, and more instrumental than assault. Assault was clearly an impulsive criminal offense. However, it was not totally irrational. Each womans actions were a function of the victims behavior and the implications of that behavior for defending ones well-being or public self-concept. The data indicate that lifestyle factors (e.g., peer association, serious drug use) are associated with participation in robbery. The findings also suggest that the womens lifestyles and routine activities increased their probability of exposure to situations that were associated with more serious disputes. In addition to differences in the underlying motivation or meaning of violence, there appear to be different behavioral patterns within the study samples. Women involved in robbery, particularly those involved in both robbery and assault, were disproportionately involved in other criminal activities, particularly drug sales, and were more deeply entrenched in addictive drug use.

Methamphetamine use and Violence

The current research analyzed the relationship between methamphetamine use and violence. Interviews were conducted with a sample of 205 respondents. The research was based on life history interviews with individuals who used methamphetamine for a minimum of three months and who resided in Los Angeles County. Of the 205 respondents, 55 (26.8%) had committed violence while under the influence of methamphetamine. Males comprised two thirds of the 55 respondents (N=36). Of the total sample, 30% of males and 23% of females committed methamphetamine-related violence, respectively. Overall, the 55 respondents reported 80 separate violent events while using methamphetamine. Of these 80 events, 41 (51.4%) acts of violence involved domestic relationships, 28.6% (N=23) of the violent events were drug related, 8.6% (N=7) were gang related, and 11.3% (N=9) involved random acts of violence (e.g., road rage, stranger assault). The study findings suggest that methamphetamine use heightens the risk for violence. Everyone interviewed agreed that methamphetamine has clear abuse and violence potential. Having said this, it is crucial to state that there was no evidence of a single, uniform career path that all chronic methamphetamine users follow. Progression from controlled use to addiction is not inexorable. Furthermore, a significant number of sample members experienced limited or no serious social, psychological, or physical dysfunction as a result of their methamphetamine use. Most germane to this study, we found that violence is not an inevitable outcome of even chronic methamphetamine use.

Factors Related to Female Adolescent Initiation into Violent Street Crime

The present study is concerned with understanding when and how adolescent girls become involved in violent street crime. Specifically, the study explores the correlates or explanatory factors of such offending among a sample of women arrested and/or incarcerated for violent street crimes in New York City. The findings of this study suggest that an adequate understanding of female offending must consider the impact of neighborhood, peer, and addiction factors that affect both male and female participation in criminal violence. In addition, it appears as though different configurations of these factors contribute to the initiation of violent offending depending on the age of onset. Early initiation into violent crime was accompanied by participation in a wide variety of other offending behaviors and deviant lifestyles. On the other hand, those women who experienced a later onset of violent offending did so within the context of a criminal career that, up to the point of substance abuse, was more specialized and focused on typically nonviolent, gender congruent activities (e.g., prostitution, shoplifting).

Role incongruence and gender variation in the provision of prison mental health services

Correctional administrators are equipped with a variety of responses to manage problematic inmate behavior. The forms of these responses range from subtle coercion in the context of everyday prison life to segregative placements that include protective custody, disciplinary confinement, and mental health residential services. Using logistic regression, the present study examines the disproportionate placement of female inmates in mental health facilities. The results suggest that placement differences for male and for female inmates reflect both psychiatric need and differential responses to role-incongruent behavior.

Use of Forensic Science in Investigating Crimes of Sexual Violence Contrasting Its Theoretical Potential With Empirical Realities

This article contrasts the theoretical potential of modern forensic science techniques in the investigation of sexual violence cases with empirical research that has assessed the role played by scientific evidence in the criminal justice processing of sexual assault cases. First, the potential of forensic scientific procedures (including DNA testing) are outlined and the sexual assault literature that examines the importance of physical and forensic evidence in resolving such cases is reviewed. Then, empirical data from a recent National Institute of Justice (NIJ) study of 602 rapes are presented that describe the forensic evidence collected and examined in such cases and its impact on decisions to arrest, prosecute, adjudicate, and sentence defendants. The article closes with a discussion of research and policy recommendations to enhance the role played by forensic science evidence in sexual assault investigations.

Sex, Race, Age, and Violent Offending

Although there is an increase in attention being paid to race and sex variations in crime and delinquency, little has been done to disaggregate the “gender-ratio” problem in order to account for participation in particular offenses, specifically different types of violent crime. Virtually all of the research pertaining to the interaction of gender, race and -violent crime focuses on murder and dichotomizes race into white and black, or white and nonwhite. This paper uses New York City arrest data to examine the extent of violence within various race-sex-crime subgroups. Rates of violent offending (i.e., homicide, robbery, assault, and burglary) are presented for black, Hispanic and white males and females. Regardless of violent crime type, black and Hispanic females exhibited high rates of offending relative to white females. Furthermore, the violent offending rates of black females paralleled those of white males. These findings suggest that an examination of gender differences in violent offending, independent of race, will produce incomplete and potentially misleading interpretations. The paper also provides a social structural explanation of the disproportionate involvement of black females (and males) in violent crime.

The Structural Relationship between Drug Use, Drug Dealing, and Other Income Support Activities among Women Drug Sellers

Interviews were conducted with 156 women drug sellers from two New York City neighborhoods with high concentrations of drug selling, neighborhoods that had active heroin markets in the 1970s and were sites for the growth of cocaine and crack markets a decade later. Structural equations models were estimated to test the relationships over two time periods between drug use and income generation activities including drug dealing, crime, legal work, and public transfers. Dependent variables included self-reports of income and expenses together with criminal career parameters. Results showed that the effects of prior drug expenses on subsequent crime, drug, and work incomes were nonsignificant. Overall, drug dealing appears to suppress future non-drug crime activity. Prior drug selling has a facilitating effect on later drug use and significant negative effects on subsequent crime income generation and legal work. Selling also helped women avoid the types of street hustling, including prostitution, and other crimes that characterized womens income strategies in earlier drug eras. Drug use careers are influenced less by earlier drug use patterns than by income growth from dealing that appears to increase opportunities to expand drug use.

Situational or Generalized Violence in Drug Dealing Networks

It has been contended that womens participation in drug markets has had a tremendous impact on female involvement in nondrug crimes, especially such violent offenses as robbery and assault. Systemic violence in drug selling, however, may be spuriously related to other etiological factors in violence and crime commission, rather than a function of social processes unique to drug selling. Violence within and apart from the context of drug dealing is compared for women involved in various types of drug distribution activities. Life history interviews were conducted with 156 female drug sellers from two New York City neighborhoods. The findings suggest that violence among drug sellers, including females, appears to reflect the concurrence of two processes: the self-selection of people who routinely use violence in their broader social and economic interactions, and the neighborhood itself, in which violence is taught, practiced, and maintained as a way of negotiating the social realities of street and domestic life.

The intersectionality of sex, race, and psychopathology in predicting violent crimes

The present study used data on prisoners to advance our understanding of the joint effects of sex, race, and psychopathology, specifically antisocial personality disorder (APD) and Psychopathy, on criminal violence. The sample comprised 3,525 male and 1,579 female inmates between the ages of 18 and 45 years who were incarcerated in state prisons in Wisconsin at the time of data collection. Multivariate analyses were used to examine all sex–race–psychopathology combinations. The findings indicate that Black males and females with comorbid APD and Psychopathy were more likely to commit violent crime than similarly situated White males. While gendered patterns of aggression may characterize males and females in the aggregate, the present study clearly highlights the importance of considering sex/race subgroups when examining the relationship between psychopathology and violent crime.

Exposure to community violence and trajectories of violent offending

The present study uses longitudinal data from the Pathways to Desistance project to investigate the extent to which trajectories of violent youth offending are affected by exposure to community violence. Latent class growth analysis was used to identify groups that followed distinctive patterns of self-reported violent offending and exposure to violence over time. Multinominal regression was used to identify factors that distinguished membership in the trajectory subgroups. The results indicate that youth who had more chronic and direct exposure to community violence were more likely to remain mired in violent criminal behavior, independent of other known risk factors.