Jeffrey Fagan

Gender Differences in Partner Violence in a Birth Cohort of 21-Year-Olds: Bridging the Gap Between Clinical and Epidemiological Approaches

This study describes partner violence in a representative sample of young adults. Physical violence perpetration was reported by 37.2% of women and 21.8% of men. Correlates of involvement in severe physical violence differed by gender. Severe physical violence was more strongly associated with unemployment, low educational attainment, few social support resources, polydrug use, antisocial personality disorder symptoms, depression symptoms, and violence toward strangers for men than for women. Women who were victims of severe physical violence were more likely than men who were victims to experience symptoms of anxiety. The findings converge with community studies showing that more women than men are physically violent toward a partner and with clinical studies highlighting violence perpetrated against women by men with deviant characteristics.

Theory and Research on Desistance from Antisocial Activity among Serious Adolescent Offenders

Improving juvenile court decision making requires information about how serious adolescent offenders desist from antisocial activity. A systematic research agenda on this topic requires consideration of several processes, including normative development in late adolescence, what constitutes desistance, and the factors likely to promote the end of involvement in antisocial behavior and successful adjustment in early adulthood. This article presents an overview of the major points to consider in pursuing this research agenda.

An Analysis of the New York City Police Department's “Stop-and-Frisk” Policy in the Context of Claims of Racial Bias

Recent studies by police departments and researchers confirm that police stop persons of racial and ethnic minority groups more often than whites relative to their proportions in the population. However, it has been argued that stop rates more accurately reflect rates of crimes committed by each ethnic group, or that stop rates reflect elevated rates in specific social areas, such as neighborhoods or precincts. Most of the research on stop rates and police–citizen interactions has focused on traffic stops, and analyses of pedestrian stops are rare. In this article we analyze data from 125,000 pedestrian stops by the New York Police Department over a 15-month period. We disaggregate stops by police precinct and compare stop rates by racial and ethnic group, controlling for previous race-specific arrest rates. We use hierarchical multilevel models to adjust for precinct-level variability, thus directly addressing the question of geographic heterogeneity that arises in the analysis of pedestrian stops. We find that persons of African and Hispanic descent were stopped more frequently than whites, even after controlling for precinct variability and race-specific estimates of crime participation.

Intoxication and Aggression

Evidence of an association between use of illicit substances and aggressive behavior is pervasive. But the precise causal mechanisms by which aggression is influenced by intoxicants are still not well understood. Research on intoxication and aggression often has overlooked the nonviolent behavior of most substance users, controlled use of substances, and the evidence from other cultures of a weak or nonexistent relation between substance use and aggression. There is only limited evidence that ingestion of substances is a direct, pharmacological cause of aggression. The temporal order of substance use and aggression does not indicate a causal role for intoxicants. Research on the nexus between substance use and aggression consistently has found a complex relation, mediated by the type of substance and its psychoactive effects, personality factors and the expected effects of substances, situational factors in the immediate settings where substances are used, and sociocultural factors that channel the arousal effects of substances into behaviors that may include aggression. Contemporary explanations of the intoxication-aggression relation offer only limited explanatory power in view of the occurrence of controlled use of substances, the mutability of cultural norms, and cross-cultural differences.

Published findings from the Spouse Assault Replication Program: A critical review.

Published reports from seven jointly developed experiments have addressed whether or not arrest is an effective deterrent to misdemeanor spouse assault. Findings supporting a deterrent effect, no effect, and an escalation effect have been reported by the original authors and in interpretations of the published findings by other authors. This review found many methodologically defensible approaches used in these reports but not one of these approaches was used consistently in all published reports. Tables reporting the raw data on the prevalence and incidence of repeat incidents are presented to provide a more consistent comparison across all seven experiments. This review concludes that the available information is incomplete and inadequate for a definitive statement about the results of these experiments. Researchers and policy makers are urged to use caution in interpreting the findings available to date.

Women and Drugs Revisited: Female Participation in the Cocaine Economy

Recent changes in illicit drug use and drug markets, and simultaneous changes in the social and economic contexts where drugs are bought and sold, suggest the possibility of significant shifts in womens involvement in drugs. The interaction between rapidly changing social structures and drug markets provides an explanatory framework for womens participation in the cocaine economy of New York City in the late 1980s. Data on both legal and illegal behaviors and incomes were collected through interviews with N=311 women from two northern Manhattan neighborhoods with high concentrations of crack use and selling. Women were involved extensively in both drug selling and nondrug crimes as part of diverse income strategies. Drug incomes and expenses dominated the economic lives of women in the cocaine economy. Higher incomes from drug selling were inversely related to prostitution and legal work. Prostitution, property crimes and assaults increased with the frequency of crack and cocaine use. Although women remain disadvantaged in highly gendered street networks of drug users, some women have constructed careers in illegal work that have insulated them from the exploitation that characterizes heavy cocaine and crack use. Although prostitution is a common role for many women, changes in the status of women in drug markets are evident in the relatively high incomes some achieve from selling and their diverse roles in the cocaine economy.

Effects of gender and ethnicity on duty-related posttraumatic stress symptoms among urban police officers.

We studied 655 urban police officers (21% female, 48% white, 24% black, and 28% Hispanic) to assess ethnic and gender differences in duty-related symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). We obtained self-report measures of: a) PTSD symptoms, b) peritraumatic dissociation, c) exposure to duty-related critical incidents, d) general psychiatric symptoms, e) response bias due to social desirability, and f) demographic variables. We found that self-identified Hispanic-American officers evidenced greater PTSD symptoms than both self-identified European-American and self-identified African-American officers. These effects were small in size but they persisted even after controlling for differences in other relevant variables. Contrary to expectation, we found no gender differences in PTSD symptoms. Our findings are of note because: a) they replicate a previous finding of greater PTSD among Hispanic-American military personnel and b) they fail to replicate the well-established finding of greater PTSD symptoms among civilian women.

Critical Incident Exposure and Sleep Quality in Police Officers

Objective Police officers face many stressors that may negatively impact sleep quality. This study compares subjective sleep quality in police officers with that in control subjects not involved in police or emergency services. We examined the effects of critical incident exposure (trauma exposure) and routine (nontraumatic) work environment stressors on sleep quality after controlling for the effects of work shift schedule. Methods Subjective sleep disturbances were measured by the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index in police officers (variable-shift workers, N = 551; stable day-shift workers, N = 182) and peer-nominated comparison subjects (variable-shift workers, N = 98; stable day-shift workers, N = 232). The main predictor variables were 1) duty-related critical incident exposure to on-line policing and 2) work environment stress related to routine administrative and organizational aspects of police work. Results Police officers on both variable and stable day shifts reported significantly worse sleep quality and less average sleep time than the two corresponding control groups. Within police officers, cumulative critical incident exposure was associated with nightmares but only weakly associated with poor global sleep quality. In contrast, the stress from officers’ general work environment was strongly associated with poor global sleep quality. Sleep disturbances were strongly associated with posttraumatic stress symptoms and general psychopathology. Conclusions A large percentage of police officers report disturbances in subjective sleep quality. Although the life-threatening aspects of police work are related to nightmares, the routine stressors of police service seem to most affect global sleep quality in these subjects. These findings may have implications for health and occupational performance.

Cessation of Family Violence: Deterrence and Dissuasion

Family violence research has only recently begun to investigate desistance. Recent developments in the study of behaviors other than family violence, such as the use of addictive substances, suggest that common processes can be identified in the cessation of disparate behaviors involving diverse populations and occurring in different settings. Desistance is the outcome of processes that begin with aversive experiences leading to a decision to stop. Desistance apparently follows legal sanctions in nearly three spouse abuse cases in four, but the duration of cessation is unknown beyond short study periods. Batterers with shorter, less severe histories have a higher probability of desisting than batterers with longer, more severe histories. Victim-initiated strategies, including social and legal sanctions plus actions to create aversive experiences from abuse (e. g., divorce and loss of children) and social disclosure, also lead to desistance. Batterers are more resistant to change when they participate in social networks that support and reinforce violence to maintain family dominance. Desistance may also actually be displacement, where a violent spouse locates a new victim.

Criminal Careers of Serious Delinquents in Two Cities

Because different methods for studying criminal behavior all suffer from important limitations, it is useful to apply different methodologies to the same population whenever possible. In this analysis, we examine the relationships between self-report and official record-based measures of offending activity using populations of adolescent serious offenders in Phoenix, Arizona, and Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.