Julak Lee

IQ and Delinquency: The Differential Detection Hypothesis Revisited

The purpose of this study is to examine the degree to which police arrest is influenced by an offenders’ level of verbal intelligence. Concomitantly, we examine whether the level of concentrated disadvantage of the neighborhood where the offender resides moderates the effect of verbal intelligence on arrest. To accomplish this, we employed the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the extent to which persistent delinquent youths’ self-reported arrests are significantly related to their verbal IQ scores. Furthermore, we also analyzed the interaction of verbal IQ scores and neighborhood disadvantage net of an array of theoretically relevant control variables.

Citizen participation in community safety: a comparative study of community policing in South Korea and the United Kingdom

The comparative analysis of community policing in South Korea and the UK provides the basis for evaluating the strengths of the current theorising on this subject. The study revealed that participation in community policing was not a spur-of-the-moment emotional decision but was carefully considered and planned before it was undertaken. The study revealed that the British participants were attracted to community policing by individual factors – that is, factors that primarily benefitted them as individuals – while community crime prevention was only a secondary concern. By contrast, for the South Korean cohort, participation in community policing was an extension of their commitment to their community. The research findings highlighted two different models of community policing: one underpinned by a commitment to the community and a desire to enhance crime prevention and community safety, and a second model underpinned by personal gain, in which community policing is valued as a stepping stone to formal policing. These two models emerge from the fact that community police work is a full-time paid job in the UK, whereas it is a purely voluntary activity in South Korea. The research findings significantly contribute to ‘citizen participation in community policing’ by informing our understanding of why individuals choose to participate in these activities. Additionally, the comparative study helps to raise questions regarding current theorising on community policing, particularly when examined in a cross-cultural context.

Neighborhood Disadvantage and Parenting Behavioral Genetics Evidence of Child Effects

The criminological literature has a long tradition of emphasizing the socialization effects that parents have on children. By contrast, evidence from behavioral genetics research gives precedence to child effects on parental management techniques over parental effects on children’s outcomes. Considering these diverging lines of scholarship and literature, the current study explores a novel hypothesis that child effects on parenting may be conditioned by the level of the disadvantage of the neighborhood in which the child’s family resides. By using measures of perceived parenting as dependent variables, the researchers analyze data on 733 same-sex sibling pairs derived from the Add Health study by taking advantage of the DeFries–Fulker analytical technique. The results show that in adequate neighborhoods, between 43% and 55% of the variance in the measures of perceived parenting is due to genetic factors, whereas shared environmental effects are negligible. In disadvantaged neighborhoods, genetic effects are negligible, whereas shared environmental influences account for between 34% and 57% of the variance in perceived parenting. These results offer partial support for the contextualized gene–environment correlation, which provides initial evidence that although both parental socialization effects and child effects exist, these effects can be modified by the context.

Dopaminergic Polymorphisms, Academic Achievement, and Violent Delinquency:

Recent research in the field of educational psychology points to the salience of self-control in accounting for the variance in students’ report card grades. At the same time, a novel empirical study from molecular genetics drawing on the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) data has revealed that polymorphisms in three dopaminergic genes (dopamine transporter [DAT1], dopamine D2 receptor [DRD2], and dopamine D4 receptor [DRD4]) are also linked to adolescents’ grade point averages (GPAs). Juxtaposing these two lines of research, the current study reanalyzed the Add Health genetic subsample to assess the relative effects of these dopaminergic genes and self-control on GPAs. The results showed that the effects of the latter were far stronger than those of the former. The interaction effects between the dopaminergic genes and a set of environmental factors on academic performance were also examined, producing findings that are aligned with the “social push hypothesis” in behavioral genetics. Finally, based on the criminological literature on the link between academic performance and delinquency, we tested whether dopaminergic effects on violent delinquency were mediated by GPAs. The results demonstrated that academic performance fully mediated the linkage between these genes and violent delinquency.

Book review: RK Lippert, K Walby, I Warren and D Palmer (eds), National Security, Surveillance and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative PerspectiveLippertRKWalbyKWarrenIPalmerD (eds), National Security, Surveillance and Terror: Canada and Australia in Comparative Perspective, Palgrave Macmillan: Switzerland, 2016; 348 pp.: 9783319432427, £82.00 (hbk)

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The Relationship Between Religiosity and Deviance Among Adolescents in a Religiously Pluralistic Society

Most empirical studies of religion and deviance have employed samples from Western countries, especially the United States, where one predominant religion—Judeo-Christianity—is an embedded fixture of the mainstream culture. By comparison, research conducted in East Asia, where religious pluralism is the norm rather than the exception, is extremely scarce. Moreover, a large proportion of the population in East Asia professes themselves to be atheists. Given the drastically different religious climates between East and West, it thus remains an important empirical question whether the research findings on religiosity and deviance garnered from Western samples can be generalizable to East Asia. Given this background, the current study assesses the linkage between religiosity and deviance using a sample of adolescents in South Korea, where secular social controls emanating from Confucianism are potent. The results of the study show that religiosity’s deviance-constraining effects are considerably weaker in South Korea. In addition, many of the Western findings do not apply to the South Korean context.

Erratum to: Vulnerability, risk and agroterrorism: an examination of international strategy and its relevance for the Republic of Korea

This article explores the under-researched subject of agroterrorism, and how this is being addressed in the Republic of Korea (South Korea). It first outlines the differences between bio-terrorism, food terrorism and agroterrorism and why it is becoming increasingly important to focus on risks to farming and the food chain. The article then explores a range of international models of organisational structures and processes designed to counter agroterrorism in the USA, Australia and UK, based on an analysis of all available open source materials at the time of writing. This provides a critical picture of the understanding of risk, security & preparedness in those three countries against which the South Korean model can be compared. We found that, compared to the mature arrangements in place in the USA and Australia, both the UK and the Republic of Korea have relatively immature strategies to protect farmers, food production and rural communities, focussing only on maintaining alternative safe food sources for consumers. These relatively weak policies essentially ignore the potentially significant social and economic impact of agroterrorism. We conclude by proposing further research, including fieldwork with local communities in the agricultural sector, including first responders, within South Korea. Overall, these findings may help Korean policy makers to consider their current approach within an international perspective and encourage them to consider both national resilience and local interests.