Paul Nieuwbeerta

Reporting to the police in western nations: A theoretical analysis of the effects of social context

One of the most consistent findings in empirical studies using victimization data is that the decision to report victimization to the police is determined in large part by the seriousness of the crime. The police will be notified more often of crimes that involve more serious injury or greater monetary loss. These findings, however, may be due to the fact that most studies on reporting have been conducted using victimization surveys that devote a great deal of attention to the crime event and victim characteristics and much less to the social context of that event. As a result, influences on reporting operating at the neighborhood, jurisdiction, or nation level have been neglected. The aim of this paper is to bring social context into the discourse on reporting to the police by presenting a much more inclusive model of crime reporting. In addition, the influence of four aspects of macro-level social context on reporting are tested—the perceived competence of the police, institutionalization of insurance business, norm of conformity, and level of individualism—by merging incident-level data from the International Crime Victims Survey (ICVS) for 16 Western industrialized countries with nation-level data from various sources. Hierarchical logistic modeling is used to analyze the nested data. The perceived competence of the police has a positive effect on whether property crimes are reported.

Class voting in western industrialized countries, 1945—1990: Systematizing and testing explanations

Analyzing data obtained from the literature and our own calculations, significant differences were found among countries in their levels of class voting. The Scandinavian countries had the highest and Canada and the USA the lowest levels of class voting. Since the 1950s, there was a decline in almost all countries in the level of class voting. In this article, several hypotheses were deduced from a limited number of individual assumptions, each purporting to explain the differences among and declining trends within countries. Testing these hypotheses with multilevel techniques revealed that differences among countries can best be explained by their populations religious-ethnic-linguistic diversity, and by the union density within countries. The decline in most countries can best be explained by the rise in their standard of living. Furthermore, a rise in the percentage of union members, especially among the nonmanual classes, accelerated the decline in the level of class voting in some countries.

Long-term patterns of offending in women

The empirical and theoretical knowledge base on criminal careers is heavily influenced by data on boys and men.What pathways do women follow in and out of crime through their adulthood? With data from the Criminal Career and Life-Course Study, this article describes the criminal careers of 432 women and 4,180 men, a representative sample of all those who had a criminal case adjudicated in 1977 with retrospective criminal histories up to age 12 and prospective data to death or 2003. Comparing women and men, this article describes life-span patterns of prevalence, onset, duration, termination, frequency, crime mix, and overall trajectories and discusses implications for practice and for developmental and life-course theory.

The Democratic Class Struggle in Postwar Societies: Class Voting in Twenty Countries, 1945-1990:

Studies on the relation between class and voting behaviour traditionally use measures of absolute class voting (Alford indices), and apply simple class schemes (a manual/non-manual class dichotomy). Almost all these studies showed that levels of class voting differed between countries and that declines in levels of class voting occurred in most countries in the postwar period. However, recently, scholars have argued that using measures of relative class voting (e.g. log-odds-ratios) and more detailed class schemes (e.g. the EGP class scheme) might yield different conclusions. In this article the tenability of this claim is tested analysing comparable data from twenty Western industrial democracies in the period 1945-90. The main finding is that the different measurement procedures do not lead to essentially different conclusions. Using various procedures, a similar ranking of the countries with respect to their levels of class voting was obtained: the Scandinavian countries and Britain having the highest levels of class voting, and the United States and Canada the lowest. Furthermore, on using the various procedures, declines in levels of relative class voting were indicated in the same countries (particularly the Scandinavian countries, Germany and Britain), while no evidence of substantial declines was found in others (Canada, Ireland, Luxembourg, Switzerland and The Netherlands).

A Life-Course Analysis of Offense Specialization Across Age: Introducing a New Method for Studying Individual Specialization Over the Life Course

Much of the knowledge base on offense specialization indicates that, although there is some (short-term) specialization, it exists amidst much versatility in offending. Yet this general conclusion is drawn on studies using very different conceptualizations of specialization and emerges with data primarily through the first two to three decades of life. Using data on a sample of Dutch offenders through age 72 years, this article introduces and applies a new method for studying individual offender specialization over the life course. The results indicate that although, in general, individual offending patterns over the life course are diverse, there is also evidence of an age—diversity curve. Linking offense frequency trajectories to the estimated diversity index, the authors also examine distinct specialization patterns across unique trajectory groups. Implications for theory and research are outlined.

Homicide–suicide and other violent deaths: An international comparison

Homicides followed by the suicide of the perpetrator constitute a serious form of interpersonal violence. Until now no study has directly compared homicide-suicides to other violent deaths from multiple countries, allowing for a better understanding of the nature of these violent acts. Using country-specific data, this study describes and compares the incidence and patterns of homicide-suicide as well as the relationship between homicide-suicide, homicide, suicide and domestic homicide in the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States. The results indicate that cross-nationally, homicide-suicides are more likely than other types of lethal violence to involve a female victim, multiple victims, take place in a residential setting and to be committed by a firearm. Although homicide-suicides display many similarities across the different countries, differences exist regarding age and the use of firearms in the offence. This study indicates that homicides followed by suicides differ from both homicides and suicides in similar ways internationally. Cross-national differences in the availability of firearms may explain the international variation of homicide-suicide rates and patterns.

Association of criminal convictions between family members: effects of siblings, fathers and mothers

BACKGROUND Crime runs in families. Previous research has shown the existence of intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour. AIM The aim of the present study was to investigate the extent to which variation in criminal convictions may be explained by the criminality of siblings and by the intergenerational transmission of criminal behaviour. METHOD Data from the Dutch Criminal Career and Life-course Study (CCLS) were used to analyse cross-tabulations and to conduct multi-level logistic regression analyses. RESULTS The results indicate that criminal convictions of other family members are indeed correlated with individual conviction risk. The criminal history of siblings is most strongly correlated with the convictions of focal respondents. Results furthermore show that parental convictions only account modestly for the association of criminal convictions between siblings. CONCLUSIONS These findings indicate that a direct influence between siblings is plausible, providing support for learning or imitation theories.

Homicide-Suicide in the Netherlands An Epidemiology

Homicides followed by the suicide of the perpetrator are a rare yet very serious form of interpersonal violence that occurs mainly in partnerships and families. No systematic research on homicide-suicide has ever been conducted in the Netherlands. This study provides an overview of the international homicide-suicide literature. Additionally, this article describes, for the first time, the incidence and patterns of homicide-suicide in the Netherlands and compares these to homicides not followed by suicide. To do so, an existing record containing all homicide cases in the Netherlands in the period 1992-2006 was used. Additional information on homicide-suicide events was retrieved through newspaper analysis. A total of 135 people died in 103 events. Homicide-suicide occurs with an annual incidence of 0.07 to 0.02 per 100,000 persons per year. People who commit homicide-suicide cannot be easily equated to those accused of other types of homicide.

Homicide in Finland, the Netherlands, and Sweden First Findings From the European Homicide Monitor

Due to differences in definitions, data sources and criminal justice procedures, comparing homicides between countries is not without problems. To overcome these limitations, we have constructed a joint European Homicide Monitor (EHM). So far, Finland, the Netherlands and Sweden constitute the basis of the database. In this contribution, we give an overview of this new data set. In doing so, we elaborate on methodological issues that arose when constructing this data set and discuss the feasibility of constructing an international and comparable homicide data set. Preliminary results show that the EHM as a joint database provides unique opportunities to closely monitor homicide across Europe.

Predicting Trajectories of Offending over the Life Course: Findings from a Dutch Conviction Cohort

Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction of high-rate offenders, has received considerable attention over the past two decades. Motivated by a recent study by Sampson and Laub (2003), this study uses longitudinal data on conviction histories from the Dutch Criminal Career and Life-Course Study (CCLS) to examine whether adolescent risk factors predict offending trajectories across the life span. The CCLS is particularly well suited to study developmental offending trajectories as it contains detailed information on individual criminal offending careers for a representative sample of all individuals convicted in the Netherlands in 1977 (n = 4,615) beginning at 12 years of age and continuing into late adulthood. To assess predictive ability, the authors employ two different analytical approaches. First, the authors examine whether offending trajectories can be prospectively differentiated by risk factors identified in adolescence. Second, the authors use group-based trajectory analysis to retrospectively identify distinct developmental offending trajectories and employ a cross-validation technique to examine the ability to predict the probability of an individual’s membership in a particular trajectory group. Overall, the results support the notion that it is difficult to predict long-term patterns of criminal offending using risk factors identified early in the life course.