Roosevelt Wright

The Influence of Crack Cocaine on Robbery, Burglary, and Homicide Rates: A Cross-City, Longitudinal Analysis

After tracking one another closely for decades, the U.S. robbery rate increased and the burglary rate declined in the late 1980s. The authors investigate the impact of crack on this divergence using a two-stage hierarchical linear model that decomposes between-and within-city variation in crime rates for 142 cities. Given its prominence in discussions of crack and criminal violence, homicide offending is also examined. Net of other influences, cities with higher levels of crack use experienced larger increases in robbery and decreases in burglary. Cities with greater levels of crack had higher homicide rates but did not show more rapid increases in these rates than other cities. The results suggest that the emergence and proliferation of crack shifted the balance of urban offending opportunities and rewards from burglary to robbery.

Criminal Expertise and Offender Decision Making: An Experimental Study of the Target Selection Process in Residential Burglary

This article reports the results of an experiment designed to explore (a) the environmental cues used by active residential burglars in choosing targets, and (b) the extent to which such offenders possess specialized cognitive abilities (commonly referred to as expertise) that might facilitate this decision-making process. Forty-seven active residential burglars and a matched group of 34 nonoffenders were shown photographs of houses and asked whether the dwellings would be attractive or otherwise to burglars. Subsequently, subjects were given a surprise recognition test where, in some photographs, physical features of the setting had been changed. Results revealed that active residential burglars were significantly better than nonoffenders at recognizing certain “burglary relevant” environmental changes. Moreover, offenders differed from controls in the mix of environmental cues they employed when selecting targets. These results argue for the importance of acquired expertise in explanations of offender decision making.

Acculturation, health, stress, and psychological distress among elderly Hispanics

A structural equations model is proposed to identify direct, indirect, and total effects of selected predictors of psychological distress in a national-area probability sample of Mexican American, Puerto Rican and Cuban elderly. Multivariate regression procedures vis-\,a-vis LISREL-7 techniques are used. The findings indicate that the modified path model explains 29% of the variance in psychological distress. Measures of acculturation have significant indirect effects on psychological distress via other intervening variables in the model. All selected measures of health and stress included in the model have significant direct effect on psychological distress. Implications of the findings for future research and public policy are discussed. jg]Key words gw]Acculturation gw]Health gw]Psychological distress gw]Stress gw]Elderly Hispanics gw]USA

Researching Drug Robbery

Street robbery is widely seen as the epitome of acquisitive instrumentality, yet recent research suggests that the crime may be designed more to send a message than to generate capital. Drawing from in-depth, semistructured interviews with active offenders, we find that moralistic street robbery is a response to one of three types of violations. Market-related violations emerge from disputes involving partners in trade, rivals, or generalized predators. Status-based violations involve encounters in which the grievants essential character or normative sensibilities have been challenged. Personalistic violations flow from incidents in which the grievants autonomy or belief in a just world have been jeopardized. Discussion focuses on the datas implications for deterrence and the spread of urban violence.Street robbery is widely seen as the epitome of acquisitive instrumentality, yet recent research suggests that the crime may be designed more to send a message than to generate capital. Drawing from in-depth, semistructured interviews with active offenders, we find that moralistic street robbery is a response to one of three types of violations. Market-related violations emerge from disputes involving partners in trade, rivals, or generalized predators. Status-based violations involve encounters in which the grievants essential character or normative sensibilities have been challenged. Personalistic violations flow from incidents in which the grievants autonomy or belief in a just world have been jeopardized. Discussion focuses on the datas implications for deterrence and the spread of urban violence.

Bounded Rationality, Retaliation, and the Spread of Urban Violence

Drawing from in-depth interviews with 52 active street criminals, this article examines the grounded theoretic implications of bounded rationality for retaliatory street violence. The bounds on rationality that this article explores are anger, uncertainty, and time pressure. These bounds create imperfections in the retaliatory decision-making process that, in turn, cause asymmetries in the way that reprisal is enacted. Two asymmetries are operative in this regard: strike intensity and target choice. Anger produces asymmetries of both types. Uncertainty and time pressure produce only target-choice asymmetry. All three modalities cause retaliation to be redirected. Redirection promotes the spread of urban violence through conflict spirals.

Drug dealers’ rational choices on which customers to rip-off

BACKGROUND Drug dealers are infamous for overcharging customers and handing over less than owed. One reason rip-offs frequently occur is blackmarket participants have limited access to formal means of dispute resolution and, as such, are attractive prey. Yet drug dealers do not cheat every customer. Though this is implicitly understood in the literature, sparse theoretical attention has been given to which customers are ripped-off and why. METHODS To address that lacuna, this paper uses the rationality perspective to analyze qualitative data obtained in interviews with 25 unincarcerated drug sellers operating in disadvantaged neighborhoods of St. Louis, Missouri. RESULTS We find that dealers typically rip-off six types of customers: persons who are strangers, first-time or irregular customers; do not have sufficient money on hand to make a purchase; are uninformed about going market rates; are deemed unlikely to retaliate; are offensive; or are addicted to drugs. Dealers target these groups due to perceiving them as unlikely to be repeat business; not worth the hassle of doing business with; unlikely to realize they are being ripped-off; in the wrong and thus deserving of payback; and, unwilling to retaliate or take their money elsewhere. CONCLUSION Our findings are discussed in relation to their practical implications, including the importance of giving blackmarket participants greater access to law, and how customers may prevent being ripped-off.

Grief among Surviving Family Members of Homicide Victims: A Causal Approach

A causal model is proposed to delineate predictors of self-reported grief among surviving family members of homicidal victims. The model specifies structural linkages among sociodemographic characteristics, psychological factors, and subjective ratings of grief. The proposed model is evaluated using data from a survey of members of “Victims of Violence” support groups. The results, for the most part, support the proposed model and indicate that correlates of grief differ across gender-specific subgroups in terms of their relative importance, predictive power, complexity, and overall patterns. Implications of the findings for developing program interventions and future research are discussed.