Sebastian Roché

Birth order and youth delinquent behaviour testing the differential parental control hypothesis in a french representative sample

Studies on delinquent behaviour have frequently shown that firstborn children are less involved in delinquency than middle-born children. We suggest that differential parental control of the children depending on their ordinal position might account for this phenomenon. The study, carried out with a French representative sample (n=1129), indicated that firstborns were more supervised than middle-borns. Firstborns reported less minor offences and serious offences than middle-born children. However, when sibship size and parental supervision were controlled in a subsequent analysis of covariance, the effect of ordinal position on serious offences disappeared, whereas the birth-order effect on minor offences declined but remained significant. It is concluded that ordinal position plays a moderate role in delinquent behaviour and that this effect is partly induced by differential parental control.

Multidimensional Social Control Variables as Predictors of Drunkenness among French Adolescents.

BACKGROUND Previous studies of the determinants of drunkenness among youth investigated the contribution of a limited range of variables measuring social control. For the first time in France, this study including 1295 participants aged 14-19 years aimed at assessing the relative contribution of a broad range of multidimensional variables relating to social control such as parental and school functioning, conventional and religious beliefs, and activity level, in a single model predicting self-reported drunkenness episodes. METHODS A logistic regression model based on a survey involving nearly 50 measures selected at the first step was conducted using a backward elimination procedure to identify the significant predictors of drunken experience controlling for age, gender and SES among a sample of French adolescents. RESULTS We found a protective effect of attachment and commitment to institutions in drunkenness experience among youth. Previous findings on parental variables were confirmed with qualifications, whereas the effect of religion was limited. The negative role of sport practice and impulsivity was also emphasized for some participants.

Crime and Justice in France Time Trends, Policies and Political Debate

Crime and insecurity have been major political issues in France during the past 20 years, and especially during the presidential election campaign of 2002. This survey focuses on empirically-based social science that is relevant to these issues. Key themes are crime trends and the influence of incivilities and of fear of crime. The political debate about crime and crime reduction since the 1970s is described and analysed. The paper describes and critically assesses the various measures of the crime phenomenon (vital statistics, victim surveys, self-report studies) and summarizes the information provided by these measures at various times. The various societal responses to crime and insecurity are reviewed, including police work (and police reform), incarceration trends, social prevention and the new partnerships at a local level. Moves to decentralize policy and practice in the field of control and prevention of crime are discussed. Finally, key publications, centres of criminological research and sources of funding are reviewed.

The Role of Alcohol Consumption in Female Victimization: Findings from a French Representative Sample

Alcohol is frequently related to interpersonal aggression, but information regarding the role of alcohol consumption by victims of severe aggression is however lacking. In order to better understand the dynamic of victimization, we investigated contextual, facilitator, and psychological impact variables related to victimization in a French sample composed of 1,033 females aged 18–74 years. The participants were recruited using quota sampling methodology, and responses were measured using Computer-Assisted Self-Interviewer. A logistic regression was conducted using a backward elimination procedure to identify the significant predictors of blows and wounds suffered in the past 24 months. The results indicated that victims, relative to nonvictims, did binge drink significantly more often, had a higher aggression trait, and had experienced more social hardships in the past. The studys limitations are noted.

Video Games Exposure and Sexism in a Representative Sample of Adolescents

Research has indicated that many video games are saturated with stereotypes of women and that these contents may cultivate sexism. The purpose of this study was to assess the relationship between video game exposure and sexism for the first time in a large and representative sample. Our aim was also to measure the strength of this association when two other significant and well-studied sources of sexism, television exposure and religiosity, were also included in a multivariate model. A representative sample of 13520 French youth aged 11–19 years completed a survey measuring weekly video game and television exposure, religiosity, and sexist attitudes toward women. Controlling for gender and socioeconomic level, results showed that video game exposure and religiosity were both related to sexism. Implications of these results for future research on sexism in video games are discussed.

Different styles of policing: discretionary power in street controls by the public police in France and Germany

ABSTRACT By analysing French and German police stop and search on the streets based on embedded observations in police patrols and findings of a large school survey, this article comparatively questions their determinants. Control practices diverge in their frequency: the German police officers control less proactively than their French counterparts. The targets of controls also differ: a concentration on visible minorities is much more pervasive among the French police officers. These divergences may be explained by contrasted professional orientations, especially the importance given to the crime control agenda, and state/society relations.

Epidemiological modelling of the 2005 French riots: A spreading wave and the role of contagion

As a large-scale instance of dramatic collective behaviour, the 2005 French riots started in a poor suburb of Paris, then spread in all of France, lasting about three weeks. Remarkably, although there were no displacements of rioters, the riot activity did travel. Access to daily national police data has allowed us to explore the dynamics of riot propagation. Here we show that an epidemic-like model, with just a few parameters and a single sociological variable characterizing neighbourhood deprivation, accounts quantitatively for the full spatio-temporal dynamics of the riots. This is the first time that such data-driven modelling involving contagion both within and between cities (through geographic proximity or media) at the scale of a country, and on a daily basis, is performed. Moreover, we give a precise mathematical characterization to the expression “wave of riots”, and provide a visualization of the propagation around Paris, exhibiting the wave in a way not described before. The remarkable agreement between model and data demonstrates that geographic proximity played a major role in the propagation, even though information was readily available everywhere through media. Finally, we argue that our approach gives a general framework for the modelling of the dynamics of spontaneous collective uprisings.

Young and armed: a cross-sectional study on weapon carrying among adolescents

ABSTRACT The purpose of this study was to identify empirically, for the first time in France, the prevalence of adolescent weapon carrying with particular focus on the contribution of a broad range of social bonding, strain, social learning, and sociodemographic predictors. A multivariate logistic regression model was conducted using a backward elimination procedure to identify the significant predictors of weapon carrying controlling for age, gender, and SES in a sample of 12,706 French youth aged 11–19 years. Results revealed that the odds of weapon carrying increased among adolescents who suffered from past victimization, who had a negative relationship with their mother, and who repeated a grade at school. Moreover, holding pro-delinquent beliefs and having delinquent peers also increased the odds of weapon carrying. Our findings highlight the importance of the interpersonal and social context when examining the determinants of weapon carrying and showed a unique contribution of components of social bonding, strain, and social learning in weapon carrying among adolescents.

The “silver bullet” to good policing: a mirage: An analysis of the effects of political ideology and ethnic identity on procedural justice

Purpose – Procedural justice (PJ) during police-citizen interactions has often been portrayed as a “silver bullet” to good policing, as it could function as a means to gain trust, voluntary obedience and public cooperation. PJ research is based on the assumption that there exists “true fairness.” However, it is still unclear what people actually mean when they evaluate the police as “fair” in surveys. By focusing the analysis to underexplored aspects of PJ, namely, the identity and political antecedents of the attribution of procedural fairness, the authors highlight the social and ideological reasons that influence people’s perceptions of police fairness. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach – In order to explain the attribution of fairness of police, the study comprises a range of independent variables organized into five overarching domains: prior experience with police, victimization, socioeconomic status and (disadvantaged) context of residence, ethnicity and political attitudes and punitive values. The analysis is based on a representative sample of France, as well as a booster sample of a deprived, urban province (Seine-Saint-Denis) in order to better incorporate ethnic effects into the model (March 2011; 1.498, 18+). Findings – The present study finds support for the notion that aggressive policing policies (police-initiated contacts, e.g. identification checks, road stops) negatively impacts attributions of fairness to police. In addition, the findings show that attributions of fairness are not only interactional (i.e. related to what police do in any given situation) or related to individual cognitive phenomena, but for the most part pertain to broader social and political explanations. Political and ethnic cleavages are the key to understanding how police are judged by the public. The findings therefore question the nature of what is actually measured when fairness is attributed to police, finding that more punitive and conservative respondents tend to assess the police as fair. The authors find that the attribution of fairness seems to correspond to upholding the existing social order. Research limitations/implications – This study has limitations inherent to any cross-sectional survey and the findings pertain only to a single country (France). Furthermore, the authors did not analyze all possible confounding variables to perceived fairness. Social implications – The findings pose a practical problem for police and government to implement, as the authors ultimately find that there is no single recipe, or “silver bullet,” for being deemed fair across all social, ethnic and political groups – and, of course, the expectations of one group might conflict with those of another. Originality/value – The study demonstrates that existing theory needs to better incorporate those explanations of fairness which extend beyond interactional processes with police, and refer instead to the social and political cleavages in society

Studying policing comparatively: obstacles, preliminary results and promises

ABSTRACT Compared to the burgeoning literature on the determinants of penal policies in various Western countries, and compared to criminology in general, the comparative study of policing is an underdeveloped area of research. We acknowledge the practical and theoretical difficulties of such an approach, but we defend its main benefits. Studying policing comparatively allows for a better knowledge of national systems, an understanding of basic concepts such as centralisation, and a stronger recognition of the diverging and converging trends in policing policies at a global level. Traditional comparisons of national models considered policing systems in broad categories (Anglo-Saxon vs. continental European, for example). Here, we suggest rather that models need to be broken down into their elementary components and main organisational features (degree of centralisation, mechanisms of oversight and others).