Simon I. Singer

Victims of Serious Violence and Their Criminal Behavior: Subcultural Theory and Beyond

This paper looks at the relationship between the experiences of the victim of a serious crime and that of the offender. It shows that, in some cases, the victim experience is an important predictor of criminal behavior. An analysis of self-reported and officially recorded offense and victimization data supports the hypothesized relationship between victim and offender experiences. The results have implications for subcultural theory and a dynamic analysis of how patterns of assaultive violence are created and maintained.

The Fear of Reprisal and the Failure of Victims to Report a Personal Crime

Most people who fail to report their victimizations to the police state either that the incident was not serious enough to warrant official attention or that nothing could be done. However, a small proportion of victims states that they did not report because of their fear of reprisal. Based on National Crime Panel victimization data, the offense and personal characteristics of these victims are contrasted with the total victim and nonreporting victim populations. Contrary to the general reasons for not reporting a crime, several personal and offense characteristics are related to reprisal. For instance, reprisal is more often a factor in personal victimizations where victims are female and acquainted with their offenders. The more dangerous the incident, the more often reprisal is the stated reason for not calling the police. The results of the analysis strongly suggest that in certain social environments the fear of reprisal is a major factor in the reporting of crime.

The sociology of shoplifting : boosters and snitches today

An Introduction to the Study of Shoplifting Of Shoplifters and Shoplifting Faces in the Crowd: Who Shoplifts? Typologies of Shoplifters and Shoplifting Psychiatric/ Psychological and Sociological Theories and Shoplifting Catching, Processing, and Preventing Shoplifting Overview References Index

The Automatic Waiver of Juveniles and Substantive Justice

Legislative waiver bypasses juvenile court and juvenile justice officials by initially transferring jurisdiction over juveniles arrested for serious offenses to criminal court. Supporters of legislative waiver argue that the exclusion of offense categories from juvenile court jurisdiction best meets the punishment-oriented objectives of waiver. However, a logistic regression analysis of case processing decisions in a state with automatic transfer provisions revealed that juvenile offenders from single-parent households were more likely to face a grand jury indictment than juveniles from dual-parent households.

Heavy Metal Music Preference, Delinquent Friends, Social Control, and Delinquency

The authors examined the relationship between a preference for heavy metal music among a large sample of suburban high school youth (N = 715) and delinquency, controlling for parental and school-related variables, as well as delinquent associations. They found support for the hypothesis that heavy metal has an effect on delinquency when parental control is low. However, they found no support for the hypothesized interaction between a preference for heavy metal and delinquent peers. Contrary to expectations, those students with better school marks and a preference for heavy metal music had higher amounts of self-reported delinquency.

Incarcerating Juveniles Into Adulthood: Organizational Fields of Knowledge and the Back End of Waiver

One of the consequences of waiver legislation is the long-term imprisonment of juveniles. Little is known about juveniles subject to long-term incarceration and the legal decision making that creates the conditions and length of their imprisonment. Although there is an emerging body of research on the front end of waiver that draws on theories of sentencing, there is little research on postsentencing decisions. Research on the back end of waiver is needed to understand the effect of transferring juveniles to criminal court. Legal decision making at the back end of waiver can be understood in terms of the jurisdictional context of organizational knowledge. The effects of back-end waiver decisions also need to be understood with respect to the reaction of juvenile offenders to their long-term incarceration.

Sentencing Juveniles to Life in Prison: The Reproduction of Juvenile Justice for Young Adolescents Charged With Murder

In Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the sentencing of juveniles to death violated the constitutional amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. Similarly, the Court most recently decided that life without parole for nonhomicide offenses is also unconstitutional (Graham v. Florida, 2010). Part of the reason for the Court’s decisions is the lack of consensus as to the appropriateness of punishing juveniles as if they were adults. To examine the extent to which there is consensus as to the capital penalties for capital crimes, this article examines a population of young juveniles who were initially charged with murder, and then subsequently convicted in criminal court and sentenced to life in prison. As is the case with adults, not all juveniles were convicted in criminal court for their initial charge of murder. But unlike for adults, a proportion of eligible juveniles were adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court or received youthful offender in criminal court, resulting in a less severe sentence than a maximum of life in prison. The author suggests that this reduced set of sanctions, which a segment of juveniles receive, is substantive justice and the reproduction of juvenile justice. He found significant differences in the reproduction of juvenile justice by place and prior offense.

Victim Categories of Crime Revisited

When Marvin Wolfgang asked me to co-author, Victim Categories of Crime (Wolfgang and Singer 1978), he transformed my status as an anonymous graduate student into one that was committed to his way of doing criminology. Victim categories of crime set the stage for my dissertation, and a research agenda that saw crime less as a product of the actions of an offender, and more as an event to be described and understood in ways that go beyond any simple, unidirectional analysis. Previously, I had completed a proseminar paper on the development of the National Crime Panel victimization surveys. I came into the graduate program in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania after having completed a Master’s thesis at Northeastern University on the elderly as victims of crime. Wolfgang knew of my interest in the emerging study of victims, and for that reason I believe asked me to join him in revising his article. The original version of Victim Categories of Crime first appeared a decade earlier in a German publication honoring Hans von Hentig (Wolfgang 1967). Wolfgang wanted to see an English version of the article published, and one that would take into account recent developments in the emerging study of the victim.

Adolescence, Discrimination, and the Law: Addressing Dramatic Shifts in Equality Jurisprudence

chefs driven by internalized values or by instrumental ways to bolster their status. Instead, she expands the model to include a third process—motivated action driven by embodied intuitions—and argues for the intertwining of all three pathways into one where creative ‘‘sparks’’ are experienced as ‘‘knowhow,’’ ‘‘instinct,’’ ‘‘disposition,’’ and ‘‘process.’’ Chapter Six further captures tensions in how chefs’ field positions refract culinary creation, given the expectations through which others judge their dishes. Interestingly, she argues that middle-status chefs are more constrained than their elite counterparts, who have greater access to high-end suppliers and more freedom to vary their dishes from singular culinary traditions. The final chapter refocuses attention on how actual chef relations in the localized cultural fields of New York and San Francisco differ and the dimensions along which they do so. These choices, Leschziner argues, are syncretic in that they both constrain and constitute status and field positions. This chapter is an important one: it synopsizes her findings and theoretical traction in a concise manner. In sum, this book ambitiously asks us to rethink the nature and cognitive shape of creative work. I think it can easily be extended to the study of multi-process aspirations and possibilities and multi-sourced constraints in additional areas of contemporary cultural production. The book entreats us to consider the materiality of cultural products going forward—that a dish itself plays a role in influencing its creator’s status (citing the cronut as an example). On the whole, Leschziner offers a fascinating and complex contribution to sociological inquiry into both creative work and creative workers. Adolescence, Discrimination, and the Law: Addressing Dramatic Shifts in Equality Jurisprudence, by Roger J. R. Levesque. New York: New York University Press, 2015. 275 pp.

Book Review: Squires, P., & Stephen, D. E. (2005). Rougher Justice: Anti-Social Behaviour and Young People. Cullompton, UK: Willan. 238 pp

55.00 cloth. ISBN: 9781479815586.