Theodore N. Ferdinand

The victim's experience and fear of crime

With the rapid development of sophisticated victim surveys, the fear of crime has emerged as a fundamental concept in theoretical and practical discourse. Since publication of the Report of the Presidents Commission The Challenge of Crime in a Free Society (1967), the fear of offenders has become a major public concern in the United States alongside the mounting problem of crime itself. The flourishing of national crime surveys in the United States and in Europe has in turn led to large data sets examining carefully not only the knowledge and experience of the victims regarding criminality but also the fear of offenders and its causes (cf. Herbert and Darwood, 1992; p. 145). We shall offer first, a review of research on these issues in Europe and the United States, and then we shall report our research that has probed these issues in a focused manner.

Joining Punishment and Treatment in Substantive Equality

How can justice and treatment be combined so that the rights of victims are upheld and offenders are rehabilitated? Substantive justice administers punishment proportionate both to the offense and the offender’s condition while also providing treatment according to the offender’s needs. Substantive justice means that similar offenders ought to experience not the same objective punishment but similar degrees of subjective pain. Judges already use distinctive standards in sentencing juveniles and women, and this practice should be extended to all offenders; that is, to men and white collar offenders, not simply with minor fines but with all forms of punishment and treatment. It should be codified in law so that our justice system can provide generally better protection to victims and better treatments to offenders.

Aging and the Fear of Crime: Recent Results from East and West Germany

Fear of crime and the escalating official crime rate have become in the last decade notable themes in criminology and victimology: This is especially true since the reunification of Germany brought with it an opportunity to survey east German citizens regarding their inner security in a closed society with strong formal and informal controls. The results of several surveys by the authors and others will be discussed with special attention to the measurement of the complex construct ‘fear of crime’. These results show that young women especially in the new German states have the greatest fear and thereby throw into question widely reported findings that fear of crime is primarily a problem of the aged. The relationship between age and fear of crime is more complex than formerly anticipated and must be treated as multi-dimensional. Accordingly the results are controlled for residence in east or west Germany, gender, age, victimization, the size of the community, ones habits and life style, and confidence in the police.

Does Severe Punishment Mean Less Criminality

Historical and international data from criminal justice archives and recent victim surveys show that neither the death penalty nor long-term imprisonment significantly deters criminality. Punitivity is defined and demonstrated in law, public opinion, and social history, and political and economic institutions particularly are viewed as shaping it-for example, Americas populism and Europes elitism. Americas harsh punitivity relative to other Western nations is examined and understood in terms of the historical roots of pro-death penalty and abolitionist regions. Within this discussion the findings of Savelsberg and Garland are carefully examined.

Civic Culture and Criminal Justice in the United States

How did civic culture evolve? How does civic culture define both the crime problem and Americas response in criminal justice? Civic culture came out of the English Civil War and the Enlightenment, and it defines the dilemmas that confront both the citizens of civic culture and the criminal justice system. This article examines the meaning of civic culture, and it specifies Americas crime problem by describing three types of offenders and the problems that the courts, the police, and penal institutions confront as they attempt to deal with offenders in civil society. It suggests that offenders should be dealt with in terms of their offense and justice, and in terms of their needs as members of civil society.

The Theft/Violence Ratio in Antebellum Boston

A variety of studies have shown that the theft/violence ratio is related to urbanization in several Western societies. The explanation for this pattern has focused on the socioeconomic changes that usually accompany urban growth. This study shows that another explanation is also plausible: the peculiar nature of assaultive offenses and the reaction of early criminal courts to large numbers of such offenses suddenly flooding their dockets.

Book Reviews : The Tempting Of America: The Political Seduction Of The Law by Robert H. Bork. The Free Press, 1990. 432 pp. cloth

Whatever else he may be, Robert Bork is a bold and original legal thinker. In The Tempting of America he sets forth his provocative analysis of legal reform in democratic society. When tempers have cooled, his ideas may well have sparked a reassessment of judicially sponsored legal reform though probably not in the direction he proposes. His conclusion that in most circumstances legislative reform is preferable

Book Reviews : Kriminologie by Hans Joachim Schneider. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1986. 1, 117 pages, cloth

&dquo;The most dramatic new fact in the drug abuse field is the growth of heroin use in America and throughout the rest of the world.&dquo; The number of new books and journals appearing each year in the field of substance abuse appears to be increasing exponentially. How, then, does Dealing with Drugs justify itself as an important addition to the literature? What audience is it aiming for? Clearly, it is not designed for treatment professionals or for researchers. It is not comprehensive enough to serve as a text