Vincent F. Sacco

Crime and Victimization of the Elderly

I: Crime and the Elderly.- One: Who are the Elderly?.- The Aging of the North American Population.- Gender and the Marital Status of the Elderly Population.- The Plight of Older People in Western Society.- Two: Age as a Criminological Variable.- Explanations of the Decline in Criminality with Advancing Age.- How Much Crime Do the Elderly Commit?.- What Offences Do the Elderly Commit?.- Is the Elderly Criminal an Academic Invention?.- Three: Offences the Elderly Commit and their Explanations.- Explaining Elderly Crime.- What Role do Mental Disorders Play in Geriatric Criminality?.- Examining Specific Offence Patterns.- Conclusion.- Four: The Elderly Offender and the Criminal Justice System.- The Elderly Offender in the Hands of the Police.- Prosecutorial Discretion and the Processing of Old Offenders.- Diversion of the Elderly Offender.- The Elderly Offender in Court.- Five: The Elderly Offender in Prison.- Incarceration and Older Criminals.- Negative and Positive Effects of Imprisonment on Elderly Inmates.- Problems of Elderly Offenders In a Prison Setting.- Six: Responding to Elderly Criminality: Sentencing, Punishment, Prevention.- A Tenative Typology of Geriatric Offenders.- Sentencing the Elderly Offender.- Punishment and the Elderly Offender.- Preventing Elderly Crime.- Bibliography: Part I.- II: Victimization of the Elderly.- Seven: Age as a Victimological Variable.- Elderly Victimization: Cultural Images.- Age and Victimology.- The Victim as Decision-Maker.- Data on Elderly Victimization.- Summary.- Eight: General Patterns of Elderly Victimization.- The Findings of Victim Surveys.- Fraud and the Elderly.- Explaining General Patterns of Elderly Victimization.- Conclusion.- Nine: The Cost of Elderly Victimization.- Estimating the Costs of Victimization.- The Empirical Investigation of Victimization Costs.- Coping with the Costs of Victimization.- Summary.- Ten: The Indirect Cost of Elderly Victimization.- What is Fear of Crime?.- Fear of Crime Among the Elderly.- The Correlates of Fear of Crime.- Fear of Crime Among the Elderly: Some Theoretical Issues.- Conclusion.- Eleven: The Mistreatment of the Elderly in Domestic Settings.- The Problem of Elder Abuse and Neglect.- Patterns of Elder Mistreatment.- Explaining Elder Mistreatment.- Summary.- Twelve: Crimes Against the Elderly: Policy and Planning.- Crime and Victimization Policy.- Elder Mistreatment: Policy and Problems.- Politics and Policy: What Should be Done?.- Bibliography: Part II.

Gender, fear, and victimization: A preliminary application of power‐control theory

The accumulated body of research on public fear of victimization has consistently demonstrated that gender is the most useful predictor of tearfulness. However, theoretical attempts to link variations in fear of crime to gender differences have been found wanting. In particular, these theoretical accounts have failed to provide an integrated framework within which it is possible to reconcile findings relevant to gender differences in both fear‐arousing crimes and fear itself. In this article the research on gender differences in fear and victimization is reviewed, and the methodological assumptions that underlie work in this area are critically assessed. The theoretical inadequacies of contemporary explanations of these differences are then made explicit. Borrowing from the work of Hagan, Gillis, and Simpson, it is suggested that insights derived from power‐control theory provide an alternative and potentially more valuable conceptualization of the interrelationships among crime, fear, and gender.

The Process and Structure of Crime: Criminal Events and Crime Analysis

Criminology has developed strong methodological tools over the past decades, establishing itself as a competitive, sophisticated, and independent social science. Perhaps because of its emphasis on matters of design, methodology, and quantitative analysis, criminology has had few significant advances in theory. Advances in Criminological Theory is the first series exclusively dedicated to the dissemination of original work on criminological theory. The Process and Structure of Crime, the ninth volume in this landmark series, is a thorough overview of the conceptual and empirical issues raised by the adoption of a criminal event perspective, which takes into account the multifaceted character of human behavior. This book is divided into three sections: conceptual bases of criminal events, the criminal event perspective itself, and responses to criminal events. Contributors analyze and explore a wide range of topics, including: how interpersonal routines are structured through past experience; the influence of social context on interpersonal routines; criminal opportunity and its impact on criminal events; the significance of neighborhood context; the effect of victimization and fear; how problem-oriented policing efforts need to be informed by and reflect the problems of repeat offenders, repeat victims, and hot spots of crime; and finally, how changes in the physical environment constrain or limit criminal opportunities. This fascinating work will be beneficial to criminologists, sociologists, and scholars of legal studies. Contributors to this volume include: Leslie W. Kennedy, Erin Gibbs Van Brunschot, Robert F. Meier, Mark Warr, Christopher Birkbeck, Luis Gerardo Gabaldon, Kriss A. Drass, Terance D. Miethe, Julie Horney, Jeffrey Fagan, Deanna L. Wilkinson, Robert J. Buskirk, Jr., Vincent F. Sacco, Ross Macmillan, John E. Eck, Paul J. Brantingham, and Pat Brantingham.

fame and strain: the contributions of mertonian deviance theory to an understanding of the relationship between celebrity and deviant behavior

This paper argues that Mertons original means/goals gap theory can be used to understand the emerging relationship between deviant behavior and the acquisition of celebrity status. The intent is to illuminate how forms of deviant behavior have become adaptive responses to the structurally anomic conditions that have resulted from popular cultures incessant emphasis on the desirability of fame and celebrity status, and the structurally limited means by which it can be legitimately achieved. Mertons original forms of adaptation—innovation, retreatism, rebellion, and ritualism—are explored in relation to this increasingly important phenomenon.

The Mistreatment of the Elderly in Domestic Settings

Within recent years, criminological images of the elderly have undergone a significant modification. As Gordon (1987:116) notes: The image of the elderly as victims of conventional “street” crime is being replaced by a view in which the family and private nursing home settings appear as more hazardous environments.

The Costs of Elderly Victimization

What occurs in the aftermath of criminal vicitmization? How do individuals assess the problems that Victimization has created for them and how do they cope with these problems? Thus far in our examination of criminal victimization of the elderly we have focused upon the determinants and the content of victimization experiences. We have discussed the rates of such crimes and their distributional properties but we have not been concerned with the consequences which flow from them. This is the principal issue considered in the present chapter.

Age as a Victimological Variable

The next several chapters shift attention away from the study of elderly persons as offenders and toward the study of elderly victims of crime. Social scientific interest in the analysis of victim processes is relatively recent and may be seen as representing one aspect of a significant broadening of the criminological paradigm which began in the 1960s and which continues to the present day (Gibbons, 1979; Short and Meier, 1981; Pfohl, 1985). The development of victimology during this period has reflected the influence of several other methodological and theoretical innovations such as the increased use of survey research methods, and the movement toward labeling and situational theories of crime (Elias, 1986; Fattah, 1979; Friedrichs, 1983). In general terms, the growth of victimology has underlined a widespread perception that the traditional criminological preoccupation with the offender has provided a focus that is both narrow and limiting. Despite its relatively short history, the victimological literature is indeed vast and, a significant proportion of this literature concerns the special problems faced by the elderly as actual and potential victims of crime. In the next several chapters, the attempt will be made to sort through a variety of competing theoretical and empirical claims in order to uncover the salient dimensions of the relationship between being “elderly” and being “victimized”.

The Elderly Offender and the Criminal Justice System

The continuing growth in the size of the elderly population means that increasing numbers of elderly people will come into contact with the criminal justice system in one capacity or another. As mentioned in chapter two, the numbers of those who come into conflict with the law and who are handled by the justice authorities seem to be growing. It is important, therefore, to examine how elderly offenders are dealt with by the criminal justice system.

Age as a Criminological Variable

Since the dawn of scientific criminology, age has been identified as the most important criminological variable. On the basis of their statistical studies of criminality, Guerry and Quetelet declared that age is the factor that has the greatest impact on crime. In 1839 Quetelet wrote: of all the causes which influence the development of propensity to crime, or which diminish that propensity, age is unquestionably the most energetic.

The Elderly Offender in Prison

It is difficult to trace the movement of elderly offenders in and out of the provincial prison and federal penitentiary systems in Canada. It is also difficult to tell how many old inmates there are at any given time in Canadian prisons and penitentiaries. The numbers will vary according to which age is taken as the starting point beyond which a prisoner is considered old: 50, 55, 60 or 65 years. Statistics on admissions to prisons and penitentiaries are published annually by Statistics Canada in its catalogue no. 85–211 Adult Correctional Services in Canada. The distribution by age of those admitted is given in absolute numbers for the penitentiaries and in percentages for provincial prisons. The rationale for this different presentation is not clear. Furthermore, the breakdown of the “50 and over” category is not provided. According to the latest statistics available, 126 offenders age 50 and over were admitted to the federal penitentiaries in Canada under a warrant of committal in 1984–1985. The corresponding figure for the year 1985–1986 is 153, a 20% increase. Because the total number is relatively small, no conclusion should be drawn from this increase. Out of the 153 admissions in 1985–1986, 13 came from the Atlantic provinces, 48 from the province of Quebec, 35 from Ontario, 25 from the Prairies and 32 from British Columbia. These crude figures are not very useful unless related to the population size and the rates of serious crimes in each region.