Thursday, May 10, 2007

New Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency

Psychology and Crime News alerts us that the latest issue of Journal of Research on Crime and Delinquency is out and abstracts online. All the articles are interesting, but here are a couple of abstracts related to corr sent issues. Go, read, learn.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 44, No. 2, 238-263 (2007)

Neighborhood Effects on Felony Sentencing
John Wooldredge,
University of Cincinnati, OH

The relatively high imprisonment rates of African American men from poor neighborhoods raise a question of whether felony sentences are influenced by ecological factors, separately from or in conjunction with a defendant's race. To provide insight on the topic, both legal and extralegal effects on imprisonment and sentence length were modeled for nearly 3,000 convicted felons from more than 1,000 census tracts in Ohio. Neighborhood effects were estimated with empirical bayes coefficients as outcomes, derived from hierarchical analyses, to adjust for the small ratio of defendants to tracts. Findings revealed that convicted felons from more disadvantaged neighborhoods were more likely to receive nonsuspended prison sentences, whereas a defendant's race was unrelated to imprisonment. By contrast, neighborhood disadvantage was unrelated to sentence length for imprisoned defendants, whereas African Americans received significantly shorter terms relative to Whites. The processes through which ecological context may operate to affect sentence severity are discussed.
jrc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/44/2/238
crimepsychblog.com/?p=1516

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 44, No. 2, 185-207 (2007)

Are Life-Course-Persistent Offenders At Risk for Adverse Health Outcomes?
Alex R. Piquero
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York Graduate Center
Leah E. Daigle
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro
Chris Gibson
Georgia Southern University, Statesboro
Nicole Leeper Piquero
John Jay College of Criminal Justice City University of New York Graduate Center
Stephen G. Tibbetts
California State University, San Bernardino

Moffitt's developmental taxonomy of adolescence-limited and life-course-persistent offenders has received much empirical attention, with researchers focusing on the etiology and trajectory of offending between the two groups. Recently, Moffitt articulated a new hypothesis that has yet to be empirically assessed—that life-course-persistent offenders will be at high risk in midlife for poor physical and mental health, cardiovascular disease, and early disease morbidity. Using data from the Baltimore portion of the National Collaborative Perinatal Project, a longitudinal study of several thousand individuals followed from birth to ages 27 to 33, the authors test this hypothesis. We find that, compared to adolescence-limited offenders, life-course-persistent offenders are more likely to experience adverse physical and mental health outcomes. We also find that life-course-persistent offenders are more likely than their counterparts to be involved in antisocial lifestyles, which in turn increase the chances of adverse health outcomes. Future theoretical and empirical research directions are identified.

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