Chapter 12 Discussion

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Crime Control in America: What Works?

CHAPTER

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Individual, Family, and Household Crime Control

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Individual Crime Control

• Individuals engage in many crime control activities, including:

▪ Purchasing (and possibly using) guns for self-defense

▪ Risk-avoidance behavior

▪ Risk-management

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Measuring Gun Prevalence

• No main registry of guns in private hands

• How do we know how many guns are in circulation?

▪ Surveys

• General Social Survey

▪ Can't be used to arrive at local-level estimates

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Measuring Gun Prevalence

• Other measures

▪ Suicides committed with a gun (apparently the most reliable)

▪ Homicides committed with a gun

▪ NRA membership

▪ Subscriptions to gun-oriented magazines

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Often Are Guns Used in Self- Defense?

• Surveys have shown between 500,000 and 3.6 million instances of gun use in self-defense

• NCVS has shown between 32,000 and 108,000 uses per year

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Often Are Guns Used in Self- Defense?

• Which sources should be believed?

▪ NCVS

• It's more conservative

• More consistent with findings from other studies

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Often Are Guns Used in Self- Defense?

• NCVS limitations include:

▪ Respondents must first indicate a victimization

▪ "Prevented" crimes not counted

▪ May be a desire to conceal gun use from surveyors

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Aggregate Research

• Most has looked at the relationship between levels of gun ownership and burglary at the state and local level

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Aggregate Research

• Findings?

▪ Lott found that increased gun ownership was associated with less burglary

▪ Duggan found more burglaries where there were more guns

• Consider hot vs. cold burglaries

▪ Cold burglaries are the norm

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Armed Resistance and Crime Completion

• Researchers have also looked at whether armed resistance leads to a reduction in the likelihood that a crime will be completed

• What does the research show?

▪ Armed resistance to robbery appears effective, more so than unarmed resistance

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Armed Resistance and Victim Injury

• Researchers have also looked at victim injury when they resist victimization by using a gun in self-defense

• What does the research show?

▪ Some studies show gun use results in less victim injury

▪ Another study shows higher rates of victim injury when guns are used

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Do Criminals Care?

• Some researchers have surveyed convicted burglars

• They have found

▪ Burglars steer clear from "hot" burglaries for fear of getting shot

▪ Burglars are also attracted to guns because "a gun is money with a trigger"

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Compensating Risks and Offsetting Behavior

• Another topic of interest to researchers has been whether people act differently when they are armed

• The concern is that people may act in ways that increase their likelihood of victimization

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Compensating Risks and Offsetting Behavior

• What is the precedent for this research?

▪ Improvements in automobile designs have led to riskier driving

▪ Child-resistant packaging for drugs has led to careless storage of such drugs

▪ Study: 1/3 of all gun defenders had the option of not confronting the suspect

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Guns and Accidental Deaths

• Any merits associated with self-defense with a gun need to be balanced against costs to society resulting from accidental deaths

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Guns and Accidental Deaths

• What does the research show?

▪ One study showed states with the highest gun ownership rates had 9 times the rate of unintentional firearm deaths

▪ Push for safe-storage laws, which appear effective based on one study

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

A Gun in Every Home?

• In 1982, the city of Kennesaw, GA passed an ordinance requiring every household to keep a gun

• Did it reduce burglary?

▪ Researchers have not been able to tell because levels of gun ownership in the city did not change markedly after the ordinance went into effect

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Risk-Avoidance Behaviors

• Risk-avoidance consists of activities people engage in to minimize their chances of being victimized

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Risk-Avoidance Behaviors

• Examples of risk-avoidance include:

▪ Avoiding certain areas

▪ Staying inside at night

▪ Driving instead of walking

▪ Parking in certain locations

• Does it work?

▪ Hard to study what doesn't happen!

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Risk-Management Behaviors

• Risk-management behaviors include actions people take when they know that can't fully avoid the potential for victimization

• Examples include:

▪ Self-defense training

▪ Resistance

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Self-Defense Training

• Does self-defense training work?

• Research shows

▪ Women who enroll in self-defense courses feel more in control and are less fearful of crime

▪ Women who enroll in self-defense courses alter their behavior

• Effects of such training on victimization have yet to be explored

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Forceful Resistance

• Here we are concerned with forceful resistance without a gun

• Two forms of forceful resistance

▪ Forceful physical resistance

▪ Forceful verbal resistance

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Forceful Resistance

• What does the research show?

▪ Forceful physical resistance can reduce the likelihood of crime completion, but can increase victim injury, especially in rapes

▪ Forceful verbal resistance appears more effective

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Non-forceful Resistance

• Non-forceful resistance also comes in two forms

▪ Efforts to push offender away

▪ Pleading with offender to stop and/or reasoning with the offender

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Non-forceful Resistance

• What does the research show?

▪ First method more effective than the second

▪ There is no clear consensus in the literature

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Household and Family Crime Control

• Crime control in households/families is common, but it is difficult to evaluate

▪ What happens in childhood may not have consequences until much later in life

▪ Confounding by contextual factors (e.g., neighborhood)

▪ Families tend to be shut off from researchers

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Families Influence Delinquency and Youth Victimization

• How do families influence delinquency/youth victimization?

▪ Transgenerational delinquency

▪ Children born to teenage mothers are at a higher risk of delinquency (especially when biological father is absent)

▪ Parental substance abuse

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Families Influence Delinquency and Youth Victimization

• How do families influence delinquency/youth victimization?

▪ Poor supervision

▪ Inappropriate discipline

▪ Parental rejection of children

▪ Abuse and neglect

▪ Parental conflict

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Families Influence Delinquency and Youth Victimization

• Other ways families influence youth delinquency

▪ Length of residence

▪ Children born to large families are at a high risk of delinquency

• Crowding

• Can't adequately supervise

• Birth order

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

How Families Influence Delinquency and Youth Victimization

• What can be made of all this?

▪ Certain factors can't be changed (e.g., family size)

▪ Other factors can be changed

• Parenting skills

• Abusive behavior

• Substance abuse

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Parent Training and Education

• Government/other agencies have begun to target ineffective parenting in a number of ways

▪ Strengthening Families Program

▪ Home visits by trained professionals, usually during the prenatal period

▪ Parent training in conjunction with day care and/or preschool programs

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Parent Training and Education

• Targeting ineffective parenting

▪ Parent training/education in a clinical setting

▪ School-based parent training

▪ Community-based parent training

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Family Preservation Therapy

• Divorce/broken homes are associated with youth delinquency

• Steps have been taken to keep families intact

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Family Preservation Therapy

• Family preservation therapy starts when:

▪ Divorce/separation are imminent

▪ Child starts to act inappropriately

• Does it work?

▪ Not clear

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Multisystemic Therapy

• What is multisystemic therapy?

▪ Community- and family-based treatment method that targets sources of antisocial behavior in delinquent juveniles

▪ Usually occurs after signs of delinquency present themselves

▪ Occurs in a family context

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Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Multisystemic Therapy

• Does it work?

▪ The research is very encouraging

Crime Control in America: What Works?, 3e John L. Worrall

Financial Assistance to Families

• Researchers have looked at whether increases in welfare payments are associated with reductions in crime

• What does the research show?

▪ Many studies show an inverse relationship between welfare spending and crime

▪ The jury is still out!