Browsing by Subject "Crime"

Now showing 1 - 14 of 14

Careful crackdowns : human rights and campaigning on public security in Latin America
(2012-05) Uang, Randy Sunwin; Hunter, Wendy; Weyland, Kurt; Dietz, Henry; Madrid, Raul; Greene, Kenneth
Crime and violence are regularly seen as being ripe for politicians to turn into campaign issues and win votes. This study argues, in contrast, that success on public security is not so automatic: human rights values constrain the use of security and the winning of votes on it. Even in Latin American countries, where voters' concerns about rampant crime and violence are among the highest in the world, considerations of human rights combine with low trust in security forces to restrict the viability of the issue in key ways. Examination of presidential campaigns in Colombia in 1994, 1998, 2002, and 2010 supports this claim. Success on security is a two-step process: invoking the issue and then gaining voter support on the topic. Usability depends on the absence of recent repression and the degree of organization of security threats. Then, winning votes on it depends on having a civilian background, a campaign that balances security with other issues, and messages of careful enforcement. These messages of careful enforcement promise targeted, deliberate use of security forces' enforcement activities in a way that pays attention to human rights, rather than promising unbridled enforcement, increased punishment, or programs of long-term prevention. This study therefore shows how candidates are forced to walk a fine line between promising to establish order and promising to protect basic rights and liberties. These findings are powerful, providing an understanding of public security in electoral campaigns that maintains a much closer fit with empirical reality than existing research. The results also provide a critique of the sociological school of vote choice and points to ways in which ownership of the issue of security may be leased away. Furthermore, because the results are driven by the spread of human rights values, the results demonstrate the importance of quick shifts in political culture as a factor that explains changes in political patterns.
Creating the vilest places on Earth : public resource, crime and the social geography of Buenos Aires, 1880-1920
(2010-05) Bates, Juandrea Marie; Garfield, Seth, 1967-; Twinam, Ann
This Master’s Report explores how the social geography of Buenos Aires transformed between 1887 and 1910 and how these changes affected the city’s development. It argues that despite the state’s purported willingness to provide security and sanitation services to its citizenry, changing settlement patterns and expanding democratic participation led to the unequal distribution of public resources and the decay of neighborhoods in the south and west of the city. It argues that as public works removed inexpensive housing in the city’s downtown and transportation networks linked the city’s peripheries closer to the nucleus, members of the middle class and elites increasingly congregated in center and north of the city. Buenos Aires’ neighborhoods became segregated increasingly along class lines and patronage networks broke down. Members of the working class, now concentrated in their own neighborhoods, were unable gain the same resources. Inequality in the allocation of government benefits created clear physical and cultural barriers between rich and poor segments of the city. Unequal access to security forces played an especially important role in stigmatizing poor regions. While the police department vigilantly protected safety, private property and order in some parts of the city, they did not provide enough officers to complete the same tasks in others. Crime went unchecked in poorer regions. The municipal government published statistics and commentary on crime in the southern and western districts of the capital. This imagery cast the area’s residents as threats to public safety and sanitation that the state should control and maintain segregated rather than aid. By casting them as a threatening “other,” city officials denied inhabitants of poor neighborhoods’ future claims to public resources.
Essays on compensation, incentives, and representation
(2022-08-09) Lee, Andrew Ji-Hoon; Trejo, Stephen J., 1959-; Murphy, Richard J., Ph. D.; Tuttle, Cody; Cunningham, Scott
This dissertation consists of three essays on compensation, incentives, and representation in the United States criminal justice system. The first two chapters study flat fee compensation structures for publicly financed defense lawyers, their implications for case outcomes of indigent defendants and lawyer effort, and their role in distorting incentives away from effective legal representation in the spirit of the Sixth Amendment. The third chapter examines whether pre-arrest diversion programs impact later-life outcomes, such as recidivism, among first-time misdemeanor offenders. In Chapter 1, I empirically examine whether compensation structures for court-appointed attorneys impact case outcomes of indigent defendants. I study this question in the context of a natural experiment in North Carolina, in which six counties were arbitrarily chosen to change compensation for assigned counsel from a schedule of statewide hourly rates to a flat fee per case disposed. Linking detailed administrative on attorney pay records with court records for the universe of indigent criminal cases in the state, I find that moving from hourly to flat fee pay resulted in a higher incidence of adverse case outcomes: defendants were 11% more likely to be convicted and 37% more likely to be incarcerated, a result driven by an increase in guilty pleas. In Chapter 2, I investigate two potential mechanisms through which compensation structures for court-appointed attorneys may impact case outcomes of indigent defendants. Examining the intensive margin response on effort, I find evidence that lawyers reduce their effort under flat fee pay: lawyers spend 11% fewer hours on each case, dispose of cases 25% sooner, and are 36% more likely to dispose of a case on the same day as their first meeting with the defendant. Second, I examine selection of lawyers on the extensive margin, but do not find evidence that moving to flat fee pay significantly impacted lawyer composition in the treated counties. In Chapter 3, I turn my attention to the long-term impacts of criminal records, which can create barriers to employment, housing, and higher education throughout an individual's life. I focus on the pre-arrest misdemeanor diversion program (MDP) in Durham County, NC, which has been offered to first-time offenders from 2014 to the present day. Key features of the program include rehabilitative treatment (such as mental health counseling) in lieu of arrest and prosecution, a clean criminal record for participants upon successful completion, and law enforcement officer discretion in diverting first time offenders as an alternative to arrest. I propose two empirical strategies to study the impact of pre-arrest diversion on later-life outcomes, particularly future criminal behavior, of first-time offenders. First, I propose a regression discontinuity approach that exploits cutoffs at (1) the start of the program in March 2014 for 16-17 year old offenders and (2) an expansion of the program to 18-21 year old offenders in October 2015. Second, I propose an instrumental variables design that leverages as-if random assignment of offenders to law enforcement officers, who vary in their probability of diverting first-time offenders in lieu of arrest.
Essays on mechanism design, safety, and crime
(2014-05) Shoukry, George Fouad Nabih; Abrevaya, Jason; Stinchcombe, Maxwell
This dissertation uses theoretical and empirical tools to answer applied questions of design with an emphasis on issues relating to safety and crime. The first essay incorporates safety in implementation theory and studies when and how safe mechanisms can be designed to obtain socially desirable outcomes. I provide general conditions under which a social choice rule can be implemented using safe mechanisms. The second essay is an empirical study of how criminals respond to changing profitability of crime, a question that informs the policy debate on the most effective crime fighting methods. I find that the price elasticity of theft is about 1 in the short term and increases to about 1.2 over a seven-month horizon, suggesting that policies that directly affect crime profitability, such as policies that shut down black markets or those that reduce demand for illegal goods, can be relatively effective. The third essay shows that any standard implementation problem can be formulated as a question about the existence of a graph that solves a graph coloring problem, establishing a connection between implementation theory and graph theory. More generally, an implementation problem can be viewed as a constraint satisfaction problem, and I propose an algorithm to design simple mechanisms to solve arbitrary implementation problems.
Essays on the economics of law enforcement institutions and policy
(2018-03-22) Weisburst, Emily Karen; Youngblood, Sandra Black; Abrevaya, Jason; Linden, Leigh; Pettit, Becky
This dissertation consists of three chapters on the economics of law enforcement institutions and policy. In the first chapter, I examine the importance of individual police officers to arrest outcomes in interactions with civilians. I show that the likelihood of an arrest is not only a function of incident timing, geography, offense type, and other contextual factors but also critically depends on the identity of the police officer who responds to a call for service. Examining detailed data on more than 1,850 police officers responding to over 160,000 calls for service from the Dallas Police Department, I find that officers vary widely in their arrest behavior, with a 1 standard deviation increase in an officer’s propensity to arrest resulting in a 33% increase in the likelihood that a given incident results in an arrest. In the second chapter, I investigate the impact of police hiring on crime rates in municipalities in the U.S. In this chapter, I use a novel estimation approach to which exploits variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) hiring grants, while also controlling for the endogenous decisions of police departments to apply for these grants. Using data from nearly 7,000 municipalities, I find that a 10% increase in police employment rates reduces violent crime rates by 13% and property crime rates by 7%. The results also provide suggestive evidence that law enforcement leaders are forward-looking. In the third chapter, I explore the impact of police on student discipline and academic outcomes. This chapter provides the first causal estimate of funding for school police on student outcomes, leveraging variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. Exploiting detailed data on over 2.5 million students in Texas, I find that funding for police in public schools results in a small but significant reduction in high school graduation and college enrollment.
Fatores de risco associados ao trabalho policial no Rio de Janeiro
(2007-02-03) Carmo, Cleber
Isa Parada Interview
(2021-11-08) Institute for Diversity & Civic Life; Department of Religious Studies
This interview is with Imam Isa Parada, a Latino Muslim leader with IslamInSpanish. Isa talks about growing up in New York City and Houston, the popular culture of his youth, and being involved in criminal activity as a teen. He tells the story of wanting to make a change in his life for the better, exploring Islam, and converting at the age of twenty. Isa describes the struggles of converting, such as his family’s initial concern and prejudice, as well as the joys, such as meeting his wife and studying in Saudi Arabia. He goes on to discuss the origin and growth of IslamInSpanish.
Issues in urban America : factors related to perceptions of self-reliance and lower crime
(2001-05) Wheeler, Sean; Butler, John S. (John Sibley)
For over a century, researchers have studied methods for revitalizing urban communities. Many studies show that entrepreneurship plays a vital role in sustaining valuable resources that are necessary for community development. The current study adds to previous research by identifying factors that are related to self-reliance and lower crime. I analyze data from the 1991 National Race and Politics Study, which explored attitudes on various issues related to community development and politics. My findings indicate that jobs, more say in government decisions, and hard work are significantly related to self-reliance, while small business, neighborhood organizations, care for the homeless and job training are significantly related to lower crime. These results support the work of previous researchers by showing that crime and neighborhood organizations play important roles in community development. The study goes a step further to identify additional attitudinal variables that are related to self-reliance and lower crime. These results should assist policy makers in determining what factors may help revitalize urban communities that suffer from high levels of unemployment and crime.
Jaime "Mujahid" Fletcher Interview
(2022-01-25) Institute for Diversity & Civic Life; Department of Religious Studies
This interview is with Jaime “Mujahid” Fletcher, founder of IslamInSpanish. Jaime shares about his youth, during which he was involved in gang activity in Alief then developed his value of education in Colombia. After his conversion to Islam at twenty-three, Jaime began to translate Islamic literature and thought into Spanish so his Latino family and community could better understand Islam. Jaime goes on to describe the growth of IslamInSpanish from its inception as a family project to its current state as a vibrant community in the Centro Islamico in Alief. He also discusses the social justice projects IslamInSpanish is involved in and shares his advice for working toward social change.
Organized Crime and Central American Migration in Mexico, PRP 198
(LBJ School of Public Affairs, 2018) Leutert, Stephanie
The following report was researched and written in response to a request by the Mexican Federal Police for an evaluation of the interactions between organized crime and Central American migrants transiting through Mexico. Given that protecting migrants and combating organized criminal groups both fall within the Federal Police’s mandate, this evaluation also outlines how protecting migrants can help deprive organized criminal groups of a lucrative funding source. Part 1 of this report provides background information on Central American migration to and through Mexico, including current migratory trends, their causes, and high-risk groups. Part 2 examines Mexico’s federal legal and institutional frameworks for addressing migration. Part 3 focuses on the interactions between organized crime and migrants and concludes with an evaluation of current crime prevention policies. Finally, the report concludes in Part 4 with the laws and policies that govern the interactions between Federal Police forces and migrants and outlines international best practices for guiding these interactions.
Physical crimes informed by publicly available identity information : underreported risk or overhyped myth?
(2018-01-26) Yost, Janel Eden; Adams, Paul C.; Blaha, Craig
Vulnerabilities associated with the wide dissemination of personally identifiable information (PII) are well documented from an identity theft perspective, but reporting of identity-related crimes that result in assaults, robberies, and other physical losses has been inconsistent. This paper aims to identify gaps in existing research regarding physical crimes informed by the public availability of PII, with an emphasis on vulnerabilities created by victim self-publication of identity information through social media. A survey of media reporting regarding 111 recent incidents, or strings of connected incidents, has facilitated the establishment of rudimentary patterns in these crimes, as well as trends in reporting, both within the US and abroad. A review of pop culture commentary on the current risk environment offers insights into public perceptions of risk, and how these perceptions may be impacted by the media and entertainment industries.
Policing globalization : the imperial origins of international police cooperation
(2014-04-25) Whitaker, Robert David; Louis, William Roger, 1936-; Brands, H.W.; Hunt, Bruce; Vaughn, James; Warr, Marc
This thesis studies the early history of international police cooperation and international crime control. It argues that the British Empire played an active and often decisive role in this history by encouraging the development of international police organizations, such as Interpol. Additionally, it contends that Britain’s support for these organizations was based in large part on the country’s experience policing its Empire. The effort to reform colonial police brought British police in regular contact with police throughout the world, and led to exchanges of philosophies and technologies between the international and colonial spheres. During the aftermath of the Second World War, the reforming zeal of Britain’s imperial police was translated into several foreign police missions in occupied Europe and elsewhere. The British police involved in these missions attempted to encourage the development of civilian, unarmed policing with little reference to local circumstances. The failure of these missions, combined with the development of several colonial emergencies, caused Britain to abandon their forward foreign policy with regard to policing. In this vacuum, the United States emerged as the leading force in international law enforcement, though without Britain’s emphasis on civilian style policing and pursuit of cooperation with other countries.
A Threshold-Based Analysis of Bipartisanship in Crime and Law Legislation in the United States Senate (1989-2018)
(2021) Burniston, Mary Margaret; Rose, Mary
As affective polarization rises in the United States, much scholarly work is devoted to gridlock and hyper-partisanship. In this thesis, I examine whether the issue of crime and law legislation has been impacted by rising polarization, or if it has been able to maintain a degree of bipartisanship. With the use of data on 432 crime and law bills considered from 1989 to 2018, I analyze the concept of issue ownership over crime and law legislation, create 18 different subcategories within the crime and law category, and conduct four network analyses which examine the role of thresholds in facilitating bipartisan collaboration. In doing so, I create several new variables, including Cosponsorship Partisan Difference (CPD) and Sponsorship Partisan Difference (SPD) in order to conceptualize degrees of hyper-partisanship and bipartisanship. I make several key findings, including that CPD is a critical factor which sets apart the most successful sessions and bills, and that individual senators skilled in bipartisan collaboration serve as crucial actors in the most successful session networks.
Urban Space, Police and Crime
(2007-02-03) Alves da Silva, Bráulio