This paper aims to analyze the way in which the media reports of sex offences tend to reinforce traditional sexual scripts and gender identities. Compared to investigations into male sex offenders, female sex offending is relatively underresearched, undertheorized, and misunderstood (Hayes and Carpenter, 2013). We argue that the media&#x2019;s reinforcement of traditional scripts has hindered the development of awareness of sex offending by women, depicting them as aberrations, that is, as &#x201c;female pariahs.&#x201d; As Harris (2010) notes, female sex crimes cannot be explained by male theories of crime. To address this issue, we examined 487 media reports from Australia and the United Kingdom and found that, as key stakeholders in public debate, the media does indeed play a crucial role in shaping the public perceptions of female sex offenders as aberrations and pariahs. This distorted view influences approaches to understanding and acknowledging sex offending by women as well as hindering the safe and timely reporting of offences by victims.

Sharon Hayes

Bethney Baker

Female Sex Offenders and Pariah Femininities: Rewriting the Sexual Scripts

This study examines the attitudes about intimate violence and compares the prevalence of abuse reported by married and dating participants, by type of abuse and sex of respondent. A sample of 3,716 participants, aged 15 to 67 years, filled in one attitudinal questionnaire and a self-report instrument on abuse perpetration and victimization. Attitudinal data revealed a general disapproval of violence use, with greater violence support among males and married participants. When comparing violence in both relational contexts, we found that, in terms of perpetration, more dating partners reported physical abuse and severe forms of physical abuse than married partners. Suggestions for future research are discussed.

Carla Machado

Carla Martins

S&#xf3;nia Caridade

Violence in Intimate Relationships: A Comparison between Married and Dating Couples

Racial threat theory was developed as a way to explain how population composition influences discriminatory social control practices and has become one of the most acknowledged frameworks for explaining racial disparity in criminal justice outcomes.  This paper provides a thorough review of racial threat theory and empirical assessments of the theory and demonstrates that while scholars often cite inconsistent support for the theory, empirical discrepancies may be due to insufficient attention to the conceptual complexity of racial threat.  I organize and present the following review around 4 forms of state-sanctioned control mechanisms:  police expenditures, arrests, sentencing, and capital punishment.  Arguing that the pervasiveness of racialization in state controls warrants continued inquiry, I provide suggestions for future scholarship that will help us develop enhanced understanding of how racial threat may be operating.

Cindy Brooks Dollar

Racial Threat Theory: Assessing the Evidence, Requesting Redesign

In the past three decades, developed prison and probation services have paid large attention to risk assessment tools predicting the probability of reoffending. This not only resulted in a more accurate classification of offenders, but also in a more informed choice of effective intervention helping to reduce relapse in offending behaviour. In terms of reducing the risk of reoffending intervention programmes considering the principle of criminogenic risks, needs, and responsivity proved successful, while imprisonment on its own, where intervention methods were not applied, showed only limited effectiveness. For historical reasons, the Czech Prison Service underwent a different development, although its objectives were similar. It was not until the beginning of a new millennium when the Czech prison system together with a newly created probation service decided to seek new methods of assessing offenders based on criminogenic risks. This paper presents development and results of the first Czech tool used for assessment of offenders&#x2019; risks and needs, called SARPO (from the Czech abbreviation of Complex Analysis of Offenders&#x2019; Risk and Needs).

Vaclav Jiricka

Zuzana Podana

Michal Petras

Jindrich Hurka

Prediction of Offending: SARPO&#x2014;The Czech Tool for Assessment of Offenders' Criminogenic Risk and Needs

This study addresses three questions pertinent to the debate concerning the secondary crime effects of adult businesses. (1) Are adult businesses hotspots for crime? (2) How do adult businesses compare with controls with regard to crime? (3) What subclasses of adult business are most likely to be associated with crime? A study of three cities reveals that adult businesses tended to fall outside the heaviest concentrations of criminal activity. Further, adult bookstores were less related to crime than both cabarets and on-site liquor-serving establishments. While adult cabarets were associated with ambient crime, crime was generally equivalent to nonadult liquor-serving establishments. A weighted intensity value analyses revealed that crime generally was more &#x201C;intense&#x201D; around liquor-serving establishments than around adult cabarets across the municipalities. These findings suggest that the relationship between cabarets and crime is not due to the presence of adult entertainment per se but rather due to the presence of liquor service. This finding is consistent with central precept of routine activities theory that areas that contain public establishments that serve alcohol facilitate crime.

Christopher Seaman

Daniel Linz

Are Adult Businesses Crime Hotspots? Comparing Adult Businesses to Other Locations in Three Cities

Minor offences are often punished with a fine. Up to 2007 the number of fines in the Netherlands was increasing but 2008 saw a decline. At the same time fines were raised significantly. The question is whether the raise in fines caused the decline in the number of fines. To answer this question a database containing administrative fines for speeding on the motorway over the period 2007&#x2013;2010 is analyzed. Two categories are compared: speeding offences detected by average speed measuring systems (ASMS) and speeding offences detected by police officers. For each category the elasticity of fines is estimated. It turns out that the elasticity of fines detected by an ASMS is small but differs significantly from both 0 and &#x2212;1. If fines are raised by 1&#x25;, the offence rate, that is, proportion of fines detected by an ASMS, will decline by 0.14&#x25;. For fines handed out by police officers we see no such effect: the estimated elasticity of the number of fines is positive and does not significantly differ from zero. The conclusion is that motorists make moderate adjustments in their behavior when fines are raised but only if the risk of being caught is high.

Debora E. G. Moolenaar

Motorist's Response to an Increase in Traffic Fines

With an emphasis to examine Latino officers who have been involved in police shootings, this study analyzed twenty-one years (1990&#x2013;2010) of data from one of the largest law enforcement departments in the United States. The study compared Latino population trends in the United States, the State of California, a southern California County, and focused on the representativeness of Latinos in one southern California law enforcement department. The analysis further investigated police shootings by the race of the officer, narrowing the focus to determine whether an increasing representativeness of Latino officers had any effect on police shootings. Results revealed that while the percentage of White officers in the department decreased and Latino officers increased, so too did their involvement in police shootings. Most surprisingly, Latino officer-involved shootings outpaced their growth in the department by a factor of 3.3 and in the county by a factor of more than 4.

James P. McElvain

Augustine J. Kposowa

Latino Officers and Their Involvement in Police Shootings

To maintain public safety and improve system response, a strong need exists for understanding the characteristics of individuals involved in gun crimes, related police activities, and situational/contextual variables surrounding gun incidents. A serious knowledge gap exists, however, in understanding weapon-related offenses at the city level and in how to develop a local gun-case database. This paper, which is based on research experiences at an urban police department in USA, describes and analyzes the process and related issues in developing such a database. The study revealed a few critical lessons concerning this process, including those related to communication and cooperation between the police and researchers, quality of data, and importance of a refined dataset for improving local police policies and operations.

Allan Y. Jiao

Developing and Analyzing a Local Gun-Case Database: The Process and Related Issues

This study presents a partial test of Agnew&#x2019;s general theory of crime and delinquency. Relying on a sample of adolescents and employing measures of the self, family, school, and peers domains, this study examines the contemporaneous and lagged effects of these four life domains on the likelihood of consuming alcohol and using marijuana. This study also assesses the contemporaneous and lagged effects of the life domain variables on themselves and on one another. Overall, the results lend support for Agnew&#x2019;s general theory. The results also reveal several notable puzzles and underscore the complexity of this potentially important contemporary theoretical perspective.

Fawn T. Ngo

Raymond Paternoster

Contemporaneous and Lagged Effects of Life Domains and Substance Use: A Test of Agnew's General Theory of Crime and Delinquency

Children&#x2019;s (N = 48) and adults&#x2019; (N = 28) truthful and deceptive statements were compared using a linguistics-based computer software program. Children (4 to 7 years of age) and adults (18 to 25 years of age) participated in a mock courtroom experiment, in which they were asked to recount either a true or fabricated event. Testimonies were then analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count Software (LIWC; Pennebaker et al. 2007). This software has been previously used to detect adults&#x2019; deceptive statements (e.g., Bond and Lee, 2005). To date, no research has used this method on children&#x2019;s narratives, nor has this software been used to compare those narratives to adult counterparts. Markers generated through the LIWC program achieved detection rates of 72.40&#x25; for samples of both children&#x2019;s and adults&#x2019; narratives combined. In contrast, adult laypersons&#x2019; (N = 48) detection rates, for the same narratives (i.e., both children and adults) were close to chance. More specifically, detection rates were above chance for truth (65.00&#x25;) and below chance for lies (45.00&#x25;). Thus, the linguistic profile provided through LIWC yielded greater accuracy for evaluating the veracity of children&#x2019;s and adults&#x2019; narratives compared to adult laypersons&#x2019; detection accuracy.

Shanna Mary Williams

Victoria Talwar

R. C. L. Lindsay

Nicholas Bala

Kang Lee

Is the Truth in Your Words? Distinguishing Children&#x2019;s Deceptive and Truthful Statements

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Journal of Criminology