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- Volume 6, 2023
Annual Review of Criminology - Volume 6, 2023
Volume 6, 2023
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Beyond Predatory Peace
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 1–21More LessThis autobiographical review is about a research life unusually oriented to the long-term study of organizational crime, peace, and crisis prevention. Most ambitions proved half-baked. Hopes for a more sweeping macrocriminology of freedom will doubtless remain half-baked when cooking ceases. None of the author's mentors bear responsibility for the mess left in the kitchen from attempts to understand how to grow freedom and prevent crime and war. Messy kitchens must sometimes become even messier before they create the best kind of challenge for the tidier minds that clean them up.
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How Little Supervision Can We Have?
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 23–42More LessUse of probation and parole has declined since its peak in 2007 but still intrudes into the lives of 3.9 million Americans at a scale deemed mass supervision. Originally intended as an alternative to incarceration and a means of rehabilitation for those who have committed crimes, supervision often functions as a trip wire for further criminal legal system contact. This review questions the utility of supervision, as research shows that, in toto, it currently provides neither diversion from incarceration nor rehabilitation. Analysis of national supervision, crime, and carceral data since 1980 reveals that supervision has little effect on future crime and is not a replacement for incarceration. Case studies from California and New York City indicate that concerted efforts to reduce the scope of mass supervision can effectively be achieved through sentencing reform, case diversion, and supervisory/legal system department policy change, among other factors, without increasing crime. Therefore, we suggest extensive downsizing of supervision or experimentation with its abolition and offer actionable steps to enact each possibility.
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The Current Crisis of American Criminal Justice: A Structural Analysis
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 43–63More LessThis review situates the recent, radical challenges to American criminal justice—calls to end mass incarceration, defund the police, and dismantle systemic racism—within the broader social and economic arrangements that make the US system so distinctive and so problematic. It describes the social structures, institutions, and processes that give rise to America's extraordinary penal state—as well as to its extraordinarily high rates of homicide and social disorder—and considers what these portend for the prospect of radical change. It does so by locating American crime and punishment in the structural context of America's (always-already racialized) political economy—a distinctive set of social structures and institutional legacies that render the United States more violent, more disorderly, and more reliant on penal control than any other developed nation. Drawing on a broad range of social science research findings, it argues that this peculiar political economy—a form of capitalism and democratic governance forged on the anvils of slavery and racial segregation and rendered increasingly insecure and exclusionary in the decades following deindustrialization—generates high levels of social disorganization and criminal violence and predisposes state authorities to adopt penal control as the preferred policy response.
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Can Conservative Criminal Justice Reform Survive a Rise in Crime?
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 65–83More LessOver the past 20 years, conservatives have often been at the forefront of criminal justice reform efforts, including to reduce mandatory minimum sentencing, lengthy prison terms, and excessive criminal fines and fees and to improve conditions in prisons and jails. Rejecting the Nixonian “law and order” impulse, criminal justice reform has increasingly become incorporated into the conservative political self-identity. But this has been an elite-driven phenomenon, and it is open to question whether the roots of that political identity are deep enough to withstand the rising salience of crime as a political issue. This review traces how criminal justice reform came to be incorporated into the conservative political identity, raises questions concerning its staying power in the face of rising crime and increasingly strident progressive demands, and proposes some principles that might ground a more lasting conservative commitment to a just, proportionate system of criminal justice.
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Trends in Women's Incarceration Rates in US Prisons and Jails: A Tale of Inequalities
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 85–106More LessWomen's rates of imprisonment and incarceration in jails grew faster than men's rates during the prison boom in the United States. Even during the recent period of modest decline in incarceration, women's rates have decreased less than men's rates. The number of women in prisons and jails in the United States is now at a historic high. Yet research on mass incarceration most often ignores women's imprisonment and confinement in jails. This review examines trends in women's incarceration, highlighting important disparities for Black, Latina, and American Indian/Indigenous women. It contextualizes these trends in terms of the economic and social disadvantages of women prior to incarceration as well as inequalities that are created by women's incarceration for families, communities, and women themselves. The review concludes by calling for improved data on women's imprisonment and jail trends, particularly regarding race and ethnicity, as well as more research and theoretical development.
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Addressing Hate Crime in the 21st Century: Trends, Threats, and Opportunities for Intervention
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 107–130More LessHate crimes, often referred to as bias-motivated crimes, have garnered greater public attention and concern as political rhetoric in the United States and internationally has promoted the exclusion of people based on their group identity. This review examines what we know about the trends in hate crime behavior and the legal responses to this problem across four main domains. First, we describe the legal framework and recent attempts to expand hate crime protections beyond historically disenfranchised groups. Second, we examine recent trends and patterns of hate crime victimization. Third, we review what is known about those who perpetrate hate crimes and those who experience hate crime victimization. Finally, we examine the efficacy of efforts to respond to and prevent hate crime. This review examines a wide range of bias-motivated harms and suggests how future research and policy can be more inclusive of victimization extending beyond traditionally understood hate crimes.
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Far-Right and Jihadi Terrorism Within the United States: From September 11th to January 6th
Laura Dugan, and Daren FisherVol. 6 (2023), pp. 131–153More LessAs tens of thousands swarmed the US Capitol Grounds on January 6th, 2021, to oppose the election of Joe Biden as President, thousands among them assaulted officers and breached the building to stop the certification of the election results, leading to nine deaths and hundreds of injuries. Despite being an act of terrorism and evidence that far-right extremists planned to take over the government, some dismiss January 6th as legitimate political discourse. This divisive response starkly contrasts with the unifying response to the jihadi attacks on September 11th two decades earlier, raising the question as to why the country has not also united against far-right extremism. This review argues that the Bush administration misused deterrence in response to the September 11th attacks. While unifying the country, it also disproportionately punished innocent Muslims and legitimized anti-Muslim ideals, giving rise to anti-Muslim hate crimes and backlash by jihadi extremists and emboldening violence from far-right extremists. This review combines research on deterrence, counterterrorism, anti-Muslim ideals, and far-right organizations with data on terrorism and hate crimes within the United States to delineate this argument and assess its alignment with the empirical progression of violence between September 11th and January 6th.
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Carjacking: Scope, Structure, Process, and Prevention
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 155–179More LessCarjacking is a violent crime with a broad motivational landscape related to the unique opportunities that a motor vehicle, as the item targeted, makes available to offenders once it is stolen. Although carjacking is technically a form of robbery, carjacking is a hybrid offense because it draws from elements of both regular robbery and motor vehicle theft. Nuanced in its etiology and expression, carjacking boasts a structure and process that require offenders to navigate multiple challenges under considerable time pressure and uncertainty. The fact that carjacking is so often opportunistic yet simultaneously requires a fair amount of calculation makes the offense even more subtle in its complexity. The purpose of this review is to examine these nuances through the lens of official data and existing empirical research. Nascent but growing, this research provides insight into the scope of the problem, the method and manner of the crime's commission, and the challenges of curbing a clear urban menace.
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Police Unionism, Accountability, and Misconduct
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 181–203More LessRecent discussions of police violence in the United States and the corresponding lack of accountability have shone a light on a highly debated agent opposing police reform—police unions. Although police unionism continues to be an understudied area, a recent wave of empirical investigations, both qualitative and quantitative, have contributed to a nascent understanding of the ways in which police union mechanisms facilitate police misconduct and violence. Accordingly, in this review we first discuss the origins of police unionism in the United States, illustrating how historical forces, including racial animus, have shaped the existing landscape. Then, we highlight significant empirical work exploring the relationship between police unionism and misconduct. Thereafter, we review the potential intervening mechanisms, which are employed in ways to reduce disciplinary consequences of misconduct and excessive use of force, undermine oversight of the police, and limit police transparency. We end with a set of recommendations on future avenues for research.
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Police Observational Research in the Twenty-First Century
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 205–218More LessThe often-clandestine inner workings of the policing profession have been of considerable interest to scholars, policy makers, social justice activists, and everyday citizens. Technological innovations such as body-worn cameras, smartphones, and social media have allowed for increased public scrutiny of how officers carry out their duties. Recently, there has been intensified interest in the role of police and their suitability for addressing a wide range of important social issues. As various stakeholders consider impassioned calls for police reform, a comprehensive understanding of officer behavior is especially critical. Police observational research has historically used innovative methods to observe, document, and analyze police officer conduct. Herein, we investigate the evolution of police observational research and its many contributions and underscore the potential for future research.
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Surveillance Technologies and Constitutional Law
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 219–240More LessThis review focuses on government use of technology to observe, collect, or record potential criminal activity in real-time, as contrasted with “transaction surveillance” that involves government efforts to access already-existing records and exploit Big Data, topics that have been the focus of previous reviews (Brayne 2018, Ridgeway 2018). Even so limited, surveillance technologies come in many guises, including closed-circuit television, automated license plate and facial readers, aerial cameras, and GPS tracking. Also classifiable as surveillance technology are devices such as thermal and electromagnetic imagers that can “see” through walls and clothing. Finally, surveillance includes wiretapping and other forms of communication interception. The following discussion briefly examines the limited evidence we have about the prevalence and effectiveness of these technologies and then describes the law governing surveillance, focusing principally on constitutional doctrine, and how it might—and might not—limit use of these technologies in the future.
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Expanded Criminal Defense Lawyering
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 241–264More LessThis review collects and critiques the academic literature on criminal defense lawyering, with an emphasis on empirical work. Research on criminal defense attorneys in the United States has traditionally emphasized scarcity of resources: too many people facing criminal charges who are “too poor to pay” for counsel and not enough funding to pay for the constitutionally mandated lawyers. Scholars have focused on the capacity of different delivery systems, such as public defender offices, to change the ultimate outcomes in criminal cases within their tight budgetary constraints. Over the decades, however, theoretical understandings of the defense attorney's work have expanded to include client interests outside the criminal courtroom, reaching the broader social conditions connected to the alleged criminal act. Researchers have responded by asking a broader range of questions about the effectiveness of defense counsel outside the courtroom and by using improved data to study the effectiveness of lawyers at discrete procedural stages.
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Six Questions About Overcriminalization
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 265–284More LessThe allegation that criminal justice systems (and that of the United States in particular) have become guilty of overcriminalization is widely accepted by academics and practitioners on nearly all points along the political spectrum (Dillon 2012). Many commentators respond by recommending that states decriminalize given kinds of conduct that supposedly exemplify the problem. I urge those who are theoretically minded to proceed cautiously and address several preliminary matters that must be resolved before genuine progress is possible. In the absence of a position on several controversial normative and conceptual issues, discussions of overcriminalization and decriminalization are bound to be oversimplified and superficial. My review is organized around six of these issues. I invite commentators to examine (a) what the criminal law is; (b) what overcriminalization means; (c) why overcriminalization is thought to be pernicious; (d) whether overcriminalization is a de jure or de facto phenomenon, i.e., whether it is a function of the law on the books or the law in action; (e) what normative criteria might be invoked to alleviate the predicament; and (f) whether and to what extent overcriminalization is a serious concern in our penal system. Even though these six issues are analytically distinct, positions about one invariably blur into commitments about the others. Although theorists rarely dissent from the claim that states are guilty of something called overcriminalization, uncertainties about the foregoing topics mar their treatments. I conclude that a deep understanding of the problem of overcriminalization depends on how these six issues are resolved.
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Revitalizing Ethnographic Studies of Immigration and Crime
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 285–306More LessEthnographic studies of immigration and crime were prominent in the early decades of the twentieth century, yet contemporary scholarship has been dominated by quantitative approaches. In this review, we heed the call of those who have lamented the “collective amnesia” and “newness fetish” that characterize much of contemporary criminology and revisit classic ethnographies of immigration and crime, with an emphasis on the unique methodological contributions of this early work. Next, we synthesize the small but growing body of contemporary ethnographic research on immigration and crime, which includes the policing of immigrant communities in the age of “crimmigration;” the lived experiences inside contemporary deportation/detention regimes; the integration experiences of Muslims, a highly marginalized but understudied population; and immigrants’ unique vulnerabilities to and experiences of victimization, to illustrate the value of qualitative approaches for capturing the nuances of immigrants’ experiences in the new age of immigration.
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LatCrit and Criminology: Toward a Theoretical Understanding of Latino/a/x Crime and Criminal Legal System Involvement
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 307–338More LessAn important body of work documents how race matters for the patterning of crime and criminal legal system involvement largely by focusing on comparisons between Blacks and Whites. We build on this vital scholarship by spotlighting Latino/a/xs, a fast-growing group that is the United States’ largest racial minority, to broaden the field's understanding of race and crime. In this review, we follow race scholars who see Latino/a/xs as a racial category because dominant actors racialize them as an innate, distinct, inferior, and criminogenic category, leading to their marginalized experiences across many domains. Moreover, Latino/a/xs increasingly view themselves as not White. Studying Latino/a/xs offers an opportunity to integrate key tenets of Latina and Latino Critical Legal Theory (LatCrit), which provide a scaffolding to center race and racism. LatCrit highlights the ways racism metes out discrimination, cultural and linguistic devaluation, criminalization, and racial profiling that in turn shape and are shaped by levels of Latino/a/x crime and legal system involvement. This article provides a description of what it means to center race with an emphasis on LatCrit,an empirical assessment of Latino/a/x crime and legal system involvement, and an integration of core criminological theory with LatCrit. By doing so, we advance the field to more directly and robustly engage with the idea that racial disparities in crime and legal system involvement are products of racialization as well as attendant policies, institutions, and practices that historically and contemporaneously subjugate and marginalize the Latino/a/x population. We seek to push the boundaries of criminology theory and thereby invigorate and equip them for the twenty-first century and its racial landscape, which is increasingly Latino/a/x.
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Renewing Historical Criminology: Scope, Significance, and Future Directions
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 339–361More LessRecent years have seen increasing interest in, and scholarly discussion of, historical criminology. Yet there remains at present no clear, settled view as to what historical criminology entails, how it is best pursued, and what its future might hold. This article explores the several conceptions of historical criminology found in the present literature, which associate it variously with archival research, practical inquiry, a concern with temporality, and a certain approach to interdisciplinary scholarship. Adopting the view that historical criminology entails a special regard for historical time, the review goes on to assess its significance to the wider field, examining its connection with some of the core impulses of criminology at large. Finally, it suggests some major opportunities for historical criminology to contribute to the future development of criminology, including through an inclusive global criminology, a criminology of events, and research on crime and justice futures.
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The Opioid Crisis: The War on Drugs Is Over. Long Live the War on Drugs
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 363–398More LessA closer examination of media coverage, the response of law enforcement and policy makers, the legislative record, and the availability of proven, high-quality treatments for substance abuse casts doubt on claims that the country pivoted toward public health and harm-reduction strategies to address the opioid crisis because its victims were disproportionately white people. Law enforcement solutions directed at people who use and sell street drugs continue to far outpace public health and harm-reduction strategies. Government support for expanding access to proven treatments for opioid use disorder that save and rebuild lives remains paltry given the scale of this public health catastrophe. And although the rhetoric has been somewhat more sympathetic, at times it rivals the excesses of the crack era. The article examines the various phases of the opioid crisis as they have unfolded over the past 25 years; related geographic and racial shifts in overdose fatalities with each new phase; media coverage of the crisis; the federal government's response, including by the US Congress and presidents from George H.W. Bush to Joe Biden; punitive developments at the state and local levels; and the country's poor record on prevention and making effective treatment widely available for people with substance use disorder.
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COVID-19 in Carceral Systems: A Review
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 399–422More LessAs with past pandemics of influenza, COVID-19 tore through US prisons and jails; however, the COVID-19 pandemic, uniquely, has led to more health research on carceral systems than has been seen to date. Herein, we review the data on its impact on incarcerated people, correctional officers, health systems, and surrounding communities. We searched medical, sociological, and criminology databases from March 2020 through February 2022 for studies examining the intersection of COVID-19, prisons and jails, and health outcomes, including COVID-19 incidence, prevalence, hospitalizations, and vaccination. Our scoping review identified 77 studies—the bulk of which focus on disease epidemiology in carceral systems, with a small minority that focuses on the efficacy or effectiveness of prevention and mitigation efforts, including testing, vaccination, and efforts to depopulate correctional facilities. We highlight areas for future research, including the experiences of incarcerated people and correctional staff, unanticipated health effects of prolonged quarantine, excess deaths due to delays in healthcare, and experimental studies on vaccine uptake and testing in correctional staff. These studies will enable a fuller understanding of COVID-19 and help stem future pandemics.
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Trauma and Prospects for Reentry
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 423–446More LessTrauma is an almost universal experience for those with incarceration histories. Lifetime traumatic experiences begin in childhood, continue in adulthood, and persist during and after incarceration. For centuries, the capacity for trauma to have a deleterious impact on social, mental, and biological functioning has been a topic of inquiry, and for years empirical work has connected trauma to crime and justice system involvement. Trauma-responsive reentry is the future state of the art for reentry. This review examines the prevalence and consequences of lifetime traumatic experiences for individuals releasing from incarceration and returning home. Extant research on trauma interventions for individuals with incarceration histories is discussed. The review ends with a vision for trauma-responsive reentry, strategies to implement trauma-responsive reentry, a proposed research agenda, and cautions and considerations for debate.
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A Review and Analysis of the Impact of Homicide Measurement on Cross-National Research
Vol. 6 (2023), pp. 447–470More LessThe number of cross-national homicide studies is increasing rapidly. Many scholars, however, do not consider the details of how individual nations and the four main centralized homicide data sources—raw estimates from the World Health Organization (WHO) Mortality Database, adjusted estimates from the WHO Global Health Observatory, United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, and World Bank World Development Indicators—generate national homicide rates and the impact this may have on results and the scientific record. We tested whether homicide trends, levels, and structural covariates are dependent on data source. We used 1990–2018 data in 5-year groupings and pooled them over time and nation. We utilized exploratory data analysis techniques to look for differences in homicide rates and trends. Then we employed seemingly unrelated regression (SUR) to determine whether associations with homicide of typical structural covariates were dependent on homicide data source. Finally, we examined Wald Tests to determine whether differences in the sizes of the SUR coefficients from each data source were significantly different from zero. We found differences in homicide trends and rates by data source and that associations with homicide rates of structural covariates varied in significance, magnitude, and even direction depending on homicide data source. Cross-national homicideresearch has a promising future for understanding short- and long-term global and regional trends and population-level covariates and constructing theoretical explanations for geographical and temporal variation. However, researchers must better understand how national homicide data are generated by nations and these four data sources. All four systems possess limitations, but homicide data from the WHO Mortality Database present the most attractive option.
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