Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. ObjectivesBroken windows theory identifies community social control as a central mechanism for controlling crime. In turn, controlling disorder is seen as the primary method that police or other government agents can use to strengthen community social controls. Our study examined the antecedents of informal community social control, measured as collective efficacy, at street segments.MethodsThis article leverages multi-wave primary data collection at 447 street segments in Baltimore, MD including official crime statistics, survey re ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. Objectives: We examine how normative school transitions (e.g., moves from elementary to middle school) shape adolescents’ experiences with three network processes that inform delinquency: delinquent popularity, delinquent sociability, and friend selection on shared delinquency participation. Methods: By applying stochastic actor-oriented models to a sample of panel data on 13,752 students from 26 school districts in the PROSPER study, we compare outcomes for students who change schools between 6th and 7th grade to those who remain i ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. Objectives: We examine whether individuals engage in crime across a variety of different settings (contextual generality). Specifically, we assess whether individuals who engage in workplace crime will engage in street crime and whether certain individuals have a greater tendency to engage in workplace crime relative to street crime. We are guided by trait-based theories, learning theories, and strain theories to guide our expectations related to the contextual generality of criminal behavior. Methods: We analyze data from the Natio ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. ObjectivesWe examine the relationship between political and religious context and juvenile court dispositions, including whether case-level indicators of focal concerns are moderated by community politics and religion.MethodsUsing a sample of 55,328 juvenile defendants across 175 counties in three states, we first employ multilevel modeling to estimate the direct effects of political and religious context on odds of placement. Second, we examine cross-level interactions between political and religious context, on the one hand, and m ..read more

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Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. ObjectivesWe examine the rational assumption of the interchangeability of legal and illegal monies. Drawing from economics, behavioral economics, and sociology we answer two main research questions: (1) Do offenders perceive money earned across various income-generating activities (legal vs. illegal) in the same way? (2) How do consumption patterns (spending and saving) differ across various forms of income-generating activities?MethodsWe use an a priori mixed methods approach with two interrelated studies; a quantitative survey of ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. ObjectivesPeer effects on the decision to commit a crime have often been documented. But how little does it take to trigger the effect?MethodA fully incentivized, anonymous experiment in the tradition of experimental law and economics provides fully internally valid causal evidence. A companion vignette study with members of the general public extends external validity.Results(a) the more of their peers violate an arbitrary rule, the more participants do; (b) a minority has a threshold and switches from rule-abiding to violation onc ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. ObjectivesCriminological research increasingly aims to better understand criminal behavior in context. Recent advancements demonstrate how perceptions of legal sanction risk are anchored in reality and influence offending decisions. Yet research on extralegal considerations involving morality has not kept pace. Such research has downplayed situational moral dynamics in offending decisions. This study presents and tests a conceptual framework on personal and situational morality that features situational rather than decontextualized ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. Objectives: We test which neighborhood characteristics are associated with perceived control over victimization and how the neighborhood context explains differences between women's and men's perceived control. Methods: Drawing upon administrative data and a survey of 2,862 participants living in 80 neighborhoods in Victoria, Australia, we make a distinction between broader characteristics of the neighborhood, community processes, and gendered neighborhood dynamics. We run a series of multilevel mixed effects regression models to ex ..read more

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Ahead of Print. Objectives: To assess whether, and to what extent, juvenile adjudications contribute to cumulative disadvantage at adult sentencing. Additionally, we parse out the relative contribution of structural disadvantage. Methods: Using data on individuals sentenced in Pennsylvania Courts of Common Pleas from 2015 to 2019, we estimate real and counterfactual incarceration sentences (probability and length). We term the difference between these estimates the “collateral cost” of juvenile adjudication. We also estimate counterfactuals under a ..read more