GBOC Lightning Round: Looooong Overdue Edition

Hello, loyal readers. Please enjoy another GBOC lightning round. As always, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments!

Item 1: Rick Rosenfeld on the Economy & Crime
In several prior posts we've considered what effect (if any) the recession will have on patterns and rates of offending, especially violent crime. Recently, ASC President-elect (and Velma's colleague) Rick Rosenfeld spoke to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about this very topic:

Reports of crime were down across the nation last year — especially in the Midwest — but the St. Louis area saw a mixed bag, according to figures released by the FBI on Monday and other available data.

The national crime rate continued a downward trend started in 2007. But an expert who tracks local and national crime statistics said the data provide few clues about how the global recession might have influenced crime rates.

"If one were going to see crime increases, one would have expected to see them later in the year last year and into the first part of 2009," said Richard Rosenfeld, a criminologist with the University of Missouri-St. Louis, and president-elect of the American Society of [Criminology].

I don't have much to add, other than that I appreciate Rosenfeld's clear, consice discussions of crime statistics. For more of his media commentaries, see here and here.

Item 2: "AG Holder Vows Science-Based Crime Policy"
I saw this headline about Holder's remarks to the NIJ in my Ted Gest e-mail a few weeks ago and was ecstatic! Here's an excerpt:

President Obama has renewed our nation’s commitment to rely on science in the development of public policy. He understands, as do I, that sound judgment derives from solid evidence. Moreover, we understand that the production of such evidence requires resources. As a result of this understanding, the President’s 2010 budget calls for increased investment in scientific research, including criminology.

Woo hoo! The word "criminology" appeared in a description of President Obama's proposed budget! How exciting is that? Finally, I thought, there might be some recognition at the federal level that criminal justice policy is often divorced from empirical research, especially where drug policy is concerned. But then I wondered if my excitement wasn't a bit misplaced; after all, isn't this step just a necessary corrective? More importantly, what does it say about the state of contemporary U.S. crime policy that we are celebrating the announcement that policy decisions will now be based on actual research? It sort of begs the question: what are these decisions based on now? Intuition? Fear? Personal beliefs? A giant Magic 8-Ball?

Item 3: Chris Brown Sentenced
Chris Brown struck a deal with prosecutors earlier this week just hours before the hearing in his assault case was set to begin. Brown avoided prison time for assaulting then-girlfriend and fellow pop star Rihanna back in February. However, in exchange for pleading guilty to felony assault he was sentenced to five years' probation, a year-long domestic violence class, and six months of "community labor" . He also was ordered to stay at least 50 yards away from Rihanna for the next five years (though the restriction was lessened to 10 yards for industry events at which both singers are present).

It will be interesting to see whether or how this story develops: will the two reuinte? Will there be a lot of publicity during his community service? (I'm thinking TMZ cameras at his trash-pickup sessions or something). Stay tuned, I guess.

The Economy & Academia

Yesterday's Talk of the Nation program featured a discussion of how the current economic crisis is affecting college and university campuses:

For the high school class of 2009 and students trying to complete a degree, the financial calamities of the market have left universities and students scrambling for money. In our occasional series, Your Life on a Recession, we look at how schools are adjusting to financial challenges.

Guests included NPR's education correspondent Claudio Sanchez, and president of Middlebury College (in VT) Ronald Liebowitz. I only got to hear snippets of this program in the car yesterday, so I was glad that I could listen to the entire conversation online. There was some good discussion of various recession-related issues in academia: increasing tuition fees, dwindling financial aid packages, and a growing reliance on part-time and adjunct faculty, among others.

In addition to creating significant challenges for students, both current and prospective, the recession also has adversely affected the academic job market this year, as I (and others) can sadly attest. It seems that many departments lost funding for advertised tenure-track faculty lines (in some cases even after candidates had begun interviewing), or did not hire at all due to hiring freezes.

Finally, questions remain about the status of educational funding in the economic-stimulus package currently being negotiated by Congress, as the Senate version "commits substantially less to state and local education programs than the $819 billion package approved by the House."

All this paints a pretty bleak picture for academia.* So, how has your department tightened its purse strings? Cut travel funding? Placed limits on faculty photocopying? What about at the university level? Are increased tuition costs and/or limited aid packages taking a toll on student enrollment? Have tenure-track searches been terminated? Finally, any predictions for the next few years?

*Though, academics are very fortunate compared to many other workers, especially those in the labor and manufacturing sectors.

Friday CJ Funnies

A great cartoon from Time Magazine. Unfortunately, the implications for social science research are not so funny. Chris Uggen posted of his research relationship with one of the funding agencies forced to close because of investor relationships with Madoff.

Chris comments -

the irony of the madoff case is brutal: could a single white-collar offender really bring down such a stunning array of good work on behalf of those less fortunate?

I will leave it at that. The ivory tower still stands and I am glad for my security, but the luster of higher ed is reduced with events like these.

More on the economy and crime

For a succinct discussion of crime and the economy, NPR News & Notes had a great discussion featuring the president-elect of ASC. Click here for the program.

In addition, Zimring provides a short primer on crime and punishment here.

The bottom line is that crime is bound to increase during this recessionary period, and there is evidence to suggest that we should see similar patterns in other Western countries. The silver lining (if there is one) is that crime remains at relatively low levels, so we have a long way to go to regain the crime patterns observed in the late 80s to mid 90s.

That said, the aggregate economic and crime data obscure the individual struggles happening in many households and on the street. As the speakers suggest, there is evidence that continued intervention on the individual (the discussion by the loss prevention specialist is very interesting) and neighborhood level may defray some of the consequences of the economic downturn.

More on The Economy and Violent Crime

Back in October I wrote about a few isolated incidents of intimate partner homicides and murder-suicides that were linked to the faltering economy. The gist of the story is that people who were panicking about devastating financial losses killed either their spouses/partners, themselves, or both.

A story in today's Detroit Free Press offers similar anecdotal evidence that the recession -- which has hit southeastern Michigan particularly hard -- is affecting violent crime by prompting a rise in women's calls to domestic violence hotlines and shelters in metro Detroit:

The calls -- virtually all from women trying to escape physically abusive men -- climbed abruptly this fall, compared with the same period in 2006 and 2007, officials said this month.

The spike has counselors and prevention leaders blaming the economy, saying job losses and other household economic stress are stoking domestic violence. And they said the increase underscores the need for donations to help domestic violence agencies and shelters....

The groups also said they must provide more women with gas cards or other transportation help so that they can appear in court to testify -- considered a key way to stop domestic violence offenders from repeating their behavior.

Having worked with many economically disadvantaged battered women over the years, I can only imagine how the current recession is exacerbating both the level of violence women experience (their partners are angrier, potentially depressed, and growing increasingly volatile and violent in the face of under- and unemployment) and their available avenues for recourse (they can't leave because they are unemployed and financially dependent on their partners, or they lack the money, transportation, and other resources necessary to leave even if they wanted to).

To find information about offering financial assistance to domestic violence agencies in your state, click here.

The Economy, Violence, and Crime

A while back I pondered whether the economic crisis would be accompanied by a rise in crime. I speculated that perhaps we would see a spike in crimes of financial gain, such as robbery or retail fraud. It appears, though, that an increase in violent crime -- especially domestic homicides and murder-suicides -- may also be linked to the economic crisis. According to CNN.com:

An out-of-work money manager in California loses a fortune and wipes out his family in a murder-suicide.

A 90-year-old Ohio widow shoots herself in the chest as authorities arrive to evict her from the modest house she called home for 38 years.

In Massachusetts, a housewife who had hidden her family's mounting financial crisis from her husband sends a note to the mortgage company warning: "By the time you foreclose on my house, I'll be dead." Then Carlene Balderrama shot herself to death, leaving an insurance policy and a suicide note on a table.

Across the country, authorities are becoming concerned that the nation's financial woes could turn increasingly violent, and they are urging people to get help. In some places, mental-health hot lines are jammed, counseling services are in high demand and domestic-violence shelters are full...

Of course, we have to be careful about drawing inferences from these few examples. First, a handful of cases does not a crime wave make. Second, it is likely that an insufficient amount of time has passed to observe any real trends in violent crime rates that may be attributable to economic instability. Third, these violent incidents may be better explained by a diathesis-stress model rather than resulting from economic troubles alone. In other words, it is possible that the people who have resorted to suicide and/or homicide in recent weeks had an underlying mental or emotional instability that was exacerbated by the current economic situation, but that may have led to violence in the presence of other stressors as well.

Still, all of that said, I don't think it is unreasonable to conclude that in the face of seemingly insurmountable financial woes, some people will choose to end their lives or the lives of their loved ones. And that, as financial troubles mount for a growing percentage of the population, more and more people might opt for a violent "way out".

It seems to me that strain is as plausible an explanation as any in these situations, though I suppose other theories might be applied as well.

Thoughts?

The Tanking Economy & Crime Rates: Will We See an Effect?

I've been thinking about this recently and wondered what others think: given the dire economic straits this country is currently in (e.g., faltering real estate market and plummeting home values, creeping unemployment rates, the collapse of banking behemoths, and news of an impending government "bailout" of Wall Street), will we see an attendant fluctuation in crime rates over the next few years? Perhaps an increase in for-profit crimes such as robbery or retail fraud? Does anyone know of a handy resource that tracks crime rates relative to various economic indicators? I am very curious to see how all of this plays out...