NCJ Number
89003
Editor(s)
M Tonry,
N Morris
Date Published
1983
Length
313 pages
Annotation
Seven essays discuss selected issues of concern in criminal justice, focusing on school violence, the gender-crime relationship, situational crime prevention, random allocation experiments, and other topics.
Abstract
One essay assents that weakening social controls over youth have led to increasing rates of school violence in modern societies; increasing the voluntariness of school enrollment will give students a greater stake in behavioral conformity and thus reduce school crime. Another examines the relaionship between the widespread availability of handguns and higher violent crime rates. Women commit far fewer crimes than men and are treated differently by the criminal justice system: they are more likely to be released on their own recognizance and receive more lenient sentences. An empirical analysis of the relationship between crime and mental disorder argues that the observed relationship tends to dissipate when certain controls are applied. Another essay asserts that researchers should avoid formulating policy regarding juvenile delinquency but rather should highlight changes in Government policy and laws on juveniles in the post-World War II era. The advantages of situational crime prevention (i.e., manipulating the environment to reduce crime through, for example, target hardening) are also mentioned. A final essay looks at the advantages and disadvantages of randomized experiments in criminal justice. Study data, footnotes, and references accompany most papers. For individual articles, see NCJ 89004-10.