This study revisits the contested relationship between financial vulnerability and compensated dating. We leverage a sample of undergraduate students, who must balance rising educational costs, limited income, and economic hardship against the anticipated benefits of a college education. Regression models estimated whether financial literacy, financial stress, financial hardship, and socioeconomic status were associated with attitudes toward sugar dating, a history of sugar dating, and anticipated willingness to engage in sugar dating. Thematic analyses explored perceived motivations, benefits, and risks. Financial literacy was unrelated to all outcomes. Greater financial stress and financial hardship were associated with both a history of compensated dating and anticipated future engagement, though notably not with attitudes toward compensated dating. Students identifying as poor reported the highest likelihood of compensated dating. Financial necessity often motivated engagement, even as they expressed moral conflict, emotional distress, and concerns about exploitation. Study findings underscore the importance of understanding compensated dating within the broader structural and economic circumstances that shape college students' opportunities, relationships, and behavioral decisions.
The influence of perceptions of offender redeemability on support for punitive versus rehabilitative practices has been widely documented. An understudied area, however, concerns law enforcement perceptions of redeemability and whether these perceptions impact buy-in and implementation of interventions. The current research addresses this gap through a mixed methods case study of a researcher-practitioner partnership (RPP), assessing the influence of law enforcement partner perceptions of offenders on the implementation of a focused deterrence strategy. Qualitative findings suggest that project partners' views of younger, lower-risk offenders being more redeemable than older, higher-risk offenders impacted implementation of the focused deterrence intervention. Quantitative client contact data support these findings, demonstrating that, over time, partners increased engagement with youth and low-risk offenders, focusing more on prevention while largely abandoning the original intervention efforts. This research informs our understanding of how law enforcement perceptions of offender redeemability can shape the implementation process. We discuss potential future directions of research in this area and highlight policy recommendations for RPPs and law enforcement interventions more broadly.
Across the U.S., many states have, or are considering, legalizing marijuana. In states that legalize marijuana, marijuana stores (dispensaries) are opening to sell marijuana for medical and/or recreational use. Theoretically, the start of recreational sales may attract offenders and deviant behavior. Therefore, as dispensaries begin recreational sales, examining whether there are subsequent shifts in crime is worth scholarly attention to inform policymakers. On August 6, 2024, sales of recreational marijuana by dispensaries began in Ohio. Treating this start of recreational sales as a natural experiment, this study executes both synthetic and canonical difference-in-differences analyses, comparing census tracts with a recreational dispensary to control census tracts with no dispensary. Findings revealed consistent decreases in total Part 1 crime and total property crime, but no substantive impacts on other crime types. There was no evidence of displacement to adjacent census tracts. We discuss the implications of these findings.
The current study sought to understand whether environmental factors early in development differentiate psychopathic individuals who obtain successful versus unsuccessful life outcomes. In doing so, the study relied upon a large (N = 1037), population representative sample known as the Dunedin Multidisciplinary Health and Development Study (Dunedin Study) which afforded the investigation of this relationship over time from birth to age 45. It was hypothesized that the identified environmental factors would explain differences between those high in psychopathy with varying levels of "success" across criminal behavior, wealth, health, and relationship quality outcomes. Using latent class growth and latent profile analysis and multivariate analysis of variance, it was found that less sensitive parent-child interactions, exposure to adverse childhood experiences, lower socioeconomic status and greater peer delinquency were prevalent in individuals high in psychopathy who had poor life outcomes later in life, to a greater extent than for those high in psychopathy who had comparably more favorable outcomes. Recognizing diverse manifestations of psychopathy and broadening definitions of success allow for a more comprehensive understanding of the construct. Addressing socioeconomic disadvantage and providing targeted, early, client-centered interventions may improve life outcomes for those high in psychopathic traits and reduce societal harm.
Traditional incapacitation research assumes that collective imprisonment of all offenders will effectively reduce the number of rapes in society by a quantifiable amount. These estimates ignore the research on sex offenderspecific risks for sexual offending. This article recalculates traditional incapacitation estimates to measure the number of rapes prevented by selectively imprisoning men already convicted of sex crimes. The National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP) data is used to show that imprisoning 431,632 felony contact sex offenders for an average of 4.3 years each between the years 2000 and 2019 may have prevented between 120,744 and 551,708 rapes in the United States. This study also considers how many sexual recidivism outcomes could be prevented if offenders had served longer sentences. Limitations to incapacitation research and sexual recidivism research is described at length and suggestions for more accurate estimates are proposed.
