Objective Apply the concept of income packaging to formerly incarcerated men by examining how an individual's income portfolio changes from pre- to post-incarceration, in terms of total income, source-specific income, and income shares.Method A zero-inflated Poisson model is used to examine changes in income likelihood (extensive margin) and amount (intensive margin), both for total income and five different income sources (formal work, public assistance, informal work, illegal activities, and other sources). To examine changes in all income shares simultaneously, a fractional estimator represents a multinomial logistic regression of proportions (the proportion of total income from each of five sources).Results Individuals experience substantial income loss upon release from prison. Formal employment and public assistance are highly stable sources of income. There is no reduction in the number of workers, but workers do experience decay in earnings. Public assistance serves as an important safety net upon release, as more individuals rely on it after imprisonment.Conclusion The findings reveal how returning individuals make ends meet from smaller budgets and highlight the potential utility of concepts as income packaging and bureaucratic capital in refining theories and understanding the financial wellbeing of released individuals.

Crime is a major societal problem that impacts countries worldwide, undermining the safety and well-being of individual citizens while imposing substantial economic and social costs on communities and governments. To address this issue, societies respond by imposing sanctions, primarily within the criminal justice setting. Although numerous studies have examined the impact of sanctions on reintegration, most focus narrowly on recidivism and are predominantly based on US data. This special issue brings together innovative quantitative and qualitative research using data across Europe and the United States, to explore reintegration in a broader context. The articles in this special issue address critical gaps in the existing literature by exploring understudied dimensions of reintegration and their interconnections, as well as by examining temporal changes in reintegration rather than relying on static conceptualizations. In doing so, they adopt the holistic and dynamic perspective essential for advancing life-course research on reintegration. The introduction to this special issue begins with a synthesis of the existing literature and then proceeds to outline the principal contributions and key findings of the articles presented in this collection. The introduction further offers considerations for future research directions.

This review considers recent evidence on the impact of the social safety net on crime and recidivism. The social safety net comprises means-tested public assistance (e.g., cash welfare, food assistance, disability assistance, public health insurance) and contributory social insurance (e.g., unemployment insurance). Dozens of recent studies, largely outside of criminology, evaluate the impact of shocks to the scope or generosity of social safety net programs. Findings from these natural experiments support the conclusion that public welfare policy has measurable benefits for public safety at both individual and aggregate levels. These benefits encompass property as well as violent crime and are observed over both immediate and extended time horizons. The review closes with a call for more criminological contributions to this growing literature.

Employment discrimination from a criminal record is a salient social fact, evidenced by a robust body of experimental research. In Part 1 of this study, we analyze prior criminal record hiring experiments—comprising in‐person audits, online audits, and opt‐in surveys—to describe patterns over time in employer receptivity to applicants of different races with criminal records. In Part 2, we use a novel experimental survey of 1080 employers to measure how differences in the signaling of a criminal record impact the criminal record–employment relationship. Our results reveal a substantial hiring penalty for an official criminal record (conveyed by a background check report), with a smaller but still significant penalty for an unofficial criminal record (an Internet search engine “hit”). The experiment also shows that the official criminal record penalty is significantly larger for White applicants than for Black applicants. Although the latter finding was counter to expectations informed by prior studies, it is less surprising considering our Part 1 findings, which reveal a closing racial gap in the criminal record penalty during the last 20 years. We discuss how broader legal, social, and technological changes, as well as changes in methodologies, impact our understanding today of criminal records, race, and employment.

The process-based model of police legitimacy suggests, when police are perceived to make fair decisions and treat people with respect, they will be viewed as legitimate authorities. A randomized controlled trial was used to test the impact of a procedural justice policing intervention, relative to routine police behavior, during traffic stops for excessive speeding in Adana, Turkey.

We inquire whether commitment to employment has an immediate suppressive effect (i.e., in the next month) on street crime. Analysis of retrospective monthly calendar data drawn from a random sample of prisoners reveals that it does not. In contrast, paycheck work co-occurs with income generating crime in almost half of the months in which participants are employed. Second, paycheck work is associated with an increase in the likelihood of subsequent drug selling and bears no association with violent or property offenses. Third, job commitment is associated with greater odds of drug selling. Finally, hours worked does exert an immediate suppressive effect on drug selling and violent crime, but the effects are relatively small and do not challenge our main conclusions.

We implement cluster randomization to test the impact of procedurally just and unjust police behavior during a hypothetical traffic stop (versus procedurally neutral behavior), in addition to the impact of BWC notification (versus BWC absence). The findings from post-vignette surveys administered to a random sample of 750 respondents indicate procedural justice has a pronounced effect on citizens' perceptions of the officer's behavior, their attitudes about the encounter, and their general views about police and the law within the context of the vignette. BWC neither improved nor worsened attitudes, nor did it buffer the impact of procedurally unjust policing or enhance the impact of procedurally just policing in the eyes of citizens. Tests of asymmetry indicate procedurally unjust police behavior results in more negative judgments of the officer's behavior in the vignette than procedurally just behavior results in positive judgments. The results suggest that officer behavior matters much more than BWCs.

Noncustodial sanctions may present an attractive way to reduce the prison population rate, but only when noncustodial sanctions meet custodial ones in terms of deterring recidivism. Using administrative criminal records data of all individuals convicted in the Netherlands in 2012, this study examines the effects of short-term imprisonment versus noncustodial sanctions on crime. We employ an instrumental variables approach to account for selection processes and to produce consistent estimates of the effects of imprisonment. Findings indicate that being sentenced to prison rather than a noncustodial sanction increases the prevalence of recidivism by 10 percentage points and increases recidivism rates by 1.07 registered crimes during a follow-up period of three years. Treatment effect heterogeneity analyses show that the detrimental impact of imprisonment is most pronounced for first-time prisoners, and adult offenders, compared to repeat prisoners and young adult offenders.

ObjectivesThe invariance thesis suggests the effectiveness of procedural fairness in enhancing citizens' views of police is not conditioned by individual differences. In this study, we used data collected from a randomized controlled trial testing the effects of procedural justice on driver perceptions of the police during traffic stops to explore whether perceptions of procedural fairness varied across subjects of differing socioeconomic backgrounds.MethodsConfirmatory principal components analysis was used to generate a latent variable measuring driver socioeconomic status by income, education, and occupation variables for procedural justice treatment group drivers and 'routine policing' control group drivers. OLS regressions tested whether socioeconomic status moderated the relationship between procedural justice and trust, as well as between procedural justice and perceptions of police.ResultsThe analyses found that procedural justice intervention improved citizen perceptions of trust and procedural fairness in the police during traffic stop encounters, and these positive impacts did not vary across drivers from differing socioeconomic backgrounds.ConclusionsThese findings support the invariance thesis and suggest that the police can expect universal benefits to their legitimacy during traffic stops of drivers of varying backgrounds by ensuring procedurally just encounters.

As the population of children of immigrants increases within the United States, the importance of ensuring the safety, while understanding and addressing adverse experiences with victimization and perpetration, of this segment of the youth population has become paramount. Segmented assimilation theory, which postulates that discrimination, prejudice, and adverse life experiences could place the children of immigrants on a path towards detrimental outcomes, guides this study. In this research, data is drawn from the Children of Immigrant Longitudinal Study to explore if prior detrimental experiences of the children of immigrants, such as discrimination and perceptions of racial/ethnic prejudice, are associated with more frequent reports of being victimized and getting into fights at school, as well as feeling unsafe. Findings suggest racial/ethnic distinctions and nuances regarding how discrimination and prejudice contribute to these school outcomes for the children of immigrants. The implications of these findings are discussed.

The aim of this article is to determine the effect of short-term prison sentences on recidivism. The authors use data from the longitudinal Life After Release study to compare effects of short-term prison sentences versus non-custodial sentences on recidivism over a maximum period of five years. In order to control for differences between persons with a short-term prison sentence and persons with a non-custodial sentence, they used an ‘instrumental variable’ method. The study shows that this method can be used in the Dutch context to investigate causal effects of punishment on recidivism outcomes. The findings reveal that short-term prison sentences lead to more recidivism than non-custodial sentences, both in the short and long term.

The interplay of sanctions, perceptions, and crime has special significance in criminology and is central to a long tradition of perceptual deterrence research as well as to more recent scholarship on crime decision-making. This article seeks to review this body of research as it pertains to three basic questions. First, are people's perceptions of punishment accurate? The evidence indicates that people are generally but imperfectly aware of punishments allowed under the law but are nevertheless sensitive to changes in enforcement, especially of behaviors that are personally relevant. Second, does potential apprehension affect people's perceived risk and behavior when faced with a criminal opportunity? A highly varied body of literature supports the conclusion that perceptions are sensitive to situational cues and that behavior is sensitive to perceived risk, but these links can be weakened when individuals are in emotionally or socially charged situations. Third, do people revise their risk perceptions in response to crime and punishment experiences? Studies of perceptual change support the contention that people systematically update their perceptions based on their own and others’ experiences with crime and punishment.

This study considers whether societal gender inequality moderates the relationship between gender and perceptions of personal safety. Pooled 1992–2005 rounds of the International Crime Victims Survey, comprising more than 285,000 respondents from 75 countries, are used to estimate multilevel models of safety perceptions, with a cross-level interaction specified between gender and gender inequality. We find that the gender gap in safety perceptions, although statistically significant in all countries, is largest in countries exhibiting high gender equality and smallest in countries with high gender inequality. This is explained entirely by variation in men’s safety perceptions; male respondents perceive themselves as safer in a milieu of gender equality, but less safe in a milieu of gender inequality. In contrast, the safety perceptions of female respondents are uncorrelated with societal gender inequality.

Objectives: The processes driving gang entry and disengagement are central to classic and contemporary criminological research on gang involvement. Yet, the role of delinquent peer friendship networks in contouring gang membership has driven much of criminological research, with little empirical research devoted to understanding sibling influences on the gang career. Method: The study uses the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 to examine the transmission of gang membership among similar-aged siblings. These data offer the opportunity to use siblings’ self-report of gang involvement as a determinant of focal youths’ self-report of gang involvement while treating gang entry, persistence, and exit (and reentry) as unique transitions with potentially asymmetric determinants. Results: Results from the event history models indicate that gang involved siblings increase the hazard of entry and re-entry into the gang but have little influence on exit decisions. Sibling configurations with respect to sex and age-order further conditions these relations, with brothers and older siblings most influential. Conclusion: Ties to siblings serve as a salient and intimate type of social tie with siblings serving multiplex roles in each other’s lives. Findings lend additional insight on crime concentration in family networks and advance our understanding of continuity and change in gang involvement

In the present study, we compared two European regions with deeply contrasting policing traditions-post-communist countries and established democracies-to explore whether political history may have long-term consequences for police-public interactions. Using data from 26 countries that participated in the 2010 European Social Survey, we first measured and compared the prevalence of police-initiated contact and satisfaction with contact once it took place. We found that both tended to be higher in established democracies. Next, we contrasted the magnitude of the association between police contact and attitudes about police fairness and legitimacy between the two regions, finding consistently stronger associations in post-communist countries. Taken together, our results help expand procedural justice theory by demonstrating that incorporating history and context can enhance its ability to explain how interactions with police shape public opinion about law enforcement.

“The police do not prevent crime.” So wrote the late David Bayley in 1994 in the opening sentence of his book, Police for the Future.1 There is no doubt policing scholars would disagree with this assertion today, but at the time Bayley wrote these words, there was little compelling evidence to dispute the claim. In a way, his assertion is a watershed in policing scholarship, because since the time he wrote it, criminologists have begun taking for granted that police can and do prevent crime. Not only does research suggest hiring more police officers contributes to crime reductions,2 but as exhaustively reviewed in the consensus report of the Committee on Proactive Policing,3 the strategic deployment of existing police resources matters a great deal. Coupled with doubts about whether spending money to increase the size of a police force is actually cost effective,4 this report lends...

Research SummaryThis study tests the effect of body‐worn cameras (BWCs) on stopped drivers’ perceptions of complying with police directives, obeying traffic laws, and cooperating with the police. A quasi‐randomized controlled trial was conducted with drivers stopped at routine traffic checkpoints. Drivers in the treatment group encountered police officers wearing BWCs, and drivers in the control group encountered police officers without BWCs. Surveys were administered after the stop. Findings suggest motorists exposed to BWC officers reported significantly stronger agreement with compliance with police directives, obedience toward traffic laws, and assistance with police duties. Further analysis indicates BWCs generate indirect impacts on specific citizen compliance mediated through improvements in procedural justice, as well as indirect impacts on general compliance and cooperation mediated through improvements in both police legitimacy and procedural justice.Policy ImplicationsThe results suggest that BWCs may be an effective means of improving drivers’ willingness to comply with directives, follow traffic laws, and assist police. Consistent with a process‐based explanation, their effectiveness stems almost entirely from drivers’ experience of procedurally just and legitimacy‐enhancing treatment by police officers. The findings indicate BWCs provide a form of officer accountability that mere training in procedural justice might be insufficient to achieve.

Increasing evidence suggests that even minor forms of contact with the criminal justice system such as being stopped by police may be implicated in poor health. Police use of force can increase the risk of physical injury, whereas interactions accompanied by abusive rhetoric or threats can lead to psychological and emotional harm. Police contact may also have no health consequences for individuals or even be linked to good health because of an increased sense of public safety and confidence in law enforcement. This is the first study that explores whether contact with law enforcement is related to health and wellbeing in Europe. We estimated multilevel models with data from 26 countries that participated in the 2010 round of the European Social Survey. Across all outcomes self-rated health, functional limitations, happiness, loneliness, and emotional wellbeing having been approached, stopped or contacted by police was associated with worse health and wellbeing, especially when police treatment was perceived as unsatisfactory.

This study explores heterogeneity in the relationship between criminal justice contact and early adult wages using unconditional quantile regression models with sibling fixed effects, estimated separately by race-ethnicity. The findings support the contention that the relationship between criminal justice contact and wages is heterogeneous in three respects: level of contact, race, and location in the wage distribution. First, entry-level contacts in the form of arrest are largely uncorrelated with wages, whereas wage gaps are evident following late-stage contacts in the form of jail or prison incarceration. Second, the wage gap from incarceration is observable among black respondents, but not whites or Latinos. Third, the size of the wage gap from incarceration is approximately U-shaped with respect to the black wage distribution.