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The vast majority of tests of major criminological theories have been conducted on youths in school settings. Following Hagan and McCarthy’s (1997) admonition to engage in “street criminology,” the current study surveyed 254 juveniles drawn mainly from impoverished neighborhoods in Uruguay, who were either confined or in an alternative justice program. Due to limited literacy skills, all youths were interviewed regarding theoretical measures and their delinquent involvement. The results revealed that self-control was unrelated to delinquency in this sample. By contrast, social learning factors and stressful life events were found to increase delinquent participation. The results suggest that the effects of the field’s core theories are general, accounting for as much or more variation in the sample of street youths as among youths attending conventional U.S. schools. The policy implications of the findings are explored. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives: This article examines a core hypothesis of Unnever and Gabbidon’s theory that racial discrimination should diminish the ability of African American youths to build strong bonds with their school, which in turn should increase their likelihood of engaging in problematic behaviors over time. Their thesis further argues that these relationships should persist after controlling for affectional ties with parents and other covariates. Methods: This hypothesis is assessed using data from two cohorts included within the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, Longitudinal Cohort Study. Results: The results show that racial discrimination predicts changes in problematic behaviors from wave 1 to wave 3 and weakens the attachment that African American youths have with their teachers and their commitment to their education while controlling for affectional ties to parents and other covariates. Conclusions: The results lend support to Unnever and Gabbidon’s thesis that a holistic understanding of African Americans’ offending must be grounded in their everyday experiences with what it means to be Black in a racialized society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The racial/ethnic invariance thesis is a foundational assumption of the general theories of crime. It assumes that all persons, regardless of their racial/ethnic background, engage in problematic behaviors for the same reasons. This thesis allows general theories to be generalizable and, for the most part, has received empirical and theoretical support. Yet, recent research and new theoretical developments question the validity of the racial/ethnic invariance thesis, breathing new life into the debate over whether the factors that influence African American youths’ problematic behaviors are similar to those that influence the behaviors of other youths. Drawing on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods–Longitudinal Cohort Study (PHDCN-LCS), our results question the validity of the invariance thesis by showing that the impact of perceived discrimination by the police has a stronger influence on African American youths’ externalizing problems than it does for other youths. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper tests core tenets of the theory of African-American offending proposed by Unnever and Gabbidon. Their theory posits that African-Americans have a common worldview on matters of race that is related to their offending. However, Unnever and Gabbidon further hypothesize that immigrant blacks do not fully embrace the worldview shared by US-born blacks. Using a 2008 national Gallup poll, we examine whether US-born blacks share a common worldview and whether foreign-born blacks differ in their opinions on key issues including: criminal injustices, the state of American race relations, attitudes towards immigration and illegal immigrants, and the perception of mobility within American society. The results partially confirm their two key hypotheses; there are no entrenched differences in the public opinions of US-born blacks on race-related matters while immigrant blacks do not wholly endorse their worldview. We discuss the implications of these two findings in relation to how scholars conceptualize offending among blacks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objective: To explore whether the impact of racial and ethnic pejorative stereotypes and prejudice on White support for the death penalty changes over time. Methods: The data were drawn from the 1990 and 2000 General Social Surveys. This trend analysis included a four-item racial–ethnic prejudice scale and two stereotype or “typification” measures that assessed the extent to which the respondents believed that African Americans and Hispanics were more prone to violence than Whites. Controls were introduced for standard demographic measures and for known covariates of punitiveness, such as conservative political ideology and religious beliefs and involvement. The dependent variable was whether the respondents favored the death penalty for persons convicted of murder. Results: The analyses revealed that racial and ethnic prejudice increases Whites' embrace of capital punishment in both periods of time. By contrast, the negative stereotypes that typify African Americans and Hispanics as prone to violence exerted a significant impact on support for the death penalty in 1990 but not in 2000. Conclusions: These findings suggest that Whites' views on minority group members' proneness to violence potentially shift over time and exert significant impacts on death penalty support depending on the broader social context that prevails at a given historical juncture. Racial–ethnic feelings of animus appear to be a stable, if not intractable source of punitiveness. Future research should continue to unpack the complex nature of Whites' racial and ethnic views and to explore how, in given sociopolitical contexts, they potentially serve to justify punitive policy agendas. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Building on traditional conflict perspectives, Hagan et al. (2005) have developed an important model for explaining racial-ethnic differences in perceptions of injustice, especially among Whites, Hispanics, and African Americans. Using data from the 2000 Public Opinion on the Courts in the United States survey, we provide a partial test of core propositions of their "comparative conflict theory." Consistent with the perspective's "racial-ethnic divide thesis," Whites perceived less injustice than members of minority groups. The findings also provide support for the "gradient thesis," which predicts that African Americans perceive the most injustice, followed by Hispanics and Whites, respectively. In our sample, however, we found no evidence for the "differential sensitivity thesis," which predicts that compared to African Americans, Hispanics' perceptions of injustice will be differentially increased by contact with the justice system. We discuss the implications of our findings in the context of comparative conflict theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the most part, prior research on discrimination in sentencing has not been theoretically informed by a context-based theory of decision making. In this article we introduce one of the theories of status characteristics and expectation states, Hembroff's (1982) version, to predict when racial/ethnic sentencing disparities are most likely to occur. The theory predicts that when the caserelated attributes (i.e., a performance characteristic set) are consistent—all point to incarceration or all point to probation—sentencing disparities are not likely to occur based on defendants' race/ethnicity (i.e., diffuse status characteristics). The theory also predicts that as case-related attributes become increasingly inconsistent—some point to incarceration while others point to probation— there is an increasing likelihood that racial/ethnic sentencing disparities will occur. We evaluate the utility of this theoretical model by analyzing data on the sentences of 315 male drug offenders in Miami, Florida. The results support Hembroff's version of status characteristics theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]