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Few empirical studies describe auto thieves. The most influential and frequently cited research is that by Wattenberg and Balistrieri who characterize auto theft as a "favored-group" delinquency. The findings of the present study challenge this conclusion. Although the majority of those arrested for auto theft are white, blacks are disproportionately represented; most thieves come from lower-class neighborhoods; and the distribution of juvenile thieves by fathers' occupational status does not appear to differ from that of other delinquents. Five types of auto theft are suggested; the offender and offense characteristics are empirically examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A common consumer fraud is the work-at-home scheme which promises substantial earnings from ‘stuffing envelopes’ in one's home. The purposes of this research were to describe this scheme in detail and to analyze the process by which the scheme persists. Upon purchasing materials advertised in National Enquirer the researchers found that the principal plan being sold involves a pyramid: those answering ads buy materials encouraging them to advertise in order to sell the same materials. For this study, the content of the materials was analyzed in terms of the elements found in traditional confidence games. It is evident that although their sequence differs, all the elements of confidence games are present in the envelope stuffing scheme. It is argued that the scheme is a quasi confidence game, and its persistence derives at least in part from the same factors that promote traditional confidence games. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Researchers have long been aware that when they become part of the system they are investigating, their own behavior may a.fleet the behavior they wish to study. Little data has been collected on the effect of respondents on the researcher and the consequences of this on tho research process. The problem is described and analyzed in this paper. We contend that respondents who have special qualities may intrude upon the researcher's role and make it difficult for him to collect necessary data. An illustration is presented from the authors' study of stripteasers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a study on public attitudes toward the city police in Hartford, Connecticut during June-July 1966. In recent years the police in the U.S. have attained a certain prominence in the eyes of their public. It appears that the public image of the policeman is assailed by bad publicity and increased conflict with the nominally non-criminal segment of society. The purpose of the study reported in this paper was to determine by interview survey the extent to which hostile attitudes toward police exist in a medium-sized Northern city, namely Hartford, Connecticut. The data for this study were collected as a part of a multi-purpose sample survey. The sample is a self-weighting two-stage stratified area probability sample of households. The first stage was a sample of all square block areas in the city. At the second stage, every dwelling unit in each of the 100 selected primary units was listed and the lists of dwelling units were subsampled. Despite the proliferation of criticism directed toward policemen, the citizens of Hartford on the whole appear to be satisfied with their performance. Differences in satisfaction with the police's job by occupational levels are not statistically significant at the .05 level. Despite some evidence of varying degrees of satisfaction by occupational level, there does not appear to be a linear relationship between occupational level and satisfaction with police performance. Asking subjects to simply evaluate the job which the local police are doing has obvious limitations. The criticism receiving the largest percentage of agreement concerned the policeman's contact with citizens over relatively minor considerations.

The novice researcher quickly learns that much of his effec tiveness depends on his ability to contact sources of data. This is especially true in correction and criminology when the researcher is interested in interviewing persons under the control of correctional agencies. Unless he is able to sell himself and his project, he may find his efforts thwarted for reasons quite unrelated to the theoretical or practical value of his research . Once he has obtained permission to carry out his project, he faces unique problems in collecting data because of the special ized nature of his subjects and the conditions under which he contacts them. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]