Sage Journals: Discover world-class research

Abstract

Works which have examined the relationship between economic conditions and the criminal justice system have usually attempted to explain criminality within specific, short term time periods. Conclusions based upon these efforts have been mixed and ambiguous. This present study uses Chicago Police Department variables as indicators of organizational activities and investigates the duration andpersistence of relationships between selected economic conditions andpolice organizational measures. Nearly 100 years of annual City of Chicago data are examined in a two step, lagged, time series regression analysis. The findings show that a persistent historical relationship exists between vagrancy arrests and economic conditions but does not exist between felonylmisdemeanor arrests or number of police employees and economic conditions. This present study suggests supportfor the previousfindings of Chambliss (1964, 1976), Wellford (1974), and Land and Felson (1976), and reveals the necessity of further model development in specifying the historical interaction between the economy and the criminal justice system. Lastly, it points to the value of developing and analysing long term historical data bases.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Bohrnstedt, G. (1969). Observations on the measurement of change. In E. Borgotta (Ed.), Sociological methodology (pp. 19-73). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.

Bonger, W. (1916). Criminality et Conditions Economiques [Criminality and economic conditions]. Boston: Little, Brown.

Box, G. & Jenkins, Ga . (1976). Time series analysis: Forecasting and control. San Francisco: Holden-Day.

Brenner, H. (1973). Mental illness and the economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Chambliss, W. (1964). A sociological analysis of the law of vagrancy. Social Problems, 12, 67-77.

Chambliss, W. (1976). The state and criminal law. In W. Chambliss & P. Mankoff (Eds.), Whose law, what order? (pp. 66-106). New York: John Wiley & Sons.

Chambliss, W. & Seidman, R. (1971). Law, order and power. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.

Croxton, F. & Cowden, D. (1955). Applied general statistics. New York: Prentice Hall.

Durbin, J. (1960). Estimation of parameters in time-series regression models. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society, 22(1), 139-153.

10.

Edwards v. California, 314 U.S. 160 (1941).

11.

Fleisher, B. (1966). The economics of delinquency. Chicago: Quadrangle.

12.

Fox, J. (1979). Crime trends and police expenditures: An investigation of the lag structure. Evaluation Quarterly, 3, 41-58.

13.

Greenwood, M. & Wadycki, W. (1973). Crime rates and public expenditures for police protection: Their interaction. Review of Social Economy, 31, 138-151.

14.

Jones, T. (1974). The impact of crime rate changes on police protection expenditures in American cities. Criminology, 11, 516-524.

15.

Land, K. & Felson, M. (1976). A general framework for building dynamic macro social indicator models: Including an analysis of changes in crime rates and police expenditures. American Journal of Sociology, 82, 565-604.

16.

Loftin, C. & McDowall, D. (1982). The police, crime, and economic theory: An assessment. American Sociological Review, 47, 393-401.

17.

Marx, K. (1904). Critique of political economy (English trans.). New York: International Library. (Original work published 1859).

18.

Nelson, C. (1973). Applied time series analysis. San Francisco: Holden-Day.

19.

Nie, N.H. , Hull, G.H. , Jenkins, J.G. , Steinbrenner, K. , & Bent, D.H. (1970). SPSS: Statistical package for the social sciences (2nd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.

20.

Pogue, T. (1975). Effect of police expenditures on crime rates: Some evidence. Public Finance Quarterly, 3, 14-44.

21.

Quinney, R. (1977). Class, state and crime. New York: Longman.

22.

Reasons, C.E. (1977). On methodology, theory, and ideology. American Sociological Review, 42, 177-181.

23.

Rushe, G. & Kirchheimer, O. (1968). Punishment and social structure. New York: Russell and Russell.

24.

Schwert, W. (1979). Tests of causality: The message in the innovation. In K. Brunner & A. Meltzer (Eds.). Three aspects of policy and policy making: Knowledge, data, and institutions (pp. 55-96). Amsterdam: North-Holland.

25.

Silver, A. (1967). The demand for order in civil society: A review of some themes in the history of urban crime, police and riot. In D. Bordua (Ed.), The police. New York: John Wiley and Sons.

26.

Skogan, W. (1976). Chicago since 1840: A time-series data handbook. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.

27.

Spitzer, S. (1975). Toward a Marxian theory of deviance. Social Problems, 22, 638-651.

28.

Spradley, J. (1970). You owe yourself a drunk. Boston: Little, Brown.

29.

Swimmer, E. (1974a). Measuring the effectiveness of urban law enforcement a simultaneous approach. Southern Economic Journal, 40, 618-630.

30.

Swimmer, E. (1974b). The relationship of police and crime: Some methodological and empirical results. Criminology, 12, 195-213.

31.

Turk, A. (1969). Criminality and the legal order. Chicago: Rand McNally.

32.

Wellford, C. (1974). Crime and the police: A multivariate analysis. Criminology, 12, 195-213.

A Note on the Historical Relationship between the Economy and Police Organizational Activities

Abstract

Get full access to this article

References