Stop-and-Frisk Policing

Stop and frisk is a proactive policing strategy that is widely used by police departments across the globe. In the United States, the origins of stop and frisk are rooted in the English practice of allowing night watchmen to stop and question individuals who were deemed suspicious. This ability to stop and question suspicious individuals serves two primary purposes. First, it gives law enforcement officers the ability to identify individuals who are looking to engage in criminal activity, stop those individuals, and prevent them from committing a criminal offense. Second, it may have a deterrent effect if potential offenders refrain from criminal offending because they do not want to risk being stopped. By the early 20th century, the implementation of stop and frisk in the United States varied by state. The Uniform Arrest Act, proposed in 1942, sought to standardize the practice. While several states adopted the Uniform Crime Act, which stipulated the circumstances under which a stop and frisk could occur, most states failed to do so. The practice of stop and frisk also faced constitutional challenges, with plaintiffs alleging violations of the Fourth Amendment’s prohibitions against unreasonable searches and seizures. In 1968, the US Supreme Court affirmed the constitutionality of stop and frisk. When law enforcement officers can establish reasonable suspicion, they can stop and question an individual. If there is reasonable suspicion to believe that a stopped individual possesses a weapon or poses a threat, law enforcement officers can also conduct a frisk. Stop and frisk has faced significant criticism and has been the subject of several class-action lawsuits, particularly in New York City. First, there is significant concern that nonwhite pedestrians are more likely than white pedestrians to be stopped, frisked, and subjected to the use of force. Next, stop and frisk may reduce perceptions of legitimacy and trust in law enforcement. The practice may also have adverse health consequences for those who are subjected to it or are in fear of being subjected to it. Finally, it is unclear whether stop and frisk prevents crime. It is also important to note that stop and frisk faces these same criticisms in other nations. The literature cited in this article summarizes key pieces on stop and frisk.

Robert K. Merton

Robert King Merton (b. 4 July 1910–d. 23 February 2003) was born to Yiddish-speaking Russian-Jewish parents in South Philadelphia, as Meyer Robert Schkolnick. Merton’s mother, Ida Rasovskaya, was a socialist and his father, Aaron Schkolnick, identified at his US port of entry as Harrie Skolnick, Hebrew and tailor. His parents immigrated to the United States from eastern Europe in 1904. Raised in an apartment above his father’s dairy products shop until the building burned down, Merton had an interesting wealth of cultural experiences. At fourteen years old, he performed magic tricks at parties under the stage name Robert K. Merlin. As a student at South Philadelphia High School, he frequently visited nearby cultural and educational venues, including the Andrew Carnegie Library, Central Library, the Academy of Music, and the Museum of Arts. Merton believed his childhood in South Philadelphia provided an abundance of social, cultural, human, and public capital; every type of capital he needed except financial. After acceptance to Temple University, he changed his name to Robert Merton, worked as a research assistant under George E. Simpson on a project about race and media, and graduated in 1931. Merton married his first wife, Suzanne Carhart, in 1934, with whom he had three children, a son named Robert C. Merton, and daughters Stephanie Merton Tombrello and Vanessa Merton. Merton earned both his Master’s degree, in 1932, and his doctorate, in 1936, at Harvard, where he taught until 1938. Merton then served as professor and chair of the Department of Sociology at Tulane University before joining Columbia University in 1941, where he remained until his retirement from full-time academic work in 1979. Spending most of his life in the Manhattan borough of New York City until his death in 2003, Merton taught as a Special Service Professor, or emeritus faculty, at Columbia University after he retired and served as an adjunct professor at Rockefeller University until 1984. Professional accomplishments include winning a Guggenheim, Parson Prize, and National Medal of Sciences; he was the first sociologist invited to the National Academy of Science, and he served as president of the American Sociological Society. Many of Merton’s childhood experiences would influence his theory of social structure, particularly the concept of the “reference group.” Other notable sociological concepts he developed include “opportunity structure,” “ritualism,” “role model,” “opinion leader,” “unintended consequences,” “self-fulfilling prophecy,” “focus group,” “peer group,” “role strain,” and “deviant behavior.” His record of achievements has led some to refer to Robert Merton as the father of sociology, Mr. Sociology, or the most influential American sociologist of the 20th century.

Voluntary Organizations and Crime Prevention

Voluntary, non-state and nonprofit organizations are commonplace in many regions as principal deliverers of services and programs to solve an array of social problems. From homelessness and poverty to human trafficking and youth and gang violence, voluntary organizations’ contribution is part of a broader ethos of “communities” and market-based solutions to urgent public problems. Often referred to as community-based organizations in the US-context, these voluntary agencies address people’s individual needs by developing services and increasing social, human, economic, and political capital (see “Community” in Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work). They consist of nongovernmental assemblages, foundations, charity groups, practitioners, and volunteers. A principal modality of community-based initiatives is to promote collective action against identified needs that replace, supplement, or extend functions of what had been the jurisdiction or obligation of the state. While serving this role, organizations often challenge, resist, or revise state policies, programs, or practices. In crime control and prevention, voluntary organizations are instrumental to justice system practices (see “Community-Based Justice Systems” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). A frequent objective of voluntary organizations is preventing crime and delinquency (see “Delinquency and Crime Prevention” in Oxford Bibliographies in Criminology). Community-based groups work alongside or directly under government agencies through multi-agency partnerships, police-community collaborations, community courts, or several other collaborative ways. A feature of voluntary groups and organizations is that they are tailored to local conditions and local capacities. In some instances, they operate separately or in opposition to the state. Activists and those advocating for criminal justice reforms frequently work through or within voluntary organizations. Regardless of the political alignment, in this shift away from a moderately robust public sector to a nonprofit, nongovernmental, community-based voluntary sector, these organizations are where much of this occurs. As the state increasingly retreats from directly working against social problems, voluntary or community-based organizations have become vital to patching up the frayed social fabric of neglected neighborhoods in late modern neoliberal times.

Disciplinary Segregation in Prison

Correctional administrators are tasked with providing and maintaining safety and security for incarcerated individuals and staff. One strategy that is used to maintain safety and security includes the separation of individuals from the general population of a prison following a rule violation. Referred to broadly as disciplinary segregation, individuals are confined within a cell for twenty-three hours a day for a determinate amount of time, often in isolation, and with a loss of amenities and privileges that are afforded to the general population. The purpose of this review is to understand the purpose, effectiveness, and problems associated with the use of disciplinary segregation.

Co-Offending and the Role of Accomplices

The social nature of crime is one of the most well-recognized and established features of offending. Accomplices come in many forms, ranging from informal co-offenders drawn from available pools of offenders (i.e., friends, acquaintances) to more formal gang-related associates. For the purposes of this review, an accomplice will be considered anyone an individual has engaged in crime or participated in a criminal enterprise with. This broad definition (as opposed to its strict legal definition) enables an exhaustive and theoretically meaningful assessment of the group nature of crime to include collective spontaneous crime, co-offending, gang-related, and organized crime. Even within various accomplice relationships, individuals occupy various roles and positions that contribute to the diffusion of information within accomplice networks, commission of crime, and consequences. The study of accomplices has led to descriptive patterns of group-based offending, theoretical development aimed at understanding the decision to engage in crime with others, and a consideration of how such involvement impacts subsequent behavior. The following entry overviews key areas related to accomplices and references scholarship that explores this important dimension of crime.

Juvenile Courts

The juvenile court has moved through phases and evolved in numerous ways since originating in 1899. During the Progressive Era, the juvenile court was seen as a social welfare reform and began to establish youth institutions. The due process revolution followed, after a series of significant case decisions established due process rights and equal projection to children. The “Get Tough” phase of the juvenile justice system in the 1980s and 1990s targeted punitive sentencing, rather than rehabilitative sentencing. More recently, the juvenile court evolved to recognize the neurological and developmental differences between youth and adults. This rationale supports the need for a separate court from the adult criminal system, with the goal of early diversion and treatment for youth. Children are more amendable to treatment and rehabilitation, and they should be considered less responsible and less culpable as compared to adults. Children who commit crimes typically will be treated less punitively than adults who commit the same crime. Modern juvenile courts generally seek to address the specific needs of youth in a developmentally appropriate manner, while also maintaining public safety. Adolescence in itself exemplifies a phase of impulsivity, vulnerability, risky behavior, and the testing of boundaries. These aspects of adolescence are widely accepted today and better understood due to neuroscientific research on adolescent development. The multiple stages of the juvenile justice process involve a variety of decision-makers who have the power and discretion to determine a child’s future. The courtroom workgroup makes decisions to divert youth from the system, incarcerate juveniles in a placement facility, or mandate treatment programs. Other systems, such as child welfare, schools, families, and health, can be involved in the juvenile court process as well. In recent decades, juvenile courts have moved away from popular punitive approaches of the latter 20th century and toward more evidence-based rehabilitative strategies. Contemporary juvenile courts seek to serve the best interests of children and youth, but also the community and victims. Moreover, juvenile court jurisdiction, based on minimum and maximum ages and definitions of criminal responsibility, varies across states. Similarly, juvenile transfer laws vary from state to state, and jurisdictional boundaries are currently a popular area of reform. In the aftermath of decreasing juvenile crime rates, many states are considering systemic reforms to remove youth from adult prisons, minimize youth confinement, and reduce racial and ethnic disparities in sentencing.

Conservation Criminology

Environmental crimes represent a significant global problem and range from the illegal dumping of e-waste and industrial-scale negligence to wildlife crime, such as the illegal taking of flora and fauna (poaching) and the illegal trade of wildlife products (e.g., ivory). Environmental crimes can have severe and long-lasting consequences by threatening sustainability and food supplies, contaminating ecosystems, and risking the health and well-being of natural environments, wildlife, and human communities. Given the profitability of environmental crimes, this form of offending has become attractive to organized crime syndicates, leading to corruption and the removal of valuable socioeconomic resources from vulnerable communities. Until the introduction of green criminology in recent decades, environmental crimes were considered to fall under the remit of the hard sciences. Conservation criminology is a branch of green criminology. Conservation criminology is a multidisciplinary framework that draws together theories, tools, and methodological approaches from criminology, natural-resource management, and decision sciences, to (1) understand the processes that lead to environmental risk and (2) devise plans to reduce and prevent risks by effectively targeting antecedent factors. A key aim of conservation criminology is to inform evidence-based conservation policy and practice through the use of robust quantitative and qualitative data analyses. Conservation criminology addresses limitations of the broader field of green criminology, specifically its focus of economic power as the main cause of environmental crime. Conservation criminology has a more defined focus than green criminology. Further, the interdisciplinary framework of conservation criminology supports a holistic understanding of the environmental crimes that considers natural and human risk factors alongside contextual, cultural, and economic influences. From a criminological perspective, conservation criminology draws heavily on crime opportunity theories, crime prevention techniques, and analytic and methodological tools developed in crime science. While crime science perspectives play a large role in the field, conservation criminology does not advocate a particular theoretical perspective. Other criminological perspectives, including enforcement legitimacy, procedural justice, and deterrence, have also been applied to understand environmental crime and inform policy and practice. Influences from natural-resource management include the use of prevention strategies based on the precautionary principle, such as protected areas and community-based conservation, as well as an understanding of the environment as a social-ecological system comprising interactions between human and natural systems. Finally, conservation criminology draws on risk assessment, management, and communication principles from the risk and decision sciences. While the field is still in its infancy, studies in conservation criminology have grown exponentially in the early 21st century. Environmental issues of interest include wildlife poaching, illegal fishing, illicit trade in wildlife products, waste and water management, logging, and industrial noncompliance. Studies in conservation criminology assess the extent of environmental crime problems, explore situational factors that facilitate and impede opportunities for environmental crime, and investigate strategies to prevent and respond to these problems.

School Safety, Security, and Discipline

The safety of children and young adults in the hallways of schools across the United States remains a top concern among school officials, policymakers and politicians, students, parents, and the general public alike. Overall, crime and victimization rates in schools across the United States have dropped precipitously over the past few decades and remain near historic lows. And schools tend to be a safe haven for the majority of youth across the United States. At the same time, concern over school safety—and efforts to maintain school safety—have tended to increase during the same time frame. Strategies aimed at maintaining a safe school generally fit into two broad categories: school security measures and school discipline. School security measures refer to specific devices and personnel used within the school to reduce victimization and promote the well-being of the students, teachers, administrators, and visitors. Some common examples of school security measures include identification badges worn by school personnel and students, the use of metal detectors at school entrances, school-based police (called school resource officers, or SROs) or security guards, surveillance cameras, drug-sniffing dogs, and the use of a check-in system for school visitors. The use of these types of security measures is often aimed at protecting against external threats to the school, although studies have shown that security measures significantly impact students, teachers, and parents within the school as well. School discipline, on the other hand, refers to actions taken by school officials, and increasingly members of law enforcement, to control and manage student misbehavior within the school. These efforts often include the use of school exclusions such as in-school and out-of-school suspensions as well as school expulsions. Since the 1990s, there has been significant growth in both school discipline and school security efforts. Millions of students are suspended from school each year and schools have increasingly adopted school security measures in efforts to maintain school safety. Although studies on the efficacy of school safety efforts are somewhat mixed, research provides limited evidence that school security and discipline increase school safety. Research has, however, provided ample evidence that some school safety strategies are tied to a number of unintended consequences such as increased racial/ethnic gaps in discipline, increased criminal justice contact and school dropout, and negative longer-term outcomes. At the same time, there is growing evidence that certain types of security and disciplinary practices have potential to promote school safety.

Outlaw Motorcycle Clubs

Outlaw motorcycle clubs (OMCs), also referred to as outlaw motorcycle gangs (OMCGs), such as the iconic Hells Angels MC, emerged as a subculture after World War II in the United States, being attractive to a number of veterans. The clubs were originally outlaws from the motorcycle club community rather than the law. The “1%” patch that distinguishes these clubs as outlaw motorcycle clubs dates back to the infamous Hollister riot in 1947 during the Annual Gypsy Tour motorcycle rally organized by the American Motorcycle Association (AMA), following which AMA is said to have stated that 99 percent of motorcyclists were law-abiding and that the riot was caused by the 1 percent of deviant law-breakers. The AMA has denied this statement, but the 1% patch has since been worn as a badge of honor, and outlaw motorcycle clubs came to be known as “One Percenters.” The subculture grew over the following decades, as clubs established chapters in new localities in the United States and in the 1960s began their transnational expansion, which accelerated in the 1980s and 1990s. Simultaneously, they became a powerful figment of popular culture and have ever since straddled the fine line between fact and fiction, reinforcing their “power mystique.” The most influential outlaw motorcycle clubs, such as Hells Angels MC, Outlaws MC, and Bandidos MC, have morphed into strong transnational organizations, counting thousands of members worldwide. These clubs have, through skillful self-commodification and branding, inspired the global growth of the 1% subculture and a worldwide proliferation of outlaw motorcycle clubs with the same organizational structures, laws and by-laws, core values, and marks of distinction: the three-piece patches consisting of a club logo, top rocker with the name of the club, and bottom rocker with location, along with the 1% patch. OMCs have been connected to a broad specter of illegal and criminal activities and are considered organized crime groups by law enforcement agencies worldwide. Considerable resources are channeled into the fight against these groups. Despite the size of the phenomenon, criminological research on outlaw motorcycle clubs has been limited and is still dominated by studies from United States, New Zealand, and Australia, albeit growing recently in Europe. This bibliography includes references to key works from criminology and related disciplines, such as anthropology of crime, as well as literature concerned with the policing of OMCs. While there are numerous accounts of OMC life written by (ex-)members and undercover agents that can be of interest to researchers, this bibliography summarizes only high-quality research.

Evidence-Based Sentencing

The evidence-based practice (EBP) movement can be traced to a 1992 article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, although decision-making with empirical evidence (rather than tradition, anecdote, or intuition) is obviously much older. Neverthless, for the last twenty-five years, EBP has played a pivotal role in criminal justice, particularly within community corrections. While the prediction of recidivism in parole or probation decisions has attracted relatively little attention, the use of risk measures by sentencing judges is controversial. This might be because sentencing typically involves both backward-looking decisions, related to the blameworthiness of the crime, as well as forward-looking decisions, about the offender’s prospective risk of recidivism. Evidence-based sentencing quantifies the predictive aspects of decision-making by incorporating an assessment of risk factors (which increase recidivism risk), protective factors (which reduce recidivism risk), criminogenic needs (impairments that, if addressed, will reduce recidivism risk), the measurement of recidivism risk, and the identification of optimal recidivism-reducing sentencing interventions. Proponents for evidence-based sentencing claim that it can allow judges to “sentence smarter” by using data to distinguish high-risk offenders (who might be imprisoned to mitigate their recidivism risk) from low-risk offenders (who might be released into the community with relatively little danger). This, proponents suggest, can reduce unnecessary incarceration, decrease costs, and enhance community safety. Critics, however, note that risk assessment typically looks beyond criminal conduct, incorporating demographic and socioeconomic variables. Even if a risk factor is facially neutral (e.g., criminal history), it might operate as a proxy for a constitutionally protected category (e.g., race). The same objectionable variables are used widely in presentence reports, but their incorporation into an actuarial risk score has greater potential to obfuscate facts and reify underlying disparities. The evidence-based sentencing literature is dynamic and rapidly evolving, but this bibliography identifies sources that might prove useful. It first outlines the theoretical foundations of traditional (non-evidence-based) sentencing, identifying resources and overviews. It then identifies sources related to decision-making and prediction, risk assessment logic, criminogenic needs, and responsivity. The bibliography then describes and defends evidence-based sentencing, and identifies works on sentencing variables and risk assessment instruments. It then relates evidence-based sentencing to big data and identifies data issues. Several works on constitutional problems are listed, the proxies problem is described, and sources on philosophical issues are described. The bibliography concludes with a description of validation research, the politics of evidence-based sentencing, and the identification of several current initiatives.