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This paper focusses on analysing the impact of crime on the housing market in Los Angeles (LA) County. By looking at different types of crime instead of general crime measures and controlling by spatial dimension of prices and crime as well as endogeneity, a model is developed that allows for the understanding of how a specific crime impacts the housing market transaction price. To perform the analysis, the paper merges different data sets (crime, housing transaction and census data) and then computes the distances to crucial transport modes to control the accessibility features affecting housing prices. The latter allows estimating the association of housing prices and crime in the distance and estimating the impact on housing depending on it.

This paper focusses on the following crimes: aggravated assault, burglary (property crime), narcotics, non-aggravated assault and vandalism. The paper shows firstly how incidents of reported crime are distributed across space and how they are related to each other – thus highlighting crime models with spatial influences. Secondly, the research utilises instrumental variables within the methodology to estimate house prices using spatial analysis techniques while controlling for endogeneity. Thirdly, it estimates the direct impact of crime on house prices and explores the impact of housing and neighbourhood features.

Results suggest that house transaction prices and crime are closely correlated in two senses. Housing prices are endogenously negatively associated with the levels of narcotics and aggravated assaults. For narcotics, the impact of distance is shorter (1,000 m). However, for burglary, vandalism and non-aggravated assaults, the price reaction suggests a positive association: the further away the crime occurs, the higher the prices. The paper also shows the large spatial association of different crimes suggesting that they occur together and that their accumulation would make negative externalities appear affecting the whole neighbourhood.

The use of a huge database allows interesting findings, but one limitation can be to not have longer time observations to identify the crime evolution and its impact on housing prices.

Large implications as the relationship identified in this paper allow defining precise policies to avoid crime in different areas in LA. In addition, crime has significant but quantitative small effects on LA housing transaction prices suggesting that the effect depends on the spatial scale as well as lack on information about where the crimes are committed. Lack on information suggests low transparency in the market, affecting the transaction decision-taken process, affecting the risk perception and with relevant implications over household welfare.

This paper relates the spatial association among crimes defining the hotspots and their impacts on housing transaction prices.

In most jurisdictions, resistance is the primary legal justification for police use of force. Identifying the correlates of resistance helps to anticipate non-compliance, increase officer safety, and maintain low rates of use of force. Following previous research on subject demeanor, the purpose of this paper is to argue that the presence of resistance is determined subjectively, based on an individual’s interpretation of a situation.

Binary and multinomial logistic regression models were used to analyze resistance reported in 878 interventions involving police use of force in a large Canadian city. A four-category measure similar to those commonly found in previous studies was used to build dependent variables and a series of 14 behaviors based on the actions of a subject was used as a predictor of reported resistance.

As expected, subject behavior was found to be a significant predictor of reported resistance. Officer and citizen characteristics (gender, race, age/experience) were weakly related to the outcome. Models were found to offer considerably better predictions when situational factors were included.

Perceptions of resistance were found to be influenced by a variety of factors, including, but not limited to, the subject’s actions.

This paper addresses the clearance of aggravated assaults (AAs). Specifically, the authors consider variations in these clearances over time for large agencies and test which crime, investigation and agency factors are associated with the likelihood of clearance by arrest or exceptional means. In doing this work, they seek to extend the understanding of how police can improve their investigations and ability to solve serious offenses.

Using case, investigative and organizational data collected from seven large police departments selected on the basis of their trajectory of index crime clearances, and measures of case characteristics, investigative effort and organizational best practices, this paper uses descriptive and inferential statistics to analyze AA investigations and case clearance.

Key findings include the following: trajectories of AA clearance vary across large agencies and covary with a measure of organizational best practices, and the relationship between investigative effort and case clearance can depend on organizational practices. The authors find that measures of investigative effort are either not related to case clearance or there is a negative association.

Now that police researchers have a better understanding of AAs and their investigations, they need to test how this knowledge can be used to improve the quality of police investigations. Tests, preferably multi-agency randomized control trials, of new investigative strategies and organizational practices are needed.

This research is original in that it uses a multi-agency sample and crime, investigation and organizational measures to understand AA clearance.

Criminal law has dramatically expanded since the 1970s. Despite popular and academic attention to overcriminalization in the United States, empirical research on how court actors and, in particular, prosecutors, use the legal tools associated with overcriminalization is scarce. In this chapter, we describe three forms of overcriminalization that, in theory, have created new tools for prosecutors: the criminalization of new behaviors, mandatory minimum sentencing statutes, and the internal expansion of criminal laws. We then use a unique dataset of felony filings and dispositions in Florida from 1995 to 2015 to test a series of hypotheses examining how overcriminalization influences prosecutorial practices given three changes to the political economy during this time: the decline in violent and property crime, the Great Recession, and a growing call for criminal justice reform. We find that prosecutors have been unconstrained by declining crime rates. Yet, rather than rely on new criminal statutes or mandatory minimum sentence laws, they maintained their caseloads by increasing their filing rates for traditional violent, property and drug offenses. At the same time, the data demonstrate nonviolent other offenses are the top charge in almost 20% of the felony caseload between 2005 and 2015. Our findings also suggest that, despite reform rhetoric, filing and conviction rates decreased due to the Recession, not changes in the law. We discuss the implications of these findings for criminal justice reform.

The purpose of this paper is to examine domestic violence calls for service data in one Florida county for a two-year period from July 2004 through July 2006.

Data for this study include information gathered on domestic violence calls for service during a two-year period (n=3,200). This secondary data were analyzed by logistic regression to determine statistically significant predictor variables.

This study found that severity of crime, presence of children, presence of an injunction, and victim injury increased the likelihood of an arrest. Victim race, location of call, victim alcohol use, and length of relationship did not affect likelihood of arrest.

Use of secondary data precluded examination of additional relevant variable information.

The research shows clear law violations and seriousness of the acts correlate to an increased likelihood of an arrest. Arrest research should inform police training and policy.

The research is consistent with other research that shows that law enforcement officers continue to play a significant role in responding to domestic violence crime and suggest that researchers should continue to study arrest practices. In this study, arrest was more likely when factors existed that may have indicated a more serious crime.

There is an ongoing need to examine agency-level response to domestic violence. This paper adds to the literature on the law enforcement response to domestic violence. The paper suggests areas for future research.

This paper reviews the transformation of requests for police services, specifically examining the various categories of assault. The impact of housing, race, education level, police workload, neighbourhood criminal history, type of call, call‐taker input, priority (seriousness) originally assigned to the call, and decision to despatch are assessed. Moreover, the paper will: identify the processes police agencies use in classifying crime; identify the conditions under which requests for service are transformed by call‐takers and despatchers; examine the impact of precursors to a request for services being made, including social and contextual (ecological), and prior workload variables; and examine the impact of factors occurring concurrent to the taking of a call.

Police factor in extra‐legal as well as legal context in their decision to arrest a suspect. The purpose of this paper is to examine the effect of extra‐legal factors at both situational and neighborhood levels.

Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling, over 9,000 domestic violence cases across 421 census tracts in Houston, Texas were examined. Situational information was derived from police reports, and neighborhood factors were measured by population characteristics drawn from the US Census Bureau. The model also controls for spatial autocorrelation of arrest rates between census tracts in the estimation of officer's arrest decision.

At the neighborhood level, concentrated disadvantage and immigration concentration had positive effect on the odds of arrest. At the situational level, the time of day, day of the week, premise type, and gender and racial relations between suspect and complainant, along with offense type and weapons use, had significant impact.

The scant literature has not yet provided an affirmative set of extra‐legal factors affecting police arrest decision. The paper's findings may contribute to the literature and suggest the need for guidelines concerning officer discretion exercised in the line of duty.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the role of evidence in the interviewing of suspects.

Analyses were made of 55 interview transcripts about the questioning of suspected sex offenders by officers of an Australian police service.

In 22 per cent of these interviews the suspect actively attempted to discover what the evidence against them was and in 9 per cent the interviewer attempted to learn of the suspect's knowledge of this evidence. Interviewers tended to favour a strategy of first asking the suspect to provide a free account of their role in the alleged crime. If this approach failed to elicit a confession, interviewers would then disclose at least some of the evidence against that suspect. In 93 per cent of the interviews some form of evidence disclosure was made by the interviewer; this was usually achieved by referring to the evidence indirectly rather than explicitly.

Although such disclosures of information seemed to have little impact on suspects' decisions to confess, this study illustrates the important role of evidence in the suspect interviewing process.

Is more child participation always better for child rights advocacy? That is the question I examine, in this chapter, as I analyse advocacy for child rights in India that led to the adoption of the landmark Protection of Children from Sexual Offences Act, 2012 (the ‘POCSO Act’). Through ethnographic fieldwork with non-government organisations (NGOs) and a narrative analysis of interviews and awareness material, I tell the story of how a combination of adult-led but child-participatory advocacy brought about a new, de-tabooised way of talking about child sexual abuse. By applying the theoretical lens of ‘critical child rights studies’, I suggest how we can conceptualise a critical perspective on child participation in child rights advocacy. First, adults’ multiple and, at times, conflicting roles in children’s lives – as advocates, protectors, and abusers – needs to be recognised. Second, children should participate in advocacy activities where they can have meaningful influence and be part of the conversation. This may not necessarily occur in adult spaces, where their participation remains token. Finally, I argue that child participation should never turn into a responsibilisation of children.