Click on the following links. Please note these will open in a new window.

Article 1: Renauer, B. (2012). Neighborhood variation in police stops and searches: A test of consensus and conflict perspectives. Police Quarterly, 15(3), 219–240. 

This study examines consensus and conflict approaches to explaining police stop and search rates in 94 neighborhoods. Police deployment, racial threat, race-out-of-place, and social conditioning perspectives were analyzed. Models were based on 206,083 stops and 38,493 searches controlling for racial/ethnic makeup, citizen calls for service, disadvantage, prior violent crime suspect rates, time of day, and spatial autocorrelation. The results supported both police deployment and race-out-of-place arguments. Policy implications focus on the need for police and community to fully understand and mutually agree on the relevance of both consensus and conflict perspectives.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. How did the author test his hypothesis?
2. What were the author’s results concerning stop and searches?
3. What policy implications result from these findings?
    

Article 2: Pakes, P. (2010). The comparative method in globalised criminology. The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 43(1), 17–30.

Traditional comparative criminology has predominantly focused on the comparison of isolated and self-contained cultures and arrangements. However, globalisation has altered states of isolation and self-containment to produce spheres of interrelation. That provides a challenge to the comparative method. This article will argue that comparative criminology needs to come to terms with novel objects in new conceptual and organisational layers, both above the state and below the city. Such enquiry requires agility. Rather than identifying and crossing new frontiers, globalised comparative criminology should concern itself with the complex interplay between global, national, city and subcity levels. This approach is illustrated by an examination of contrasts in community safety between the rival Dutch cities of Amsterdam and Rotterdam.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. What is the central issue communicated by the author?
2. Does the author provide sufficient support for his claim? Explain.
3. What recommendations does the author make to address the issue?
    

Article 3: Hinton, W. J., Sims, P. L., Adams, M.A., & West, C. (2007). Juvenile justice: A system divided. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 18(4), 466–483.

An increasing public focus on the effects of juvenile crime on society has dramatically impacted juvenile justice policy decisions in recent years. Historically, juvenile justice policy makers have attempted to address juvenile crime by promoting policies that address the rehabilitative needs of the offender. However, throughout the last 20 years of the 20th century, policy makers have advocated more punitive offense-based policies to address juvenile crime. This article examines the differences between these two approaches and the implications associated with the continued emergence of a more offense-based approach compared to the offender-based approach, which historically has been the foundation of the American juvenile justice system. The authors hope to stimulate discussion among stakeholders in the juvenile justice system to promote sound policy decisions based on scientific evidence.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. Identify two significant factors in the evolution of the juvenile justice system from each of the three eras discussed.
2. According to the authors, what is the current status of juvenile justice research?
3. What conclusion is drawn by the authors?