October 2014
Volume 56, No. 5 | Go to abstracts
Articles
Page 499
Aboriginal People and Confidence in the Police
Linqun Cao
Page 527
Épisodes d’inactivité et revenus criminels dans une trajectoire de délinquance
Frédéric Ouellet et Pierre Tremblay
Page 563
A Case Study of the Transformative Effect of Peer Injection Drug Users in the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver, Canada
Ehsan Jozaghi and Andrew A. Reid
Page 595
Crime Specialization in Rural British Columbia, Canada
Rebecca Carleton, Patricia L. Brantingham, and Paul J. Brantingham
Research Note
Page 623
Mesure de la complexité de lecture des formulaires de déclaration et de renonciation aux droits pour adolescents québécois
Kirk Luther, Brent Snook et Elisabeth Luther
Abstracts
Aboriginal People and Confidence in the Police
Liqun Cao
Faculty of Social Science and Humanities, University of Ontario Institute of Technology; Hunan University
No nationally representative study has been conducted about differential confidence in the police between Aboriginal people and non-Aboriginal persons in Canada. Based on the 2009 General Social Survey of Canada, this article examines the influence of Aboriginal status on confidence in the police. Consistent with the theoretical prediction, results of multiple regression analyses show that Aboriginal people and visible minorities have a significantly lower level of confidence than other Canadians do, after the effects of both expressive and instrumental concerns are controlled for. The persistent effects of Aboriginal or visible minorities status raise questions about racial relationships in Canada. Other significant predictors of confidence in the police are expressive concerns, such as trust, and instrumental concerns, such as community context, crime experiences, perceptions of crime in one’s own neighbourhood, and police contact. Findings indicate that continued reform measures are needed for the police force to gain the confidence of Aboriginal people and visible minorities in Canada.
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Épisodes d’inactivité et revenus criminels dans une trajectoire de délinquance
Frédéric Ouellet* et Pierre Tremblay
École de criminologie, Université de Montréal
The instability of criminal activity over time is already well documented. However, little is known of the circumstances that can explain these short-term variations. It is possible that short-term transitions and changes precede turning points in criminal careers. For example, conditions that account for the temporary interruption of criminal activity might help explain a more definitive desistance from crime. Therefore, it appears appropriate to improve our knowledge of these factors. The study is based on the trajectories of 172 offenders involved in lucrative forms of crime. It focuses on changes in criminal earnings and episodes of temporary desistance within a window period of 36 months. The life history calendars method, combined with hierarchical models, is used for the analysis of the role of static (individual characteristics) and dynamic (life circumstances) factors in order to understand variations in criminal activity on a monthly basis. Results highlight the importance of events that mark offenders’ lifestyles and the parameters that characterize criminal involvement in predicting variations in observed trajectories. They also emphasize the importance of criminal achievement in explaining the decision of offenders to temporarily stop their illegal activities.
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Crime Specialization in Rural British Columbia, Canada
Rebecca Carleton, Patricia L. Brantingham, Paul J. Brantingham
School of Criminology, Simon Fraser University
The article presents an argument for supplementing traditional crime rates with crime location quotients (LQC) for purposes of explaining crime patterns within rural environments. Although largely ignored in the past, the over-representation of rural violence requires assessment for crime reduction purposes. Focusing on property and violent offences distributed across the Canadian province of British Columbia, there is a sharp divide in terms of the distribution of specific types of crime that reflects the possibility of an urban–rural difference in terms of crime causation. This article demonstrates that, in British Columbia, rural areas might be considered to be areas that specialize in violent offending.
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Mesure de la complexité de lecture des formulaires de déclaration et de renonciation aux droits pour adolescents québécois
Kirk Luther et Brent Snook
Département de psychologie, Université Memorial de Terre-Neuve
Elisabeth Luther
Consultante, St. John’s, Terre-Neuve-et-Labrador
The reading complexity of a sample of French youth waiver forms used by Quebec police organizations was assessed. The complexity of six unique waiver forms was assessed using four readability measures (i.e., word length, Laesbarhedsindex Formula, Kandel-Moles score, and word frequency). Results showed that the waivers are relatively lengthy, contain grammatically complex and difficult to understand sentences as well as some infrequent words. The likelihood that the legal rights afforded to Québec youths are being protected and the need to create a standardized and comprehensible waiver form are discussed.