Specialized Units and Vertical Prosecution Approaches

Legal scholars and social scientists maintain that there are several advantages to processing certain types of cases—for example, sexual assault, domestic violence, and crimes involving career criminals or gang members—using vertical prosecution and a specialized prosecution unit. This chapter discusses the logic of vertical prosecution and assignment of cases to specialized units. The chapter also summarizes the findings of research on the effectiveness of specialized units for handling sexual assault cases, domestic violence cases, and gang-related homicide, noting that the research conducted to date reveals that there are very few differences in the outcomes of cases prosecuted by attorneys assigned to specialized units and those prosecuted by attorneys not assigned to specialized units. The chapter concludes with a discussion of potential explanations for this lack of impact and with a call for additional research on these interrelated approaches to prosecution.

Murder as Importation: An Empirical Study of the Continuity of Homicide Offending From Community to Confinement

Prison murder is the most severe form of institutional violence but its exceedingly low prevalence has limited prior research. Recent studies of prison murders make clear that serious, violent, and chronic career criminals are most likely to perpetrate inmate murders with equivocal evidence of the role of prior homicide offending on prison murder. Using retrospective administrative data from 1,005 prisoners selected from the southwestern United States, the current study examined whether homicide offending in the community is itself an importation factor that is useful for understanding prison murder and thus can be used to understand continuity in homicidal offending from the community to confinement context. Rare events logistic regression models found that individuals sentenced for first-degree murder are more likely to perpetrate prison murder. A separate rare events logistic regression model with any type of homicide commitment offense as a predictor provided similar findings suggesting these effects are robust to model specification. Given its gravity and fundamental threat to prison safety and security, we encourage data collection and additional research on prison murder and the inmates that perpetrate it.

Life-Course Criminal Trajectories of Mafia Members

Through a novel data set comprising the criminal records of 11,138 convicted mafia offenders, we compute criminal career parameters and trajectories through group-based trajectory modeling. Mafia offenders report prolific and persistent careers (16.1 crimes over 16.5 years on average), with five distinct trajectories (low frequency, high frequency, early starter, moderate persistence, high persistence). While showing some similarities with general offenders, the trajectories of mafia offenders also exhibit significant differences, with several groups offending well into their middle and late adulthood, notwithstanding intense criminal justice sanctions. These patterns suggest that several mafia offenders are life-course persisters and career criminals and that the involvement in the mafias is a negative turning point extending the criminal careers beyond those observed in general offenders.

The South African Cash-In-Transit Heist Enterprise: Managing its Wellspring and Concatenation

South African cash-in-transit (CIT) robberies appear to be in a state of flux. According to the Minister of Police, Mr Bheki Cele, the incidence of these crimes has steadily decreased due to rapid response by the police in arresting more than 200 suspects between June and November 2018. Given the rhizomatic, eclectic nature of this crime type – and possible mechanical linkages and/or linear causality within the genesis of the crime – it is debatable whether arrests and incarceration offer a long-term solution. CIT robbers interviewed for this study reported that they were career criminals, less likely to be rehabilitated and that incarceration was only an interruption to their career. These findings were backed by life-course theories. This article contends that if the South African Criminal Justice System wants to curb CIT robberies, an investigation into proactive methods for combating the crime should be developed and risk reduction strategies crafted. After investigating possible causes of CIT robberies, this research made recommendations based on holistic measures involving the public, family, and various government and non-governmental departments. The research was conducted for a Master of Arts degree in Criminology. A mixed-method approach was followed and 40 incarcerated offenders who committed robbery with aggravating circumstances participated in the study.