Timothy C. Hart

The purpose of this paper is to develop actionable strategies designed for law enforcement agencies seeking to reduce fear of crime among those living within their jurisdictions. A conjunctive analysis of case configurations is conducted on data collected from residents living in southeast Queensland (Australia) (N = 713) in order to identify context-specific typologies of victimization worry. Main effects for each component of the typologies are examined in order to identify the impact each has on reducing negative attitudes towards crime. Current findings suggest that agencies will likely reduce fear of crime among community residents the most by focusing on decreasing concerns related to the consequences of victimization. Results are consistent for both crimes against persons and property offenses.

Objectives: The utility of configural behavior settings is explored as an alternative unit of analysis for place-based criminological research. Four research questions are addressed: (1) How do robberies cluster within certain behavior settings? (2) How are conclusions about robbery’s behavior settings influenced by the distance interval used to measure the proximate environment? (3) Are dominant behavior settings homogeneous across patrol districts? and (4) Is there temporal variability among dominant behavior settings? Method: Conjunctive analysis of case configurations is used to construct configural behavior settings around 453 robbery locations in Henderson, Nevada, between 2007 and 2009. Results: The major findings of this study are that (1) the majority of personal robberies occur within a small number of dominant configural behavior settings and (2) the composition of behavior settings and the proportion of incidents for which they account varies by the distance interval used to measure the proximate environment, patrol district, and time of day. Conclusions: Configural behavior settings provide an alternative unit of analysis that can be used in future place-based research to improve our understanding of criminogenic microenvironments. Replication of this study in other cities that vary in urban design would further demonstrate the merits of this approach.

Using national data from felony cases processed in state courts (n = 48,006), the current study investigates the nature and magnitude of contextual variability associated with sentencing outcomes. Multivariate models are first estimated to identify the main effects of various offender and offense variables on sentencing decisions. Conjunctive analysis is then used to evaluate the contextual variability of each of these main effects across all observed combinations of offender and offense attributes. Separate analyses are also conducted among states with and without mandatory sentencing guidelines to explore whether these guidelines reduce this variability across different contexts. Findings from this study and its comparative methods are discussed in terms of implications for future research on criminal sentencing and assessing the contextual variability of the main effects of particular legal and extralegal factors.