Chongmin Na

The primary goals of this study were to test the long‐term stability thesis of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime and to examine the relationship between self‐control and social control over time. The data come from a field experiment where the “treatment” consisted of an intentional effort to improve the childrearing behaviors of a sample of caregivers whose children were at high risk of criminal behavior. Caregivers in the control condition were given no such training. The intervention occurred when all subjects were in the first grade (mean age: 6.2 years old), and we have measurements on self‐control and the social control/bond for each subject from grades 6 to 11 (mean ages: 12 to 17 years old). Both a hierarchical linear model and a second‐order latent growth model identified meaningful differences in the growth pattern of self‐control among individuals in the pooled sample and a difference in the growth parameters for self‐control and the social control/bond over time between the treatment and control groups. Both findings are inconsistent with Gottfredson and Hirschi's stability of self‐control hypothesis. The same patterns persisted when different analytic techniques and model specifications were applied, which suggests that the results are not an artifact of measurement error, model specification, or statistical methods. Structural equation modeling using the panel design of the data was better able to disentangle the long‐term relationship between self‐ and social control—a relationship that was found to be more dynamic than previously hypothesized.

The use of police in schools has increased dramatically in the past 12 years, largely due to increases in US Department of Justice funding. This study used data from the School Survey on Crime and Safety to assess the extent to which the addition of police in schools is associated with changes in levels of school crime and schools responses to crime. We found that as schools increase their use of police, they record more crimes involving weapon and drugs and report a higher percentage of their non-serious violent crimes to law enforcement. The possibility that placement of police officers in schools increases referrals to law enforcement for crimes of a less serious nature and increases recording of weapon and drug offenses requires that more rigorous research be carried out to assess more carefully the school climate and school safety outcomes related to this popular and costly practice.