Crime Control Measures, Individual Liberties, and Crime Rates: An Assessment of 40 Countries
The balance between crime control methods and individual liberties is always problematic, creating tension, because in order to investigate crime, and adjudicate and punish offenders, it is necessary to make reasonable intrusions into the liberty of citizens. This study uses data from 40 countries t...
| Main Author: | |
|---|---|
| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
2017
|
| In: |
International criminal justice review
Year: 2017, Volume: 27, Issue: 1, Pages: 5-18 |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
|
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Keywords: |
| Summary: | The balance between crime control methods and individual liberties is always problematic, creating tension, because in order to investigate crime, and adjudicate and punish offenders, it is necessary to make reasonable intrusions into the liberty of citizens. This study uses data from 40 countries to examine the crime control measures (police per capita and conviction rates) that reflect government investments in criminal justice apparatus to control crime and criminals, as well as the use of these crime control measures through government intervention in the lives of its citizens (formal citizen contacts with police, prosecution rate, and detention rate), to examine their impact on crime victimization rates (homicide rates and crimes included in the international crime victim survey). The purpose is to examine whether these government interventions have any impact on crime rates across countries, controlling other independent variables that might help to explain any observed relationships among these variables (such as measures of civil liberties, democracy, human development, available information and communications technologies, political rights, corruption perceptions, education, economic freedom, freedom of the press, and prosperity). |
|---|---|
| ISSN: | 1556-3855 |
| DOI: | 10.1177/1057567716680401 |