Use of Contextual Analysis in Models of Criminal Behavior (From Delinquency and Crime: Current Theories, P 236-267, 1996, J. David Hawkins, ed. -- See NCJ-161769)

• NCJ Number: 161775
• Author(s): R J Bursik Jr; H G Grasmick
• Date Published: 1996
• Length: 32 pages
• Sale Source: Cambridge University Press
• Publication Type: Research (Applied/Empirical)
• Language: English
• Country: United States of America
• Note: *This document is currently unavailable from NCJRS.

Annotation

This chapter examines the theoretical issues that must be resolved for a contextual model to be meaningful in criminology; discusses the primary contemporary techniques of contextual analysis; and reviews and evaluates in terms of the issues raised earlier in the chapter contextual studies that have appeared in criminology.

Abstract

This chapter emphasizes the relevance of contextual models to the growth of criminological theory. Such models present problems of theoretical specification, measurement, and analysis that are not present in studies that focus on only a single level of analysis and, consequently, only a few studies have addressed the contextual effect issue. While the results that have emerged tend to support the contextual hypothesis, the magnitudes of some of these effects have been fairly weak. Because of the sporadic nature of these studies and the variety of study designs and analytic techniques, any general conclusions concerning the nature of contextual effects would be very premature. Nevertheless, most of the major contemporary criminological paradigms are at least implicitly contextual, and the development of a full criminology depends on resolution of the problems mentioned above. Footnotes, references