Travis C Pratt
Biographic Data
| ID | 312288 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Travis C Pratt |
| GIVEN NAMES | Travis C |
| FAMILY NAME | Pratt |
| SIGNATURE | PRATT T C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Cincinnati |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2622-0656 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 50 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1141 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 49 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 13 |
Revisiting the tautology problem in rational choice theory: What it is and how to move forward theoretically and empirically
Criminological rational choice theory is blighted by tautology—that if a crime occurs, then by definition the benefits must exceed the costs. The current analysis details the nature of this tautology as well as its theoretical and philosophical implications concerning the circumstances under which offenders make rational (thoughtful and reflective) or irrational (habitual, intuitive, or instinctual) choices. In short, rational choice theorists ap…
Baseball and Science: What Roberto Clemente and Willie Mays Can Teach Us About Measuring Scholarly Impact
Citation-based indicators of scholarly impact are controversial in the sciences. Although they are often used in rankings of institutions, scholarly works, and scholars themselves, they have been criticized for their failure to capture a wider spectrum of “scholarly impact.” Much like the “five tools” that baseball players can use to influence the outcome of a baseball game, there are a lot of different ways that scholars can have an impact with …
Skimmed at the Pump: How Covid-19 Lockdowns Increased Gas Pump Skimming
Few schemes for monetizing stolen credit card data are as bold as the fuel theft scam. Skimming devices embedded inside gas pumps steal credit card data from customers which can be used to engage in any manner of illegal economic activities, however, empirical research on gas pump skimming is virtually non-existent. This study uses data from the State of Texas to examine the patterning of gas pump skimming, focusing on changes in prevalence in th…
Custodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic Review
Previous articleNext article FreeCustodial Sanctions and Reoffending: A Meta-Analytic ReviewDamon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. CullenDamon M. Petrich, Travis C. Pratt, Cheryl Lero Jonson, and Francis T. CullenAbstractFull TextPDF Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditEmailQR Code SectionsMoreAbstractBeginning in the 1970s, the United States bega…
Treating Offenders with Substance Abuse Problems: Implicit Beliefs about Addiction and Failed Drug Tests
Rehabilitating substance-abusing offenders is difficult. And while correctional interventions that target problematic attitudes and cognitions have proven to be successful at reducing recidivism, the roster of attitudes and cognitions that should be targeted is often vague. This study examines the relationship between “implicit beliefs” about addiction – those beliefs that offenders might not even be aware that they hold, but that can nonetheless…
The perceived causes of research misconduct among faculty members in the natural, social, and applied sciences
Little research has investigated the conditions that lead to research misconduct. To develop effective intervention/prevention strategies, this void must be filled. This study administered a mixed-mode survey (i.e. mail and online) to a stratified random sample of tenured and tenure-track faculty in the natural, social, and applied sciences (N = 613) during the 2016–17 academic year. The sample includes scholars from 100 universities in the Unite…
Contemporary Classics? The Early Onset of Influence of Articles Published in Criminology and Criminal Justice Journals, 2010–2015
Citation analysis is a valuable method for tracking the growth and transmission of scientific knowledge. In criminology and criminal justice, such analyses tend to be focused on “classic” works or on highly cited scholars over many years. As an alternative approach, we focus on work that has been cited rather quickly – what we term the “early onset” of impact. In doing so, we identified 221 of the most highly cited peer-reviewed articles, authore…
The Empirical Status of Deterrence Theory: A Meta-Analysis
The literature on deterrence theory has undergone a number of changes in recent years. With the rise of new ways of thinking about rational decision-making and offending, four developments have changed the way criminologists view the deterrence perspective: the effectiveness of certain situational crime prevention strategies; the recognition of the importance of the "non-legal costs" of criminal behavior; the integration of deterrence theory with…
Consequences of Violent Victimization for Native American Youth in Early Adulthood
I Hate These Little Turds: Science, Entertainment, and the Enduring Popularity of Scared Straight Programs
Americans’ opinions about crime and justice are more often shaped by media coverage than by scientific evidence. A prime example of this phenomenon is Arts and Entertainment (A&E) Network’s Beyond Scared Straight program—a show that has achieved strong ratings despite the large body of empirical evidence demonstrating the ineffectiveness of inmate–juvenile confrontation tactics. To understand the complexity of American citizens’ opinions toward t…
Lifestyle and Routine Activity Theories Revisited: The Importance of “Risk” to the Study of Victimization
Lifestyle and routine activity theories both view victimization through the lens of the convergence of a motivated offender, an attractive target/victim, and the absence of capable guardianship. These theories differ, however, in how they view the behaviors that put people at “risk” for victimization. Where lifestyle theory conceives of risk in probabilistic terms (e.g., certain behaviors elevate one’s odds of being victimized), routine activity …
Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: A Case Study in Organized Skepticism
Growing evidence exists that the findings of individual studies—including classic experiments—often fail to replicate. Such published results, however, are considered by scholars, and taught to students, as established scientific truth. In this context, citations to Zimbardo and colleagues' classic Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE) in criminology/criminal justice journals (1975–2014) were content analyzed to assess whether the study's conclusions …
It's Hopeless: Beyond Zero‐Tolerance Supervision
Toward a Theory of Police Effects
Revisiting the Criminological Consequences of Exposure to Fetal Testosterone: A Meta‐analysis of the 2d:4d Digit Ratio
As criminology has become more interdisciplinary in recent years, biosocial criminology has earned a place at the table. Although this perspective comes in many forms, one important proposition has gained increasing attention: that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio—a purported physical biomarker for exposure to fetal testosterone—is related to criminal, aggressive, and risky/impulsive behavior. Strong claims in the literature have been made for this l…
I Learned It By Watching You: Legal Socialization and the Intergenerational Transmission of Legitimacy Attitudes
Perceptions of legal actor legitimacy have important implications for criminal behaviour. While the link between perceptions of legitimacy and legal compliance has been well established, the sources of legitimacy evaluations are less clear. Drawing from the literature on legal socialization, we examined whether parents’ perceptions of the legitimacy of criminal justice authority figures influenced those same attitudes in their children. Using thr…
I Suck at Everything: Crime, Arrest, and the Generality of Failure
In this paper we advance the idea that getting arrested amounts to "failing at crime." And akin to the notion of the generality of deviance-where those who engage in any given form of criminal behavior are also likely to engage in a wide array of other problematic behaviors-we examine whether failing at crime (getting arrested) is associated with other forms of life failure. Using data from multiple waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Ado…
“Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop”: Self-Control, Risky Lifestyles, and Repeat Victimization
Advancing Quantitative Methods in Criminology and Criminal Justice
Introduction Travis C. Pratt 1. Using the group-based trajectory model to study crime over the life course Daniel S. Nagin and Alex R. Piquero 2. When space matters: Spatial dependence, diagnostics, and regression models Robert J. Fornango 3. Basic principles and practices of structural equation models in criminal justice and criminology research Jacinta M. Gau 4. Meta-analysis in criminal justice and criminology: What it is, when it's useful, an…
Self‐control and Victimization: A Meta‐analysis
A consequential development in victimization theory and research was the idea that individuals with low self‐control self‐select into the various risky behaviors that may ultimately result in their victimization. To establish the empirical status of the self‐control–victimization link, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 311 effect size estimates drawn from 66 studies (42 independent data sets) indicate t…
Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect
Sampson, Robert J. 2012. Great American city: Chicago and the enduring neighborhood effect. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN-13: 9780226734569. pp. 552, $27.50 cloth. Robert J. Sampson’s
The Collateral Consequences of Incarceration Revisited: A Qualitative Analysis of the Effects on Caregivers of Children of Incarcerated Parents
While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the “social ledger” of incarceration, where both the potential benefits and harms associated with incarceration are examined. To shed light on the variation in the collater…
Key Ideas in Criminology and Criminal Justice
The development of both criminology and criminal justice has been characterized by different theories and ideas that capture academic (and sometimes political) imaginations and send the discipline veering in entirely new directions. Why did these ideas catch on? What about them attracted and held scholars' attention and on occasion caused them to impact policy considerations? Why do they still have value today? These are the questions addressed i…
Low Self-Control and Imprudent Behavior Revisited
This study assesses the effect of low self-control on traditional offending-oriented outcomes and three imprudent behaviors—"drunk dialing," public profanity, and public flatulence. The sample consists of approximately 500 undergraduate students. The results from the regression analyses show that low self-control is associated with typical offending, academic fraud, and binge drinking. More importantly, low self-control is also associated with ma…
Routine Online Activity and Internet Fraud Targeting: Extending the Generality of Routine Activity Theory
Routine activity theory predicts that changes in legitimate opportunity structures (e.g., technology) can increase the convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets in the absence of capable guardianship. The Internet has fundamentally changed consumer practices and has simultaneously expanded opportunities for cyber-fraudsters to target online consumers. The authors draw on routine activity theory and consumer behavior research to unde…
The Empirical Status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime: A Meta‐analysis
To determine the empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) “general theory of crime,” we conducted a meta‐analysis on existing empirical studies. The results indicate that, regardless of measurement differences, low self‐control is an important predictor of crime and of “analogous behaviors.” Also, low self‐control has general effects across different types of samples. Contrary to Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, however, the effect…
Assessing Macro-Level Predictors and Theories of Crime: A Meta-Analysis
The macro-level approach reemerged as a salient criminological paradigm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prompted by new theories and reformulations of existing ones, over 200 empirical studies explored ecological correlates of crime. Few efforts have been made, however, to "make sense" of this literature. A "meta-analysis" was undertaken to determine the relative effects of macro-level predictors of crime. Indicators of "concentrated disadvant…
Self‐control and Victimization: A Meta‐analysis
A consequential development in victimization theory and research was the idea that individuals with low self‐control self‐select into the various risky behaviors that may ultimately result in their victimization. To establish the empirical status of the self‐control–victimization link, we subjected this body of work to a meta‐analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 311 effect size estimates drawn from 66 studies (42 independent data sets) indicate t…
Social Support, Inequality, and Homicide: A Cross‐national Test of an Integrated Theoretical Model
Social support, institutional anomie, and macrolevel general strain perspectives have emerged as potentially important explanations of aggregate levels of crime. Drawing on insights from each of these perspectives in a cross‐national context, the analyses show that 1) our measure of social support is inversely related to homicide rates, 2) economic inequality also maintains a direct relationship with homicide rates, and 3) social support signific…
The Collateral Consequences of Incarceration Revisited: A Qualitative Analysis of the Effects on Caregivers of Children of Incarcerated Parents
While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the “social ledger” of incarceration, where both the potential benefits and harms associated with incarceration are examined. To shed light on the variation in the collater…
Low Self‐control, Routine Activities, and Fraud Victimization
Recent research has used both routine activity/lifestyle frameworks and self‐control theory to explain victimization. Thus far, combined tests of these theories have focused on offending populations and street crime victimization. Whether these frameworks also explain exposure to and likelihood of nonviolent victimization (e.g., fraud) in general‐population samples remains an open empirical question. Building on prior work, we assess the independ…
The school context as a source of self-control
Broken Windows or Window Dressing? Citizens'(in) Ability to Tell the Difference Between Disorder and Crime
Research Summary Broken windows theory (and policing strategies based on this perspective) predicts that citizens' perceptions of disorder in their communities cause fear and social withdrawal, which thereby opens the streets for serious predatory crime. A key assumption, therefore, is that the primary exogenous variable in the broken windows process (disorder) and its outcome variable (crime) are actually separate constructs. The empirical evide…
Low Self-Control and Imprudent Behavior Revisited
This study assesses the effect of low self-control on traditional offending-oriented outcomes and three imprudent behaviors—"drunk dialing," public profanity, and public flatulence. The sample consists of approximately 500 undergraduate students. The results from the regression analyses show that low self-control is associated with typical offending, academic fraud, and binge drinking. More importantly, low self-control is also associated with ma…
Rethinking the “Norm” of Offender Generality: Investigating Specialization in the Short‐term
The life‐course approach to criminal career research has devoted a good deal of attention to the generality or specialization of offending behavior. Typically, extant research demonstrates versatility on the part of offenders, yet such findings could be attributable, at least in part, to time and measurement aggregation bias. This work uses a temporally disaggregated and individualized measure of diversity in offending to determine whether the pr…
Race and sentencing
Social support and homicide: A cross-national test of an emerging criminological theory
Revisiting Broken Windows Theory: Examining the Sources of the Discriminant Validity of Perceived Disorder and Crime
Search and Seizure, Racial Profiling, and Traffic Stops: A Disparate Impact Framework
In response to nationwide attention to the issue of racial profiling, numerous law enforcement agencies have reexamined their policies and collected data on the racial demographics of motorists stopped and searched by police. This article advocates a “disparate impact” framework for understanding the relationship between race and searches and seizures. Using data on the Washington State Patrol, analysis indicates that disparities in the proportio…
Rational Choice Theory, Crime Control Policy, and Criminological Relevance
Revisiting the Criminological Consequences of Exposure to Fetal Testosterone: A Meta‐analysis of the 2d:4d Digit Ratio
As criminology has become more interdisciplinary in recent years, biosocial criminology has earned a place at the table. Although this perspective comes in many forms, one important proposition has gained increasing attention: that the 2D:4D finger digit ratio—a purported physical biomarker for exposure to fetal testosterone—is related to criminal, aggressive, and risky/impulsive behavior. Strong claims in the literature have been made for this l…
It's Hopeless: Beyond Zero‐Tolerance Supervision
I Learned It By Watching You: Legal Socialization and the Intergenerational Transmission of Legitimacy Attitudes
Perceptions of legal actor legitimacy have important implications for criminal behaviour. While the link between perceptions of legitimacy and legal compliance has been well established, the sources of legitimacy evaluations are less clear. Drawing from the literature on legal socialization, we examined whether parents’ perceptions of the legitimacy of criminal justice authority figures influenced those same attitudes in their children. Using thr…
Examining the empirical relationship between prison crowding and inmate misconduct: A meta-analysis of conflicting research results
On the consequences of ignoring unobserved heterogeneity when estimating macro-level models of crime
I Suck at Everything: Crime, Arrest, and the Generality of Failure
In this paper we advance the idea that getting arrested amounts to "failing at crime." And akin to the notion of the generality of deviance-where those who engage in any given form of criminal behavior are also likely to engage in a wide array of other problematic behaviors-we examine whether failing at crime (getting arrested) is associated with other forms of life failure. Using data from multiple waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Ado…
Treating the chronic DUI offender “Turning Point” ten years later
Consequences of Violent Victimization for Native American Youth in Early Adulthood
I Hate These Little Turds: Science, Entertainment, and the Enduring Popularity of Scared Straight Programs
Americans’ opinions about crime and justice are more often shaped by media coverage than by scientific evidence. A prime example of this phenomenon is Arts and Entertainment (A&E) Network’s Beyond Scared Straight program—a show that has achieved strong ratings despite the large body of empirical evidence demonstrating the ineffectiveness of inmate–juvenile confrontation tactics. To understand the complexity of American citizens’ opinions toward t…
Toward a Theory of Police Effects
Race and sentencing
Treating the chronic DUI offender “Turning Point” ten years later
The Empirical Status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's General Theory of Crime: A Meta‐analysis
To determine the empirical status of Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) “general theory of crime,” we conducted a meta‐analysis on existing empirical studies. The results indicate that, regardless of measurement differences, low self‐control is an important predictor of crime and of “analogous behaviors.” Also, low self‐control has general effects across different types of samples. Contrary to Gottfredson and Hirschi's position, however, the effect…
Considering hierarchical models for research on inmate behavior: Predicting misconduct with multilevel data
Penologists recognize that both inmate- and prison-level characteristics are relevant to an understanding of individual inmates' behaviors; yet extant studies have focused only on unilevel models with either individual- or aggregate-level predictors and outcomes. To explore the potential of multilevel modeling for related research, we examine empirical relationships predicting the likelihood of inmate misconduct with individual-level (inmate) var…
A Meta-Analysis of the Predictors of Delinquency Among Girls
Social support and homicide: A cross-national test of an emerging criminological theory
Replicating Sampson and Groves's Test of Social Disorganization Theory: Revisiting a Criminological Classic
Using data from the British Crime Survey conducted in 1982, Sampson and Groves provided a convincing test of social disorganization theory. Although macro-level theory was in the midst of a revival when this investigation appeared, no single article did more to polish the previously tarnished image of social disorganization theory than Sampson and Groves's analysis; in fact, this work has become a criminological classic. Subsequent research, howe…
Parental management, ADHD, and delinquent involvement: Reassessing Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory
A core proposition of Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime is that ineffective parenting fosters low self-control in children, which leads to delinquent conduct. Using a sample of 2,472 students, we examined the impact of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) on self-control and delinquency. The analysis revealed three main findings. First, low self-control was a strong predictor of both self-reported delinquency and self-r…
Social Support, Inequality, and Homicide: A Cross‐national Test of an Integrated Theoretical Model
Social support, institutional anomie, and macrolevel general strain perspectives have emerged as potentially important explanations of aggregate levels of crime. Drawing on insights from each of these perspectives in a cross‐national context, the analyses show that 1) our measure of social support is inversely related to homicide rates, 2) economic inequality also maintains a direct relationship with homicide rates, and 3) social support signific…
Parental Socialization and Community Context: A Longitudinal Analysis of the Structural Sources of Low Self-Control
Several empirical studies have attempted to estimate the effect of low self-control on criminal and “analogous” behaviors. Most of these studies have shown that low self-control is an important feature of the cause(s) of crime. Although research is beginning to emerge that targets more specifically the “roots” of self-control via parental socialization (the most salient factor in the development of self-control according to Hirschi and Gottfredso…
Parental Efficacy, Self-Control, and Delinquency: A Test of a General Theory of Crime on a Nationally Representative Sample of Youth
Criminologists have recently begun examining Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) proposition that parenting is the primary influence on children's levels of self-control. The few existing studies on the subject, however, have typically been based on small, nonrandom samples. The current study examines the relationships between parental efficacy, self-control, and delinquent behavior using data from a nationally representative sample of adolescents (…
On the consequences of ignoring unobserved heterogeneity when estimating macro-level models of crime
Assessing Macro-Level Predictors and Theories of Crime: A Meta-Analysis
The macro-level approach reemerged as a salient criminological paradigm in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Prompted by new theories and reformulations of existing ones, over 200 empirical studies explored ecological correlates of crime. Few efforts have been made, however, to "make sense" of this literature. A "meta-analysis" was undertaken to determine the relative effects of macro-level predictors of crime. Indicators of "concentrated disadvant…
The school context as a source of self-control
Examining the empirical relationship between prison crowding and inmate misconduct: A meta-analysis of conflicting research results
Rethinking the “Norm” of Offender Generality: Investigating Specialization in the Short‐term
The life‐course approach to criminal career research has devoted a good deal of attention to the generality or specialization of offending behavior. Typically, extant research demonstrates versatility on the part of offenders, yet such findings could be attributable, at least in part, to time and measurement aggregation bias. This work uses a temporally disaggregated and individualized measure of diversity in offending to determine whether the pr…
The importance of context in understanding biased policing: State patrol traffic citations in Washington State
Several studies have provided evidence that racial profiling on the part of law enforcement agencies in the USA is a widespread problem. In contrast to most extant analyses of biased policing, our multivariate analyses of approximately 1.6 million traffic stops by the Washington State Patrol disaggregate the data from the state level to smaller jurisdictions and examine differences in rates of citation for several minority groups. The analyses re…
Rational Choice Theory, Crime Control Policy, and Criminological Relevance
Broken Windows or Window Dressing? Citizens'(in) Ability to Tell the Difference Between Disorder and Crime
Research Summary Broken windows theory (and policing strategies based on this perspective) predicts that citizens' perceptions of disorder in their communities cause fear and social withdrawal, which thereby opens the streets for serious predatory crime. A key assumption, therefore, is that the primary exogenous variable in the broken windows process (disorder) and its outcome variable (crime) are actually separate constructs. The empirical evide…
Low Self‐control, Routine Activities, and Fraud Victimization
Recent research has used both routine activity/lifestyle frameworks and self‐control theory to explain victimization. Thus far, combined tests of these theories have focused on offending populations and street crime victimization. Whether these frameworks also explain exposure to and likelihood of nonviolent victimization (e.g., fraud) in general‐population samples remains an open empirical question. Building on prior work, we assess the independ…
The Empirical Status of Social Learning Theory: A Meta‐Analysis
Social learning theory has remained one of the core criminological paradigms over the last four decades. Although a large body of scholarship has emerged testing various propositions specified by the theory, the empirical status of the theory in its entirety is still unknown. Accordingly, in the present study, we subject this body of empirical literature to a meta‐analysis to assess its empirical status. Results reveal considerable variation in t…
Search and Seizure, Racial Profiling, and Traffic Stops: A Disparate Impact Framework
In response to nationwide attention to the issue of racial profiling, numerous law enforcement agencies have reexamined their policies and collected data on the racial demographics of motorists stopped and searched by police. This article advocates a “disparate impact” framework for understanding the relationship between race and searches and seizures. Using data on the Washington State Patrol, analysis indicates that disparities in the proportio…
Routine Online Activity and Internet Fraud Targeting: Extending the Generality of Routine Activity Theory
Routine activity theory predicts that changes in legitimate opportunity structures (e.g., technology) can increase the convergence of motivated offenders and suitable targets in the absence of capable guardianship. The Internet has fundamentally changed consumer practices and has simultaneously expanded opportunities for cyber-fraudsters to target online consumers. The authors draw on routine activity theory and consumer behavior research to unde…
Special Issue on Quantitative Methods for Criminal Justice and Criminology
There has long been a power struggle between quantitative and qualitative approaches to criminal justice and criminological research (DiCristina 1997). While this debate is certainly not limited to
Meta‐Analysis in Criminal Justice and Criminology: What It is, When It's Useful, and What to Watch Out for
Meta‐analyses are becoming more common in the criminal justice and criminological literature. While much of the published work related to the technique is focused on the more technical aspects of the statistical methods that have been developed for meta‐analysis, less common are broader—and perhaps more critical—discussions concerning various issues associated with the method. Accordingly, this article presents an overview of meta‐analysis in the…
Crime Patterns and Interventions (42 works) · Psychology (38 works) · Criminology (33 works) · Social Psychology (27 works) · Computer Science (25 works) · Sociology (25 works) · Political science (20 works) · Medicine (19 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (18 works) · Social Psychology (17 works)