Janet L Lauritsen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3702250 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Janet L Lauritsen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Janet L |
| FAMILY NAME | Lauritsen |
| SIGNATURE | LAURITSEN J L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Missouri–St. Louis |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-6580-5972 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 633 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 32 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1990 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
The National Crime Victimization Survey at Fifty
The 50th Anniversary of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS)
We use the fiftieth anniversary of the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) as an opportunity to assess the contributions of the survey to our understanding of crime and its consequences, the nature of victimization, the development of criminological theory, and the advancement of survey methodology. Even though studies have established the limitations of official or police-recorded crime data in representing crime, it is not uncommon for d…
The future of crime data
Criminology lacks sufficient data for many types of crime that are of great concern to society. This lack of data poses significant problems for determining whether resources are adequate for responding to these crimes or whether programmatic, legislative, or target‐hardening efforts to prevent or reduce their occurrence are effective. Inadequate data about crime also produces a selective and incomplete narrative about crime that makes it easier …
Race and Men’s Imprisonment in the United States
Black men are overrepresented in United States prisons and the number of Black men incarcerated increased dramatically during America’s “prison boom.” Yet, existing research on male imprisonment rates in the United States has focused on explaining overall rates and has not statistically modeled rates disaggregated by race over time. This study uses seemingly unrelated regression techniques to analyze annual rates of Black and non-Black men incarc…
Violent Victimization Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations in the United States
Objectives. To estimate US nonlethal violent victimization rates for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) males and females aged 16 years and older and to compare disparities among LGB and straight males and females, controlling for other correlates of victimization. Methods. We used data from the 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to provide nationally representative rates of various forms of violent victimization for self-iden…
The Enduring Significance of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Male Violent Victimization, 1973-2010
Latino and Black males are more likely to suffer serious violent victimization compared to White males, and it is likely that economic disadvantage and other individual level differences play a key role in these disparities. This study of self-reported data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1973-2010) is the first effort to assess three important issues: 1) the extent to which the relationship between serious violent victimization and…
Criminology Reviewers List
Victimization Trends and Correlates
This paper assesses the state of the literature on victimization and its correlates by examining a diverse set of victimization trends and by summarizing the known correlates of victimization exhibited in research conducted at varying levels of analysis. A broad assessment of victimization research is valuable because it can shed light on both the similarities and differences in a wide range of trends and correlates of criminal victimization, thu…
Expanding Our Understanding of Crime
Research Summary This article summarizes the recommendations of the National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics’ Panel on Modernizing the Nation's Crime Statistics first report— Modernizing Crime Statistics, Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime (Lauritsen and Cork, 2016)—and discusses some of its implications for criminologists and practitioners. Policy Implications The crime classification offered in the National Academies’ report r…
Intimate Partner Violence in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Although community responses to the problem of intimate partner violence typically focus on increasing and improving policing and social services, few studies have examined the relationship among police force size, social service providers, and women's safety at home. To address this issue, we use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine patterns of intimate partner violence for 40 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a …
Violence Against Women in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
This article examines the impact of women's status on rates of violence against women using longitudinal data from the National Crime Survey and National Crime Victimization Survey for 40 U.S. metropolitan areas for the period 1980 to 2004. Drawing on feminist and routine activities perspectives, we specify hypotheses about the association between women's status and violent victimization, some of which predict different effects depending on wheth…
Violent victimization among males and economic conditions
Research Summary In this article, we use data from the 1973 to 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to estimate previously unknown trends in serious nonfatal violent victimization for Latino, non‐Latino Black, and non‐Latino White males in the United States. Past research has shown that Blacks and Latinos have been more susceptible than Whites to financial hardship during economic downturns and that economic disadvantage is an importan…
Reporting Crime to the Police, 1973–2005
Although many efforts have been made during the past several decades to increase the reporting of crime to the police, we know little about the nature of long‐term crime‐reporting trends. Most research in this area has been limited to specific crime types (e.g., sexual assault), or it has not taken into account possible changes in the characteristics of incidents associated with police notification. In this article, we advance knowledge about lon…
The National Crime Victimization Survey and the Gender Gap in Offending
Trends in the Gender Gap in Violent Offending
Recent research has compared male and female trends in violent offending in Uniform Crime Report (UCR) arrest data with similar trends derived from victims' reports in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and has concluded that the two data sources produce contrary findings. In this article, we reassess this issue and draw different conclusions. Using pooled National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS data for 1973 to 2005, we find that the fe…
Explaining Patterns of Offending across the Life Course
This article assesses “interactional theory” and recent developmental research based on that theory. The author argues that the unique contributions of interactional theory would be enhanced by greater formalization of the theory and comparisons of the theory's hypotheses to other developmental and criminological theories. Patterns of offending across the life course would be better understood if more longitudinal data sets were made accessible t…
The Social Ecology of Violence Against Women
Despite more than three decades of research on the topic of violence against women, the relative contribution of individual, family and community factors to victimization risk remains unknown. We use self‐report data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to study the correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate‘partner violence against women. Regardless of victim‐offender relationship, we find that the risk for victimiz…
Neighborhood Disadvantage and the Nature of Violence
Although numerous studies have examined the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on the quantity of violence, little attention has been devoted to whether such conditions also shape the quality of violence. Drawing on Anderson's (1999) influential ethnography, we derive several hypotheses about how the nature of violence differs across neighborhoods with varying socioeconomic conditions. Using data on assaults and robberies from t…
Leaving the Gang
Putting Violence in Its Place
Research Summary: This research shows that non‐Latino black, non‐Latino white, and Latino males and females in the U.S. experience significantly different levels of stranger and non‐stranger violence, and that these forms of non‐lethal violence are especially pronounced in areas with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Many of the differences between these groups are eliminated once community and other individual characteristics are taken …
Limitations in the Use of Longitudinal Self‐report Data
The Influence of Crack Cocaine on Robbery, Burglary, and Homicide Rates
After tracking one another closely for decades, the U.S. robbery rate increased and the burglary rate declined in the late 1980s. The authors investigate the impact of crack on this divergence using a two-stage hierarchical linear model that decomposes between-and within-city variation in crime rates for 142 cities. Given its prominence in discussions of crack and criminal violence, homicide offending is also examined. Net of other influences, ci…
The Age-Crime Debate
Journal Article The Age-Crime Debate: Assessing the Limits of Longitudinal Self-Report Data Get access Janet L. Lauritsen Janet L. Lauritsen University of Missouri-St. Louis Direct all correspondence to the author at Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 77, Issue…
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States
Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exac…
Lifelines and Risks
The Link Between Offending and Victimization Among Adolescents
Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey su…
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States
Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exac…
Reporting Crime to the Police, 1973–2005
Although many efforts have been made during the past several decades to increase the reporting of crime to the police, we know little about the nature of long‐term crime‐reporting trends. Most research in this area has been limited to specific crime types (e.g., sexual assault), or it has not taken into account possible changes in the characteristics of incidents associated with police notification. In this article, we advance knowledge about lon…
Trends in the Gender Gap in Violent Offending
Recent research has compared male and female trends in violent offending in Uniform Crime Report (UCR) arrest data with similar trends derived from victims' reports in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and has concluded that the two data sources produce contrary findings. In this article, we reassess this issue and draw different conclusions. Using pooled National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS data for 1973 to 2005, we find that the fe…
Neighborhood Disadvantage and the Nature of Violence
Although numerous studies have examined the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on the quantity of violence, little attention has been devoted to whether such conditions also shape the quality of violence. Drawing on Anderson's (1999) influential ethnography, we derive several hypotheses about how the nature of violence differs across neighborhoods with varying socioeconomic conditions. Using data on assaults and robberies from t…
Putting Violence in Its Place
Research Summary: This research shows that non‐Latino black, non‐Latino white, and Latino males and females in the U.S. experience significantly different levels of stranger and non‐stranger violence, and that these forms of non‐lethal violence are especially pronounced in areas with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Many of the differences between these groups are eliminated once community and other individual characteristics are taken …
The Social Ecology of Violence Against Women
Despite more than three decades of research on the topic of violence against women, the relative contribution of individual, family and community factors to victimization risk remains unknown. We use self‐report data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to study the correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate‘partner violence against women. Regardless of victim‐offender relationship, we find that the risk for victimiz…
Violence Against Women in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
This article examines the impact of women's status on rates of violence against women using longitudinal data from the National Crime Survey and National Crime Victimization Survey for 40 U.S. metropolitan areas for the period 1980 to 2004. Drawing on feminist and routine activities perspectives, we specify hypotheses about the association between women's status and violent victimization, some of which predict different effects depending on wheth…
Violent victimization among males and economic conditions
Research Summary In this article, we use data from the 1973 to 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to estimate previously unknown trends in serious nonfatal violent victimization for Latino, non‐Latino Black, and non‐Latino White males in the United States. Past research has shown that Blacks and Latinos have been more susceptible than Whites to financial hardship during economic downturns and that economic disadvantage is an importan…
The Age-Crime Debate
Journal Article The Age-Crime Debate: Assessing the Limits of Longitudinal Self-Report Data Get access Janet L. Lauritsen Janet L. Lauritsen University of Missouri-St. Louis Direct all correspondence to the author at Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 77, Issue…
Sibling Resemblance in Juvenile Delinquency
Analyses based on individual‐ and family‐level self‐report data indicate that (1) delinquency incidents are disproportionately concentrated among households with adolescents, (2) families do not specialize in delinquency by producing certain types of offenders, and (3) adolescent levels of delinquency are predicted equally as well by the offending of an older sibling. the offending of a younger sibling, or by the average level of offending among …
Intimate Partner Violence in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Although community responses to the problem of intimate partner violence typically focus on increasing and improving policing and social services, few studies have examined the relationship among police force size, social service providers, and women's safety at home. To address this issue, we use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine patterns of intimate partner violence for 40 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a …
The National Crime Victimization Survey and the Gender Gap in Offending
Explaining Race and Gender Differences in Adolescent Sexual Behavior
Journal Article Explaining Race and Gender Differences in Adolescent Sexual Behavior Get access Janet L. Lauritsen Janet L. Lauritsen University of Missouri, St. Louis Direct all correspondence to Janet L. Lauritsen, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 72, Issue 3, March …
Violent Victimization Among Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual Populations in the United States
Objectives. To estimate US nonlethal violent victimization rates for lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) males and females aged 16 years and older and to compare disparities among LGB and straight males and females, controlling for other correlates of victimization. Methods. We used data from the 2017 and 2018 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to provide nationally representative rates of various forms of violent victimization for self-iden…
Victimization Trends and Correlates
This paper assesses the state of the literature on victimization and its correlates by examining a diverse set of victimization trends and by summarizing the known correlates of victimization exhibited in research conducted at varying levels of analysis. A broad assessment of victimization research is valuable because it can shed light on both the similarities and differences in a wide range of trends and correlates of criminal victimization, thu…
Limitations in the Use of Longitudinal Self‐report Data
The Enduring Significance of Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Male Violent Victimization, 1973-2010
Latino and Black males are more likely to suffer serious violent victimization compared to White males, and it is likely that economic disadvantage and other individual level differences play a key role in these disparities. This study of self-reported data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (1973-2010) is the first effort to assess three important issues: 1) the extent to which the relationship between serious violent victimization and…
Explaining Patterns of Offending across the Life Course
This article assesses “interactional theory” and recent developmental research based on that theory. The author argues that the unique contributions of interactional theory would be enhanced by greater formalization of the theory and comparisons of the theory's hypotheses to other developmental and criminological theories. Patterns of offending across the life course would be better understood if more longitudinal data sets were made accessible t…
Expanding Our Understanding of Crime
Research Summary This article summarizes the recommendations of the National Academies’ Committee on National Statistics’ Panel on Modernizing the Nation's Crime Statistics first report— Modernizing Crime Statistics, Report 1: Defining and Classifying Crime (Lauritsen and Cork, 2016)—and discusses some of its implications for criminologists and practitioners. Policy Implications The crime classification offered in the National Academies’ report r…
The future of crime data
Criminology lacks sufficient data for many types of crime that are of great concern to society. This lack of data poses significant problems for determining whether resources are adequate for responding to these crimes or whether programmatic, legislative, or target‐hardening efforts to prevent or reduce their occurrence are effective. Inadequate data about crime also produces a selective and incomplete narrative about crime that makes it easier …
Race and Men’s Imprisonment in the United States
Black men are overrepresented in United States prisons and the number of Black men incarcerated increased dramatically during America’s “prison boom.” Yet, existing research on male imprisonment rates in the United States has focused on explaining overall rates and has not statistically modeled rates disaggregated by race over time. This study uses seemingly unrelated regression techniques to analyze annual rates of Black and non-Black men incarc…
The Limits of Family Influence
Deviant Lifestyles, Proximity to Crime, and the Offender-Victim Link in Personal Violence
This article assesses the theoretical and empirical status of offense activity and proximity to offending for explaining personal victimization. Our theoretical approach to the often-neglected linkage between offending and victimization is derived from recent revisions of lifestyle-routine activity theory (Jensen and Brownfield 1986; Garofalo 1987). Analyses of two national surveys of victimization in England and Wales suggest that offense activi…
The Link Between Offending and Victimization Among Adolescents
Prior research on victimization in the United States has generally neglected two key areas—victimization among juveniles and young adults and the connection between offending and victimization. The research presented here fuses these two concerns by examining the effect of delinquent lifestyles on the criminal victimization of teenagers and young adults. An examination of longitudinal data from the first five waves of the National Youth Survey su…
Conventional and Delinquent Activities
While age is one of the most important correlates of an individual’s risk of violent victimization, research regarding the victimization of adolescents is relatively meager. Using two well-known national data sources and an analytical framework guided by lifestyle/routine activities theories, we describe the relationships between activity involvement and the risk of assault and robbery victimization among adolescents in the United States. Several…
Sibling Resemblance in Juvenile Delinquency
Analyses based on individual‐ and family‐level self‐report data indicate that (1) delinquency incidents are disproportionately concentrated among households with adolescents, (2) families do not specialize in delinquency by producing certain types of offenders, and (3) adolescent levels of delinquency are predicted equally as well by the offending of an older sibling. the offending of a younger sibling, or by the average level of offending among …
Overcoming the Odds
Explaining Race and Gender Differences in Adolescent Sexual Behavior
Journal Article Explaining Race and Gender Differences in Adolescent Sexual Behavior Get access Janet L. Lauritsen Janet L. Lauritsen University of Missouri, St. Louis Direct all correspondence to Janet L. Lauritsen, Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 72, Issue 3, March …
Repeat victimization among adolescents and young adults
The Limits of Family Influence
Lifelines and Risks
Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Crime and Criminal Justice in the United States
Although racial discrimination emerges some of the time at some stages of criminal justice processing-such as juvenile justice-there is little evidence that racial disparities result from systematic, overt bias. Discrimination appears to be indirect, stemming from the amplification of initial disadvantages over time, along with the social construction of "moral panics" and associated political responses. The "drug war" of the 1980s and 1990s exac…
The Influence of Crack Cocaine on Robbery, Burglary, and Homicide Rates
After tracking one another closely for decades, the U.S. robbery rate increased and the burglary rate declined in the late 1980s. The authors investigate the impact of crack on this divergence using a two-stage hierarchical linear model that decomposes between-and within-city variation in crime rates for 142 cities. Given its prominence in discussions of crack and criminal violence, homicide offending is also examined. Net of other influences, ci…
The Age-Crime Debate
Journal Article The Age-Crime Debate: Assessing the Limits of Longitudinal Self-Report Data Get access Janet L. Lauritsen Janet L. Lauritsen University of Missouri-St. Louis Direct all correspondence to the author at Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Missouri-St. Louis, 8001 Natural Bridge Road, St. Louis, MO 63121. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 77, Issue…
Limitations in the Use of Longitudinal Self‐report Data
Putting Violence in Its Place
Research Summary: This research shows that non‐Latino black, non‐Latino white, and Latino males and females in the U.S. experience significantly different levels of stranger and non‐stranger violence, and that these forms of non‐lethal violence are especially pronounced in areas with high levels of socioeconomic disadvantage. Many of the differences between these groups are eliminated once community and other individual characteristics are taken …
Leaving the Gang
Neighborhood Disadvantage and the Nature of Violence
Although numerous studies have examined the influence of neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on the quantity of violence, little attention has been devoted to whether such conditions also shape the quality of violence. Drawing on Anderson's (1999) influential ethnography, we derive several hypotheses about how the nature of violence differs across neighborhoods with varying socioeconomic conditions. Using data on assaults and robberies from t…
The Social Ecology of Violence Against Women
Despite more than three decades of research on the topic of violence against women, the relative contribution of individual, family and community factors to victimization risk remains unknown. We use self‐report data from the Area‐Identified National Crime Victimization Survey to study the correlates of stranger, nonstranger and intimate‘partner violence against women. Regardless of victim‐offender relationship, we find that the risk for victimiz…
Explaining Patterns of Offending across the Life Course
This article assesses “interactional theory” and recent developmental research based on that theory. The author argues that the unique contributions of interactional theory would be enhanced by greater formalization of the theory and comparisons of the theory's hypotheses to other developmental and criminological theories. Patterns of offending across the life course would be better understood if more longitudinal data sets were made accessible t…
The National Crime Victimization Survey and the Gender Gap in Offending
Trends in the Gender Gap in Violent Offending
Recent research has compared male and female trends in violent offending in Uniform Crime Report (UCR) arrest data with similar trends derived from victims' reports in the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) and has concluded that the two data sources produce contrary findings. In this article, we reassess this issue and draw different conclusions. Using pooled National Crime Survey (NCS) and NCVS data for 1973 to 2005, we find that the fe…
Violent victimization among males and economic conditions
Research Summary In this article, we use data from the 1973 to 2005 National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to estimate previously unknown trends in serious nonfatal violent victimization for Latino, non‐Latino Black, and non‐Latino White males in the United States. Past research has shown that Blacks and Latinos have been more susceptible than Whites to financial hardship during economic downturns and that economic disadvantage is an importan…
Reporting Crime to the Police, 1973–2005
Although many efforts have been made during the past several decades to increase the reporting of crime to the police, we know little about the nature of long‐term crime‐reporting trends. Most research in this area has been limited to specific crime types (e.g., sexual assault), or it has not taken into account possible changes in the characteristics of incidents associated with police notification. In this article, we advance knowledge about lon…
Intimate Partner Violence in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
Although community responses to the problem of intimate partner violence typically focus on increasing and improving policing and social services, few studies have examined the relationship among police force size, social service providers, and women's safety at home. To address this issue, we use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine patterns of intimate partner violence for 40 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a …
Violence Against Women in U.S. Metropolitan Areas
This article examines the impact of women's status on rates of violence against women using longitudinal data from the National Crime Survey and National Crime Victimization Survey for 40 U.S. metropolitan areas for the period 1980 to 2004. Drawing on feminist and routine activities perspectives, we specify hypotheses about the association between women's status and violent victimization, some of which predict different effects depending on wheth…
Criminology Reviewers List
Psychology (26 works) · Crime Patterns and Interventions (24 works) · Sociology (22 works) · Criminology (19 works) · Political science (16 works) · Medicine (15 works) · Demography (14 works) · Poison control (11 works) · Criminal Justice and Corrections Analysis (10 works) · Demography (10 works)