Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice

Conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC) is a recent innovative approach developed by Miethe, Hart, and Regoeczi that bridges the gap between traditional quantitative- or qualitative-based studies approaches. CACC was initially designed for large sample application of exploratory and confirmative studies in criminology and criminal justice. However, as this special issue demonstrates, its application has since broadened. In this introductory article, we provide background material of conjunctive analysis by (a) presenting information on how to conduct a CACC study and (b) describing the conceptual and methodological framework surrounding this type of case comparative method. With this foundation, readers can better appreciate the distinct and unique contributions of the five pieces of CACC research making up this special issue.

Drawve, Thomas, and Walker applied routine activity theory (RAT) to examine whether measures of offender motivation, target suitability, and guardianship influence the likelihood of an offender’s arrest in incidents of aggravated assault. The current study uses the method of conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC) to explore the robustness of their results across alternative analytic methods. We begin with an estimation of the basic “main-effect” model used in the original article and then perform a series of conjunctive analyses to evaluate the contextual variability within each variable in this model. The observed pattern of substantial context-specific effects in the conjunctive analysis illustrates the limitation of traditional quantitative analysis and the utility of CACC for future exploratory and confirmatory studies in evaluating RAT and other criminological research questions.

Risk terrain modeling (RTM) is a geospatial crime analysis tool designed to diagnose environmental risk factors for crime and identify the places where their spatial influence is collocated to produce vulnerability for illegal behavior. However, the collocation of certain risk factors’ spatial influences may result in more crimes than the collocation of a different set of risk factors’ spatial influences. Absent from existing RTM outputs and methods is a straightforward method to compare these relative interactions and their effects on crime. However, as a multivariate method for the analysis of discrete categorical data, conjunctive analysis of case configurations (CACC) can enable exploration of the interrelationships between risk factors’ spatial influences and their varying effects on crime occurrence. In this study, we incorporate RTM outputs into a CACC to explore the dynamics among certain risk factors’ spatial influences and how they create unique environmental contexts, or behavior settings, for crime at microlevel places. We find that most crime takes place within a few unique behavior settings that cover a small geographic area and, further, that some behavior settings were more influential on crime than others. Moreover, we identified particular environmental risk factors that aggravate the influence of other risk factors. We suggest that by focusing on these microlevel environmental crime contexts, police can more efficiently target their resources and further enhance place-based approaches to policing that fundamentally address environmental features that produce ideal opportunities for crime.

Macro-level theories of punishment suggest that particular social conditions explain national imprisonment rates over place and time. Important causal factors underlying these theories include a country’s level of development, criminality, socioeconomic inequality, and political volatility. Based on a sample of 166 nations and set-theoretical methods, the present study uses the formal logic standards of necessity and sufficiency to evaluate the empirical merits of these widely assumed causal relations. After summarizing the confirmatory evidence and patterns of exceptional cases, results are discussed in terms of their implications for refining current macro-level theories of punishment and future testing of them through the conjunctive analysis of set-theoretic relations.

Using secondary data from 164 countries, the current study applies conjunctive analysis to assess asymmetric effects and multiple causal pathways underlying how nations’ level of media freedom influences their human rights protections, control of corruption, and political stability. These analyses reveal that (a) countries with high media freedom are associated with higher scores on each of these measures of effective governance, (b) these “media effects” vary across different socioeconomic contexts and are often asymmetric, and (c) high media freedom is a major component in the multiple conjunctive pathways found among countries with high levels of governance practices, but the conjunctive effect of low media freedom on nation’s likelihood of low governance is less dramatic. These results are discussed in terms of their implications for future research in media studies and using conjunctive methods for exploring causal complexity.

The amount of social scientific knowledge about rural violence pales in comparison with that of urban violence, and even less is known about the situational contexts of rural violence. Using National Crime Victimization Survey data, we explore situational contexts of rural violence in general, as well as compare male- and female-perpetrated violence contexts. Results indicate that the contexts of violence committed by females are characterized by main effects (i.e., no weapons, no injuries across a variety of contexts), while male-perpetrated violence is highly contextual. An important finding emerged from studying contexts associated with male offenders and female victims—in every dominant context with one exception, male perpetrators were engaged in woman abuse. These findings highlight the need for greater attention to rural violence and variation in how this violence is perpetrated.