Skip to main content
SpringerLink
Log in

Social context of crime control: a time-series analysis of the Korean case, 1973–2002

  • Published:
Crime, Law and Social Change Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Regardless of recent attempts to explain crime control in relation to its social structural conditions, few studies have assessed the economic, organizational, and political context of crime control simultaneously. This study integrated these three contexts into a single project to test the relevance of social structural explanations on major crime control practices over the past three decades in South Korea. By using a variety of official statistics, time-series regressions were used. The level of crime consistently explained most variation in the arrest rates for all four categories of crimes. Prosecutions also seemed to be closely responsive to the level of crime. However, the link between crime and incarceration rates was not found for all categories of crimes. This finding indicates that levels of incarceration could be determined by external factors such as the economic conditions, organizational capacity, and political climates. In addition, economic conditions, which were measured by the unemployment rate, appeared to have a strong relationship to all crime control practices; it was positively and statistically significant for arrest, prosecution and incarceration rates. Political repression was inversely related to all three practices. However, organizational capacity only seemed to affect incarceration rates. Failure or inconsistencies of some of the social contexts in explaining crime control practice in South Korea can be assessed in both methodological and substantive grounds. This underscores the need to develop more solid theoretical arguments and empirical measures for their roles in crime control.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Log in via an institution

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. Chiricos [15, p.195] explains that a possibility for these discrepancies may be less aggregation bias at the lower levels of aggregation because national level data may cancel out substantial sources of regional variations necessary to assess the relationship. The linkage between economic condition and crime control also varied with the type of crimes. This apparent lack of consistency inevitably leads one to wonder why it is so.

  2. “A punitive vocabulary of motives” [45] and “discourse of moral panics” [5, 16] were said to mediate the process under which economic changes are linked to the production of more punitive crime control.

  3. First, crime rates cannot explain the number of cases dismissed or dropped in the process. For example, the prosecutor’s caseload is not the same as the police’s or the court’s. Each stage has a different number of cases requiring action. Second, crime rates do not incorporate the capacity of each sub-system. They implicitly presume that each sub-unit has the same resources. Police caseload is a function of the number of officers assigned to the crime control unit. Likewise, the prosecutor caseload is affected by the capacity of the prosecutorial system.

  4. They expect that in one year after a presidential election, incarcerations should increase as law and order initiations proposed in the presidential campaign come into effect. Included in the analysis were the liberal or conservative characteristics of government, the year of presidential elections, and the percentage of people who identify themselves as Republicans.

  5. Marion [43] traced criminal justice policies across several U.S. administrations since President Kennedy. Despite some overlap, the tendency has been that crime control policies under Democratic administrations sought to ease the social conditions conducive to crime and focused more on rehabilitation and treatment than on retribution and punishment. On the other hand, when Republicans stepped into office the rhetoric of tougher crime control became dominant, resulting in more funding for law enforcement, the addition of more crime control personnel, and more punitive legal reforms. This tendency seems to also characterize crime control policy in England. Conservative governments created a more punitive rhetoric, increased expenditures for crime control, and imposed more severe punishments on criminals [6].

  6. See [13, 36, 37] for unemployment rate. See [13, 25, 33, 39, 47–49, 60] for economic inequality. Also see [75] for both unemployment rate and economic inequality.

  7. The Analytical Report on Crime is the most comprehensive compilation of data on the commission of crime, police activity, and the dispositions of public prosecutors.

  8. Workload measures include criminal offenses and offenders that were subject to the Penal Code and offenses that were regulated by various special laws that also required criminal proceedings.

  9. This source contains information about year-round events within the judiciary and its organizational structure, as well as statistics of criminal and civil trials. Unlike quarterly data on crimes, arrests and prosecutions, statistics on convictions and incarcerations exist in the form of annual data.

  10. Included among property crimes are larceny-theft, stolen property, fraud, embezzlement, breach of trust, and destruction of property. The first violent crime category includes homicide, robbery, arson, rape, assault, bodily harm, intimidation and kidnapping, and illegal confinement as prescribed in the Criminal Code. In line with offenses that violate special laws, the second violent crime category consists of violations of the Act concerning Punishment for Violent Acts, etc. (APVA crime). The APVA crime can be defined as ‘minor’ violence in the sense that it does not include serious violent crimes such as homicide, robbery and rape. The APVA crime largely regulates the use of physical violence (simple assault and bodily harm) or threats to use violence (intimidation, extortion and illegal confinement). This offense, along with the crime of larceny-theft, is the most frequently committed crime in South Korea. Preliminary analysis revealed that there are considerable differences between violent crimes listed under the Criminal Code and APVA crimes. For this reason, the two categories were analyzed separately.

  11. The total number of prosecutions is the sum of the cases for which public prosecutors recommend summary and formal trial proceedings.

References

  1. Arvanites, T. M., & Asher, M. A. (1995). The direct and indirect effects of socio-economic variables on state imprisonment rates. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 7(1), 27–53.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Barberet, R. L. (1994). Modernization, criminal sanctions and crime in Spain. Unpublished dissertation, University of Maryland.

  3. Bailey, W. C. (1981). Inequality in the legal order: Some further analysis and commentary. Social Problems, 29(1), 51–60.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Bottoms, A. (1995). The philosophy and politics of punishment and sentencing. In C. Clarkson, & R. Morgan (Eds.) The politics of sentencing reform (pp. 17–49). Oxford: Clarendon.

    Google Scholar 

  5. Box, S. (1987). Recession, crime and punishment. London: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  6. Brake, M., & Hale, C. (1992). Public order and private lives: The politics of law and order. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  7. Bridges, G. S., Crutchfield, R. D., & Simpson, E. E. (1987). Crime, social structure and criminal punishment: White and nonwhite rates of imprisonment. Social Problems, 34(4), 345–361.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Caldeira, G. A. (1983). Elections and the politics of crime: Budgetary choices and priorities in America. In S. Nagel, E. Fairchild, & A. Champagne (Eds.) The political science of criminal justice (pp. 238–252). New York: Thomas.

    Google Scholar 

  9. Chambliss, W. J. (1999). Power, politics, and crime. New York: Westview.

    Google Scholar 

  10. Chambliss, W. J., & Seidman, R. (1980). Law, order, and power. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

    Google Scholar 

  11. Chamlin, M. B. (1990). Determinants of police expenditures in Chicago, 1904–1958. Sociological Quarterly, 31, 485–494.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  12. Chamlin, M. (1992). Intergroup threat and social control: Welfare expansion among states during the 1960s and 1970s. In A. Liska (Ed.) Social threat and social control (pp. 151–164). Albany, NY: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  13. Chamlin, M. B., & Liska, A. E. (1992). Declining significance of intergroup threat. In A. E. Liska (Ed.) Social threat and social control (pp. 103–112). Albany, NY: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  14. Chamlin, M. B., & Cochran, J. K. (1998). Causality, economic conditions, and burglary. Criminology, 36, 425–440.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  15. Chiricos, T. G. (1987). Rates of crime and unemployment: An analysis of aggregate research evidence. Social Problems, 34(2), 187–212.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  16. Chiricos, T. G. (1998). The media, moral panics and the politics of crime control. In G. F. Cole, & M. G. Gertz (Eds.) The criminal justice system: Politics and policies (pp. 58–76). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  17. Chiricos, T. G., & Delone, M. (1992). Labor surplus and punishment: A review and assessment of theory and evidence. Social Problems, 39, 421–446.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  18. Cole, G. F., & Gertz, M. G. (1998). The criminal justice system: Politics and policies. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.

    Google Scholar 

  19. Emerson, R. M. (1983). Holistic effects in social control decision making. Law & Society Review, 17, 425–455.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  20. Felson, M., & Cohen, L. E. (1981). Quantitative output of the criminal justice system: Case processing indicators for the United States, 1953–1976. Social Indicators Research, 9, 61–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  21. Frumkin, N. (1998). Economic indicators (3rd ed.). New York: Sharpe.

    Google Scholar 

  22. Garland, D. (1990). Punishment and modern society: A study in social theory. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  23. Garland, D. (1991). Sociological perspectives on punishment. In Crime and criminal justice: A review of research (pp. 115–166). Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Google Scholar 

  24. Garland, D. (2001). The culture of control: Crime and social order in contemporary society. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  25. Greenberg, D. F., Kessler, R. C., & Loftin, C. (1985). Social inequality and crime control. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 76, 684–704.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  26. Gurr, T. R. (1986). The political origins of state violence and terror: A theoretical analysis. In M. Stohl, & G. A. Lopez (Eds.) Government violence and repression: An agenda for research (pp. 45–72). New York: Greenwood.

    Google Scholar 

  27. Hagan, J. (1989). Why is there so little criminal justice theory? Neglected macro- and micro-level links between organization and power. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 26(2), 116–135.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  28. Hale, C. (1989). Economy, punishment and imprisonment. Contemporary Crises, 13, 327–349.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  29. Harvey, A. C. (1990). The econometric analysis of time series. Cambridge, MA: MIT.

    Google Scholar 

  30. Hudson, B. (1993). Penal policy and social justice. Toronto: University of Toronto.

    Google Scholar 

  31. Inverarity, J. (1994). Labor markets and the relationships among forms of the criminal sanction. In G. S. Bridges, & M. A. Myers (Eds.) Inequality, Crime and Social Control (pp. 147–157). Boulder: Westview.

    Google Scholar 

  32. Jacobs, D. (1978). Inequality and the legal order: An ecological test of the conflict model. Social Problems, 25, 515–525.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  33. Jacobs, D., & Helms, R. E. (1996). Toward a political model of incarceration: A time-series examination of multiple explanation for prison admission rates. American Journal of Sociology, 102(2), 323–357.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  34. Jacobs, D., & Helms, R. E. (2001). Toward a political sociology of punishment: Politics and changes in the incarcerated population. Social Science Research, 30, 171–194.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  35. Land, K. C., McCall, P. L., & Cohen, L. E. (1990). Structural covariates of homicide rates: Are there any invariances across time and social space? American Journal of Sociology, 95, 922–963.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  36. Liska, A. E. (1992). Social threat and social control. Albany, NY: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  37. Liska, A. E. (1994). Modeling the conflict perspective of social control. In G. S. Bridges, & M. A. Myers (Eds.) Inequality, crime and social control (pp. 53–71). Boulder: Westview.

    Google Scholar 

  38. Liska, A. E., & Chamlin, M. (1984). Social structure and crime control among macro social units. American Journal of Sociology, 90, 383–395.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  39. Liska, A. E., Chamlin, M. B., & Reed, M. D. (1985). Testing the economic production and conflict models of crime control. Social Forces, 64(1), 119–138.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  40. Liska, A. E., & Yu, J. (1992). Specifying and testing the threat hypothesis: political use of deadly force. In A. E. Liska (Ed.) Social threat and social control (pp. 53–68). Albany, NY: State University of New York.

    Google Scholar 

  41. Matthews, R. (2005). The myth of punitiveness. Theoretical Criminology, 9(2), 175–201.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  42. Marion, N. E. (1994). A history of federal crime control initiatives, 1960–1993. Westport: Praeger.

    Google Scholar 

  43. Marion, N. E. (1995). A primer in the politics of criminal justice. New York: Harrow and Heston.

    Google Scholar 

  44. Melossi, D. (1985). Punishment and social action: Changing vocabularies of punitive motive with a political business cycle. Current Perspectives in Social Theory, 6, 162–197.

    Google Scholar 

  45. Melossi, D. (1989). An introduction: Fifty years later, punishment and social structure in comparative analysis. Contemporary Crises, 13, 311–326.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  46. Myers, M. A. (1987). Economic inequality and discrimination in sentencing. Social Forces, 65, 746–766.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  47. Myers, M. A. (1993). Inequality and the punishment of minor offenders in the early 20th century. Law & Society Review, 27, 313–343.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  48. Myers, M. A., & Talarico, S. M. (1986). Urban justice, rural injustice? Urbanization and its effect on sentencing. Criminology, 24(2), 367–91.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  49. Myers, M. A., & Talarico, S. M. (1987). The social contexts of criminal sentencing. New York: Springer.

    Google Scholar 

  50. Marion, N., & Farmer, R. (2004). A preliminary examination of presidential anticrime promises. Criminal Justice Review, 29(1), 173–195.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  51. Neapolitan, J. L. (2001). An examination of cross-national variation in punitiveness. International Journal of Offender Therapy and Comparative Criminology, 45(6), 691–710.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  52. Noam, E. M. (1977). The criminal justice system: An economic model. In S. S. Nagel (Ed.) Modeling the criminal justice system (pp. 41–56). New York: Sage.

    Google Scholar 

  53. Pae, S. M. (1986). Political stability of South Korea: A quantitative study. Korea Observer, 17, 72–91.

    Google Scholar 

  54. Park, T. S., & Kim, D. C. (1991). Social movements in the 1960s. Seoul: Kkachi In Korean.

    Google Scholar 

  55. Pena, D., Tiao, G. C., & Tsay, R. S. (2001). A course in times series analysis. New York: Wiley.

    Google Scholar 

  56. Pratt, T. C., & Lowenkamp, C. T. (2002). Conflict theory, economic conditions, and homicide: A time-series analysis. Homicide Studies, 6(1), 61–83.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  57. Pratt, J. (2002). Critical criminology and the punitive society: some new “visions of social control”. In K. Carrington, & R. Hogg (Eds.) Critical criminology: Issues, debates, challenges (p. 1). Cullompton: Willan.

    Google Scholar 

  58. Quinney, R. (1977). Class, state and crime: On the theory and practice of criminal justice. New York: Longman.

    Google Scholar 

  59. Ruddell, R. (2005). Social disruption, state priorities, and minority threat. Punishment & Society, 7(1), 7–28.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  60. Sampson, R. J., & Laub, J. H. (1993). Structural variations in juvenile court processing: Inequality, the underclass, and social control. Law & Society Review, 27, 285–311.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  61. Savelsberg, J. J. (1994). Knowledge, domination, and criminal punishment. American Journal of Sociology, 99(4), 911–943.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  62. Sheingold, S. A. (1991). The politics of street crime. Philadelphia: Temple University.

    Google Scholar 

  63. Sheingold, S. A. (1995). Politics, public policy, and street crime. The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, 539, 155–168.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  64. Simons, G. (1995). Korea: The search for sovereignty. Houndmills: Macmillan.

    Google Scholar 

  65. Smith, L. (2003). The organizational environment and its influence on state criminal justice systems within the United States and the offender re-integration process. Criminal Justice Studies, 16(2), 97–112.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  66. Sohn, H. (1989). Authoritarianism and opposition in South Korea. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  67. Stack, S. (1984). Income inequality and property crime: A cross-national analysis of relative deprivation theory. Criminology, 22(2), 229–257.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  68. Sung, H. -E. (2006). Democracy and criminal justice in cross-national perspective: from crime control to due process. The Annals of The American Academy, AAPSS, 605, 311–337.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  69. Sutton, J. R. (2004). The political economy of imprisonment in affluent Western democracies, 1960–1990. American Sociological Review, 69, 170–189.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  70. Taxman, F. S., & Elis, L. (1999). Expediting court dispositions: quick results, uncertain outcomes. Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, 36(1), 30–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  71. Tedesco, L. (2000). La ñata contra el vidrio: Urban violence and democratic governability in Argentina. Bulletin of Latin American Research, 19, 527–545.

    Google Scholar 

  72. Williams, K. R., & Timberblake, M. (1984). Structured inequality, conflict, and control: A cross-national test of the threat hypothesis. Social Forces, 63, 414–432.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  73. Williams, K. R., & Drake, S. (1980). Social structure, crime and criminalization: An empirical examination of the conflict perspective. Sociological Quarterly, 21, 563–575.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  74. Wray, L. R. (2001). Did the rising tide eliminate our “surplus” population? Journal of Economic Issues, 35(2), 525–531.

    Google Scholar 

  75. Yoon, O.-K., & Joo, H.-J. (2005). A contextual analysis of crime rates: The Korean case. Crime, Law & Social Change, 43, 31–55.

    Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Box 2296, Huntsville, TX, 77341-2296, USA

    Hee-Jong Joo

  2. Department of Corrections Studies, Kyonggi University, Suwon, Kyonggi-do, South Korea

    Ok-Kyung Yoon

Authors
  1. Hee-Jong Joo
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

  2. Ok-Kyung Yoon
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Hee-Jong Joo.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Joo, HJ., Yoon, OK. Social context of crime control: a time-series analysis of the Korean case, 1973–2002. Crime Law Soc Change 50, 375–394 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-008-9102-z

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10611-008-9102-z

Keywords

Search

Navigation