THE DECOMPOSITION AND GRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF CRIME AND SANCTIONS DATA - A CROSS-NATIONAL APPLICATION

This article attempts to illustrate the utility of isoquant map analys is from the field of production theory in microeconomics for the analy sis of criminal justice data. Cross-national comparisons of aggregate crime and justice data are used to demonstrate the ability of this tec hnique to reveal important patterns that are often obscured by simple rate comparisons and multivariate treatments such as pooled time-serie s analysis. For each jurisdiction, aggregate trends in criminal justic e processing rates are systematically analyzed as a sequence of two-in put production processes: gross imprisonment rates (prison population divided by resident population) can be partitioned in terms of the cri me rate and punitiveness (prison population divided by the number of o ffenses); punitiveness can, in turn, be partitioned in terms of severi ty and certainty of punishment; certainty of punishment can then be pa rtitioned, seriatim, in terms of the incarceration rate, the convictio n rate, and the arrest or clearance rate and the rate at which citizen s report crimes. Cross-national data collected by Farrington, Langan, and Wikstrom are used to illustrate the utility of the method for disp laying comparisons of the decomposition of aggregate criminal justice data for the United States, England, and Sweden.