Using multiple GPUs to accelerate string searching for digital forensic analysis

String searching within a large corpus of data is an important component of digital forensic (DF) analysis techniques such as file carving. The continuing increase in capacity of consumer storage devices requires corresponding im-provements to the performance of string searching techniques. As string search-ing is a trivially-parallelisable problem, GPGPU approaches are a natural fit – but previous studies have found that local storage presents an insurmountable performance bottleneck. We show that this need not be the case with modern hardware, and demonstrate substantial performance improvements from the use of single and multiple GPUs when searching for strings within a typical forensic disk image

Understanding Desistance from Crime

The study of desistance from crime is hampered by definitional, measurement, and theoretical incoherence. A unifying framework can distinguish termination of offending from the process of desistance. Termination is the point when criminal activity stops and desistance is the underlying causal process. A small number of factors are sturdy correlates of desistance (e.g., good marriages, stable work, transformation of identity, and aging). The processes of desistance from crime and other forms of problem behavior appear to be similar. Several theoretical frameworks can be employed to explain the process of desistance, including maturation and aging, developmental, life-course, rational choice, and social learning theories. A life-course perspective provides the most compelling framework, and it can be used to identify institutional sources of desistance and the dynamic social processes inherent in stopping crime.Sociolog

The Sutherland-Glueck Debate: On the Sociology of Criminological Knowledge

During the 1930s, Edwin Sutherland established the sociological model of crime as the dominant paradigm in criminology and as a result became the most influential criminologist of the 20th century. This article examines Sutherland's debate with Sheldon Glueck and Eleanor Glueck about the causes of crime and the proper focus of social science research. Previously unavailable correspondence and unpublished papers are examined along with published works from the period (1925-45) when Sutherland was developing the theory of differential association and the Gluecks were launching research on criminal careers. The competing paradigms of the Gluecks and Sutherland are also placed in the socio-intellectual and institutional context in which they worked. It is shown that Sutherland's attack on the Gluecks' interdisciplinary research program was driven by: (a) a substantive version of sociological positivism that attempted to establish criminology as the proper domain of sociology, (b) a commitment to the method of analytic induction, and (c) Suther- land's rise to prominence in sociology. In addition, key aspects of the Gluecks' perspective reflecting their own professional interests in law and psychiatry further contributed to sociologists' hostile reaction. Nevertheless, the article presents evidence that the Gluecks' research on such fundamental issues as age and crime, criminal careers, and social control is more correct than commonly believed and, in fact, occupies center stage in contemporary re- search.Sociolog

Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods

This article assesses the sources and consequences of public disorder. Based on the videotaping and systematic rating of more than 23,000 street segments in Chicago, highly reliable scales of social and physical disorder for 196 neighborhoods are constructed. Census data, police records, and an independent survey of more than 3,500 residents are then integrated to test a theory of collective efficacy and structural constraints. Defined as cohesion among residents combined with shared expectations for the social control of public space, collective efficacy explains lower rates of crime and observed disorder after controlling neighborhood structural characteristics. Collective efficacy is also linked to lower rates of violent crime after accounting for disorder and the reciprocal effects of violence. Contrary to the "broken windows" theory, however, the relationship between public disorder and crime is spurious except perhaps for robbery.Sociolog

Punishment’s Place: The Local Concentration of Mass Incarceration

Sociolog

Spatial Heterogeneity in the Effects of Immigration and Diversity on Neighborhood Homicide Rates

This article examines the connection of immigration and diversity to homicide by advancing a recently developed approach to modeling spatial dynamics—geographically weighted regression (GWR). In contrast to traditional global averaging, we argue on substantive grounds that neighborhood characteristics vary in their effects across neighborhood space, a process of “spatial heterogeneity.” Much like treatment-effect heterogeneity and distinct from spatial spillover, our analysis finds considerable evidence that neighborhood characteristics in Chicago vary significantly in predicting homicide, in some cases showing countervailing effects depending on spatial location. In general, however, immigrant concentration is either unrelated or inversely related to homicide, whereas language diversity is consistently linked to lower homicide. The results shed new light on the immigration-homicide nexus and suggest the pitfalls of global averaging models that hide the reality of a highly diversified and spatially stratified metropolis.Sociolog

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 exacerbated the disproportionate representation of blacks in state and federal prisons. Race and ethnic disparities in violent offending and victimization are pronounced and long-standing. Blacks, and to a lesser extent Hispanics, suffer much higher rates of robbery and homicide victimization than do whites. Homicide is the leading cause of death among young black males and females. These differences result in part from social forces that ecologically concentrate race with poverty and other social dislocations. Useful research would emphasize multilevel (contextual) designs, the idea of "cumulative disadvantage" over the life course, the need for multiracial conceptualizations, and comparative, cross-national designs.Sociolog