Master's Theses

Document Type

Thesis - campus only access

Date of Award

Summer 1999

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Psychology

Advisor

Thomas T. Jackson

Abstract

The present study examined the maximum temperature outside and reports of violent crime, property crime, and status crime. This study was modeled after a study that was conducted by Anderson, Bushman. & Groom in 1997 in which the investigators took daily maximum temperatures and found that arrests for violent crime increased as temperatures increased. They also found that arrests for property crime remained stable, even when temperatures increased. An added variable in the present study was status crimes, or crimes for which only people under the age of 18 can be charged. This study utilized reports from 1464 juveniles (905 males, 559 females) with ages ranging from 6 to 17 who live in Wyandotte County, Kansas. All reports that were used in this study were from records obtained by the Wyandotte County Juvenile Intake and Assessment Center (JIAC) of juveniles arrested and charged with one of the identified charges. The information that was gathered by the JIAC staff during the assessment process was used as data in this study. There was a significant positive linear correlation between maximum daily temperatures and arrests for violent crimes in youth, R2 =.30, bL= .174, t= 2.70, p <.01. The present study hypothesized that this relationship would be curvilinear instead of linear. This study also found that there was a significant curvilinear relationship between maximum daily temperature and reports of property crime recorded at Wyandotte County's JIAC, .R2 = .75, bc= -.0004, t = -3.18, p < .01. A significant curvilinear relationship, R2 = .84, bc =-.0007. t = -3.36, p <.005, was also found between maximum daily temperatures and reports of status crime recorded at Wyandotte County's JIAC. To summarize, the results of the present study partially support the study that was conducted by Anderson et al (1997). The current study found a linear correlational relationship between temperature and arrests for violent crime. Just as Anderson et al (1997) did. However the current study found that arrests for property crime are curvilinearly related to temperature, whereas Anderson et al (1997) found that arrests for property crime remained stable as temperature increased. The present study also found that arrests tor status crime were curvilinearly related to temperature.

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© 1999 Cara Weber

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