My name is Tyrell and I am not a Criminal
Surprisingly, first names could determine whether someone would become potential criminal in the future. Therefore, those people are targeted for intervention. But, does it make any sense “to discipline” someone for the crime that they have not committed -or even thought- yet?
Research conducted by Kalist and Lee (2009) has proved that there is a positive correlation between first names and crime. Firstly, let’s check out the figure below.
source: Kalist and Lee, 2009
It is clear that a half of the names in state’s population have PNI (popularity-name index) greater than 20 while a half of the names in juvenile delinquents have PNI greater than 11. Thus, compared to state’s population of names, a larger proportion of the juvenile delinquents have unpopular names (Kalist and Lee, 2009).
Furthermore, the regression analysis was used to depict the composition of unpopular names of black and white juveniles as well as the link between unpopular names with family structure and sociodemographic residence as illustrated by the tables below:
source: Kalist and Lee, 2009
This is how Kalist and Lee (2009) summarize those figures in short. According to the information given in table 2, the coefficient on the PNI is negative and precisely estimated in all cases, indicating that less popular names are associated with a greater likelihood of juvenile delinquency. In respect of table 3, regardless of race, the PNI is positively associated with the juvenile living with both parents but negatively related to living only with his mother. Although this might not directly relate juveniles who have unpopular names with crime, but the causality is more likely affected by the family structure as a third variable, for example, less parental supervision resulted in juvenile delinquency (gangster, drug abuse, alcohol addict). Additionally, table 4 implies that juvenile delinquents with more popular names tend to reside in counties that are less socioeconomically disadvantaged.
Risk Assessment based on First Names
As they stated in the conclusion, Kalist and Lee (2009) also suggested that:
“Depending on the information available to researchers, first name characteristics may be an important factor to help identify individuals at high risk of committing or recommitting the crime, leading to more effective and targeted intervention programs.”
As to that statement, I personally argue that as this research emerged, there might be a rumor or at least unpleasant impression, that unpopular, weird, or uncommon names are associated with negative things, not to mention crime. Although this is probably not what Kalist and Lee were intended to, but if this finding was recklessly considered in policy making, especially in the context of criminal justice, the new disastrous issue would inevitably arise. No one can guarantee that this type of stigmatization, in the long run, eventually transforms into another form of problematic discrimination just like race, religion, age, or gender, which has also resulted in raising public debate within society. Albeit unjust response towards applicants who have unusual names tremendously occurs in the US labor market (Bertrand et al., 2004), but still, it is deemed ludicrous to put someone in jail just because his name is Tyrell, Garland, or anything that is perceived as odd ones among their neighborhood.
Actuarial Justice and the world risk society
The potential issue that I mentioned in the previous paragraph is merely one of the consequences of what Feeley and Simon (1994) called as actuarial justice, a phenomenon that seeks to regulate groups as part of a strategy of managing danger. In this case, the authority is trying to put a number of “risky” adolescents who have unpopular names into a group and then providing them with some interventions programs. The purpose of this measure is basically to prevent juvenile delinquency which subsequently decreasing the probability of committing a crime once the juveniles become an adult.
Another concern that should be taken into account in accordance with actuarial justice is how the criminal justice apparatus exercise their power, particularly on the street level. Alpert et al. (2005) outlined that ideally, the formation of suspicion and any resulting police action should be aroused by the actual behavior of suspect. However, the police officer sometimes builds suspicion based primarily on non-behavior reasons such as the race or other physical appearance of the suspect, rather than behavior reasons which indicate that the suspect has committed an offense (Alpert et al., 2005). Before putting first name characteristic into risk assessment tools, policy makers might face sort of dilemma. On the one hand, it enables the police officer to have such strong legitimacy both to form suspicion and to take follow-up action when they encounter someone with an uncommon name. On the other hand, people would only see this as a new form of unreasonable profiling just like how a police randomly stop and question a man who has black skin. Consequently, many people are unwilling to comply with the police officer because they perceive that the police always behave unfairly. In fact, this is in line with Tyler’s finding of the link between procedural justice and public perception towards the police officer and how this relationship positively affects the tendency of the citizen to cooperate with the police officer.
Finally, I would argue that it is advisable to carry out such intervention programs aimed to inhibit juvenile delinquency. However, in the matter of determining the targeted group, it is more sensible to consider more direct-relevant factors such as low socioeconomically background, single-parent families, or high-criminal-activity neighborhood, instead of excessively focusing on grouping teenagers based on their popular or unpopular first names.
There is no accounting for taste. People are free to name their child with any spelling that they feel pretty and lovely by their own sense. Does living in a world risk society also mean that in order to avoid the hazard, we even have to carefully name our babies?
