Suchergebnisse

ObjectiveThe objective of this study was to determine if the housing‐mortgage stress caused by the foreclosure crisis is associated with violent and property crime in U.S. metropolitan areas.MethodUsing a sample of 142 metropolitan statistical areas and controlling for other structural factors thought to be associated with urban violence rates, we employ weighted least squares regression to estimate the association between the Housing‐Mortgage Stress Index (HMSI) and six serious crimes: homicide, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny, and motor vehicle theft.ResultsOur results showed no evidence of an association between the HMSI and any of the crime rates.ConclusionsDespite anecdotal evidence of and growing fear that the foreclosure crisis was accompanied by increasing crime rates in cities hardest hit by the foreclosure crisis, we found no evidence that metropolitan areas with higher levels of housing‐mortgage stress had higher rates of violent or property crime.

ObjectiveTo study the association between social disorganization and youth violence rates in rural communities.MethodWe employed rural Missouri counties (N = 106) as units of analysis, measured serious violent victimization data via hospital records, and the same measures of social disorganization as Osgood and Chambers (2000). Controlling for spatial autocorrelation, the negative binomial estimator was used to estimate the effects of social disorganization on youth violence rates.ResultsUnlike Osgood and Chambers, we found only one of five social disorganization measures, the proportion of female‐headed households, to be associated with rural youth violent victimization rates.ConclusionAlthough most research on social disorganization theory has been undertaken on urban areas, a highly cited Osgood and Chambers (2000) study appeared to extend the generalizeability of social disorganization as an explanation of the distribution of youth violence to rural areas. Our results suggest otherwise. We provide several methodological and theoretical reasons why it may be too early to draw strong conclusions about the generalizeability of social disorganization to crime rates in rural communities.

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim's work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions ( N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim's work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions (N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Durkheim argued that acute political crises result in increased homicide rates because they pose a threat to sentiments about the collective. Though crucial to Durkheim's work on homicide, this idea remains untested. The authors took advantage of the natural experiment of the collapse of the Soviet Union to examine this hypothesis. Using data from Russian regions (N = 78) and controlling for measures of anomie and other covariates, the authors estimated the association between political change and change in homicide rates between 1991 and 2000. Results indicated that regions exhibiting less support for the Communist Party in 2000 (and thus greater change in political ideals because the Party had previously exercised complete control) were regions with greater increases in homicide rates. Thus, while democratization may be a positive development relative to the Communist juggernaut of the past, it appears that the swift political change in Russia is partially responsible for the higher rates of violence there following the collapse of the Soviet Union. Tables, References. [Reprinted by permission of Sage Publications Inc., copyright 2006 The American Academy of Political and Social Science.]

The level of alcohol consumption in Russia is among the highest in the world and is often associated with a variety of problems in the country. Until recently, however, it was impossible to examine the health and social burdens associated with consumption in Russia due to Soviet secrecy surrounding vital statistics and health data related to alcohol and other topics. This study employed newly available mortality data to describe the demographic, temporal, and spatial patterns of mortality resulting directly from chronic and acute alcohol consumption in the country. The data reveal that in spite of high overall rates of alcohol-related mortality in Russia, levels of mortality vary considerably along these dimensions. Although descriptive in nature, the patterns of alcohol-related mortality in Russia presented here should provide initial observations with which to generate and test hypotheses concerning the causes and consequences of these patterns.

Objective. This study examined institutional anomie theory in the context of transitional Russia.Methods. We employed an index of negative socioeconomic change and measures of family, education, and polity to test the hypothesis that institutional strength conditions the effects of poverty and socioeconomic change on homicide rates.Results. As expected, the results of models estimated using negative binomial regression show direct positive effects of poverty and socioeconomic change and direct negative effects of family strength and polity on regional homicide rates. There was no support, however, for the hypothesis that stronger social institutions reduce the effects of poverty and socioeconomic change on violence.Conclusions. We interpret these results in the Russia‐specific setting, concluding that Russia is a rich laboratory for examining the effects of social change on crime and that empirical research in other nations is important when assessing the generalizability of theories developed to explain crime and violence in the United States.

Objective. This study examined institutional anomie theory in the context of transitional Russia. Methods. We employed an index of negative socioeconomic change & measures of family, education, & polity to test the hypothesis that institutional strength conditions the effects of poverty & socioeconomic change on homicide rates. Results. As expected, the results of models estimated using negative binomial regression show direct positive effects of poverty & socioeconomic change & direct negative effects of family strength & polity on regional homicide rates. There was no support, however, for the hypothesis that stronger social institutions reduce the effects of poverty & socioeconomic change on violence. Conclusions. We interpret these results in the Russia-specific setting, concluding that Russia is a rich laboratory for examining the effects of social change on crime & that empirical research in other nations is important when assessing the generalizability of theories developed to explain crime & violence in the United States. Tables, References. Adapted from the source document.

Discusses conscription & reform in the Russian army, drawing on academic research, government documents, & anecdotal & media reports to describe the difficulties facing the country's draft policies. First, the roots & evolution of the Russian draft, particularly, the influence of the Soviet legacy on present circumstances, are considered. Next, the major effects of violence in the enlisted ranks on draft evasion & desertion are examined. Russia's economic problems & the decrepit condition of the army further problematize the matter of conscription by facilitating corruption & extortion. The conclusion puts forth a summary of both governmental & civilian efforts to reform the army. 1 Table, 1 photograph.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in sudden, widespread, and fundamental changes to Russian society. The former social welfare system-with its broad guarantees of employment, healthcare, education, and other forms of social support-was dismantled in the shift toward democracy, rule of law, and a free-market economy. This unique natural experiment provides a rare opportunity to examine the potentially disintegrative effects of rapid social change on deviance, and thus to evaluate one of Durkheim's core tenets. We took advantage of this opportunity by performing interrupted time-series analyses of annual age-adjusted homicide, suicide, and alcohol-related mortality rates for the Russian Federation using data from 1956 to 2002, with 1992-2002 as the postintervention time-frame. The ARIMA models indicate that, controlling for the long-term processes that generated these three time series, the breakup of the Soviet Union was associated with an appreciable increase in each of the cause-of-death rates. We interpret these findings as being consistent with the Durkheimian hypothesis that rapid social change disrupts social order, thereby increasing the level of crime and deviance.