Suchergebnisse

The role of the physical and social environment as a catalyst for criminal activity has become prominent in recent years as an issue deserving scholarly attention. More specifically, several scholars have investigated the relationship between environmental factors and convenience store robbery. This study adds a dimension to previous empirical research by assessing, through multivariate statistical methods, whether the physical features and surrounding demographics of 30 randomly sampled convenience stores in Leon County, Florida, significantly affect the vulnerability of those stores to robbery. Results show that environmental factors are not important predictors of whether a convenience store is robbed, but parking lot size, degree of social disorganization surrounding the store, number of hours open, and whether gasoline service is provided are significant in determining the severity of robbery. These findings suggest that offenders may not be uniform in their determination of what constitutes vulnerability. The implications of these findings for primary prevention strategies are discussed.

The primary objective of this study is to determine the effect of a victim's race on the likelihood of him or her being seriously injured during the commission of an interracial crime. We also assess the probability of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. A multilevel city analysis shows that black offenders are no more apt than white offenders to injure their victims seriously during an interracial robbery or rape. A black offender also does not have a greater proclivity to kill his or her victim during the commission of an interracial crime. Some evidence suggests that white victims are more likely than black victims to suffer serious physical harm during an aggravated assault. Results also reveal that contextual factors related to racial animosity, such as residential segregation, white‐to‐black economic inequality, and black‐to‐white unemployment, fail to have any moderating effect on either the severity of victim injury or the likelihood of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. Overall, the results generated in this study tend to cast doubt on the validity of racial animosity theory. Our findings also lead us to question the veracity of the oftenmade claim that black‐on‐white crimes are punished more severely because these types of offenses are somehow more heinous in circumstance. At least in regard to serious victim injury and victim death, black‐on‐white crime is no more violent than white‐on‐black crime.

The state of California passed the Smoke-Free Workplace Act on January 1, 1995. This legislation effectively banned indoor smoking in all public and private workplaces including restaurants. Many restaurant owners, especially owners of restaurants that served alcohol, opposed the ban for fear that their businesses would be affected adversely because of the loss of patrons who smoked. Using an interrupted times-series autoregressive integrative moving average study design, the authors assess the effect of California's indoor smoking ban on revenue rates for all restaurants, for non-alcohol-serving restaurants, and for alcohol-serving restaurants. Results showed that revenues for alcohol-serving restaurants dropped by about 4% immediately following the establishment of the indoor smoking ban. However, this reduction was temporary because revenues for alcohol-serving restaurants quickly returned to normal levels. Findings also revealed that the indoor smoking ban had little observable impact on the revenue rate for restaurants overall and for nonalcohol-serving restaurants.

In response to political pressure, the state of Florida repealed its mandatory motorcycle helmet-use law for all operators and passengers older than the age of 21, effective July 1, 2000. Using monthly data and a multiple time-series design, the authors assessed the effect of this law change on serious injury and fatality rates for motorcycle riders aged 21 and older. Controls for serious injury and fatality rates for motorcycle riders younger than 21 years of age were included in the analyses. Maximum-likelihood results showed that the repeal of the mandatory helmet-use law in Florida had little observable effect on serious injuries or on fatalities that resulted from motorcycle crashes. Policy implications of these findings are discussed, and explanations are given as to why the repeal of the mandatory motorcycle helmet-use law in Florida was inconsequential.

Using longitudinal data calibrated in daily intervals and a vector ARMA (VARMA) study design, we investigate the causal relations among the number of crimes reported to the police, the frequency of arrest, and the number of defendants held in pretrial jail confinement. Results show a lagged negative effect of frequency of arrest on reported crime. As the number of wrests made by police increases, the number of index crimes reported to authorities decreases substantially the following day. Additionally the analysis reveals a significant positive contemporaneous relationship between criminal activity and arrest levels. No feedback effects among the three variables are noted. In sum, our findings add empirical support to the thesis that the instantaneous and lagged relationship between crime and clearances are of opposite sign. That is, criminal activity increases arrest levels instantaneously, or at least relatively so, while the negative effect of arrest levels on crime levels transpires more gradually.

Although available empirical evidence suggests that Minnesota's Determinate Sentencing Law has had little effect on prison incarceration, it is still uncertain whether the sentencing guidelines affected jail use. A few recent studies imply that the guidelines have had a positive effect on jail incarceration rates. Accounts have pointed to preexisting trends, more severe sanctioning of repeat property offenders, and judicial concern with prison overcrowding as possible underlying causes of this observed increase. Using longitudinal data and an ARIMA study design, we investigate the validity of these competing explanations. Our findings show that the onset of the sentencing guidelines increased judicial use of the jail sanction beyond the effect of preexisting trends. In addition, the effect of mitigated dispositional departures from the no prison/prison outcome on jail use is salient only when prison population levels are high. This latter finding supports the thesis that judicial concern with prison overcrowding motivated judges to circumvent the guidelines in order to shift the burden of incarcerating offenders from the state to the local level. The policy implications of these results for determinate sentencing reform are discussed.

Using an interrupted time‐series design, this research note analyzes the long‐term effect of Minnesota's sentencing guidelines on reducing unwarranted disparity in sentencing outcomes that fall within their scope of authority. Unwarranted disparity is defined as residual variation not attributable to legally mandated sentencing factors. Findings suggest that although the sentencing guidelines initially reduced disparity for the no prison/prison sentencing decision, inequality began to revert to preguideline levels as time passed. Further analysis revealed that the guidelines had a permanent impact on reducing disparities in decisions on the length of prison sentence. Overall we observed an 18% decline in disparity for the no prison/prison outcome and a 60% reduction in inequality for the judicial decision as to length of prison sentence. Two explanations for the reversionary trend in the no prison/prison series are highlighted.

The authors explore the relation among social demographic characteristics, occupational prestige, and anti‐Semitism in America. The National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (1986) data are used to assess Americans' attitudes toward Jews. The results suggest that respondents' age, gender, and educational level are important predictors of anti‐Jewish sentiment. The influence of age, however, contravenes previous research in that young Americans report themselves to be anti‐Semitic. Reanalysis of these same data, focusing on Americans' attitudes toward Israel, suggests that age is an important factor for explaining anti‐Zionism. Implications of these findings are discussed.

Previous research examining the association between criminal suspect's race and the likelihood of arrest has produced inconsistent findings. Social scientists remain unsure as to whether Black or White criminal suspects have a higher probability of arrest. Still others find no substantive association between a criminal suspect's race and the likelihood of arrest. This study contributes to the extant literature by examining the relationship between a criminal suspect's race and the arrest sanction for the crime of homicide while controlling for the strength of physical evidence linking the criminal suspect to the crime. Although strength of physical evidence against a defendant in a criminal case has been repeatedly shown to be important in determining a variety of criminal justice processing outcomes, it has typically been excluded from research studies examining the arrest decision due to data limitations. Logistic regression results show that Black homicide suspects are not more likely than similarly situated White homicide suspects to be arrested by police. Results also show that Black-on-White homicides are not more apt than other offender–victim racial combinations to culminate in an arrest. Based on these findings, it appears that a homicide suspect's race does not play a noteworthy role in influencing the likelihood of arrest after accounting for the strength of physical evidence gathered against the criminal suspect in the case.

Abstract
A contentious issue regarding immigration is the contempt that many natives hold for immigrants. Studies report that enhanced job competition, the potential for cultural misunderstandings, and security fears are salient in predicting native population discontent for immigrants. However, the threat posed by terrorism has been overlooked in prior research. Using data drawn from twenty mostly European countries and a nonlinear hierarchical modeling statistical procedure, we find that acts of terrorism are associated with a substantive decrease in the desire for outgroup immigration. No effect of terrorism on ingroup immigration is observed. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.