EXTENDING SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: A MULTILEVEL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF VIOLENCE AMONG PERSONS WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES*

Prior studies of violence among individuals with mental illnesses have focused almost exclusively on individual‐level characteristics. In this study, I examine whether the structural correlates of neighborhood social disorganization also explain variation in violence. I use data on 270 psychiatric patients who were treated and discharged from an acute inpatient facility combined with tract‐level data from the 1990 U.S. Census. I find that living in a socially disorganized neighborhood increased the probability of violence among the sample, an effect that was not mediated by self‐reported social supports. Implications for future research in the areas of violence and mental illness are discussed.     

DO DISADVANTAGED NEIGHBORHOODS CAUSE WELL‐ADJUSTED CHILDREN TO BECOME ADOLESCENT DELINQUENTS? A STUDY OF MALE JUVENILE SERIOUS OFFENDING,INDIVIDUAL RISK AND PROTECTIVE FACTORS,AND NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT*

This paper presents a study of the relationship between type of neighborhood socioeconomic context, individual characteristics (individuals are classified by a set of selected key measures of individual dispositions and social situation) and serious male juvenile offending (prevalence and early and late onsets) in the city of Pittsburgh. The analytical strategy may best be described as holistic and epidemiological. The key research question is whether onset and prevalence of juvenile serious offending is invariant by neighborhood socioeconomic context when controlling for individual sets of risk and protective characteristics. The results do not support the notion that neighborhood socioeconomic context has any greater direct impact on the early onset of serious offending. However, neighborhood socioeconomic context appears to have a direct impact on the late onset of offending for those juveniles who score high on protective factors, or who have a balanced mix of risk and protective factors. No support was found for the notion that individual risk characteristics and neighborhood risk are additive. Children and adolescents with high scores on risk characteristics offend in serious crime at a similar high rate regardless of the socioeconomic context of their neighborhood.     

The Acute and Enduring Consequences of Exposure to Violence on Youth Mental Health and Aggression

The bulk of “neighborhood effects” research examines the impact of neighborhood conditions cross-sectionally. However, it is critical to understand whether the effects of neighborhood context are situational and whether they endure over time. In this study, we take seriously the notion that there are enduring consequences of exposure to deleterious neighborhood conditions. Using a rich set of longitudinal data on adolescents from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, we estimate the effect of exposure to violence on both internalizing (depression and anxiety) and externalizing problems (aggression). We find that exposure to violence has both an acute and enduring effect on aggression, yet no effect on anxiety-depression, net of individual, family, peer, and neighborhood influences. Part of the enduring effect of violence exposure is explained by changes in social cognitions brought on by the exposure, yet much of the relationship remains to be explained by other causal mechanisms.     

Community violence in context: risk and resilience in children and families

Although some community violence research has examined the context of community violence, including the social, economic, and structural organization of neighborhoods, more needs to be learned about family, school, and community-level factors that may promote and lessen the incidence and prevalence of community violence. In addition, further research is needed on various social, environmental, and contextual factors hypothesized to protect youth from exposure. This article (a) reviews and examines the relation between neighborhood context and risk of violence exposure, (b) reviews current literature on predictors of community violence and mental health and behavioral consequences for children and families adversely affected by community violence, (c) examines sources of resilience and community strengths that extend beyond the individual, (d) discusses the contributions and limitations of current conceptualizations of risk and resilience, and (e) highlights directions for future research. Information from this review can inform community and government efforts to lessen community violence through prevention and treatment.     

Why is the Victimization of Young Latino Adults Higher in New Areas of Settlement?

Objectives

We used multilevel data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) to identify factors that account for differences in risk of violent victimization among young Latino adults in new and traditional settlement areas.

Methods

Area-identified NCVS data (2008–2012) were linked with census tract data from the decennial census and American Community Survey to study individual and community contributions to the risk of violent victimization. We analyzed total violence and violence specific to offense types and victim-offender relationship. The analyses were performed adjusting for the complex survey design.

Results

Young Latino adults in new settlement areas have higher victimization rates than their counterparts in traditional areas for total violence and for the majority of violence types studied. Holding constant individual and other contextual factors, Latino population density is a key neighborhood characteristic that explains the observed area differences in victimization, yielding evidence for the hypothesis that co-ethnic support in a community helps protect young Latino adults and contributes to differences in victimization across areas. Also there is evidence that the protective role of Latino population density is stronger for violence involving non-strangers than it is for violence involving strangers. Moreover, we find that the concentration of Latino immigrants, which indicates the neighborhood potential for immigrant revitalization, is another neighborhood factor that protects young Latino adults in both new and traditional settlement areas. However, there is some but limited evidence that the neighborhood-revitalizing role of immigration might be smaller in some contexts (such as some new areas outside central cities), possibly because those areas are heterogeneous in their ability to promote the integration of immigrants.

Conclusions

Our analysis of the NCVS shows the importance of neighborhood factors for the risk of violence among young Latino adults. It provides evidence consistent with co-ethnic support and immigrant revitalization theories. The findings also suggest that the effects of those neighborhood factors may be contingent upon violence type and the context in which they occur. These findings help us understand the difference in the safety of young Latino adults in new and traditional areas.

     

Race,Neighborhood Disadvantage,and Violence Among Persons with Mental Disorders: The Importance of Contextual Measurement

The individualistic fallacy (i.e., the fallacy of assuming that individual-level outcomes can be explained exclusively in terms of individual-level characteristics) is a problem with most research on violence, and is particularly problematic in research on mental disorder and violence. This article illustrates the importance of measuring community context by showing that race is not an important predictor of violence among persons with mental disorders when neighborhood disadvantage is controlled statistically. More generally, these results suggest that researchers run the risk of perpetuating the individualistic fallacy in studies of violence by persons with mental disorders when they use individual-level risk factors as predictors, but do not control for community context.     

Assessing change in dynamic risk factors in forensic psychiatric inpatients: relationship with psychopathy and recidivism

This study explored change in dynamic risk for violence using the Clinical and Risk Management subscales of the Historical Clinical and Risk Management-20 version 3 (HCR-20 v3) and sought to determine whether change was associated with violent recidivism. The association between the magnitude of change and psychopathy was also assessed. Participants were 40 male (n = 32) and female (n = 8) forensic psychiatric inpatients discharged from a secure forensic mental health service. Results showed that participants significantly improved on the HCR-20v3 Clinical subscale but significantly worsened on the Risk Management subscale. Psychopathy was unrelated to change in Clinical and Risk Management subscales. The hypothesis that changes in dynamic risk would predict recidivism over and above total pre-treatment risk (HCR-20v3 Total score) and psychopathy was not supported. These results suggest that improvements in mental state risk factors alone are insufficient with regard to lowering violence risk.     

12-Month Prevalence,Trends, Gender Differences,and the Impact of Mental Health Services on Intimate Partner Violence Perpetration Among Discharged Psychiatric Inpatients

Minimal research has examined partner violence committed by individuals with severe mental illness. This study examined rates of IPV in the first year post-discharge from psychiatric hospitalization, trends over time, gender differences, and the impact of follow-up mental health services. One in five (20.3 %) patients committed at least one act of IPV in the first year. Whereas women were more than twice as likely to perpetrate IPV, men were nearly twice as likely to be violent toward non-family members. Risk of IPV was highest immediately post-discharge and decreased over time, with the sharpest decline after 20 weeks in the community. Mental health treatment was associated with a 40 % decrease and medication non-adherence a 50 % increase in risk for IPV. Partner violence is a prevalent concern among discharged psychiatric patients, and these findings suggest that coordinated risk management efforts should focus on the time immediately following hospital discharge.     

Neighborhood Disadvantage, Individual Economic Distress and Violence Against Women in Intimate Relationships

A continuing debate in sociological criminology involves the association of crime with economic disadvantage at both aggregate and individual levels of analysis. At the aggregate level, data from law enforcement sources suggest that rates of intimate violence are higher in disadvantaged neighborhoods. Disadvantaged neighborhoods may experience higher rates of intimate violence for compositional or contextual reasons, or rates may only appear to be higher because of differential reporting. Similarly, at the individual level, intimate violence appears more common among couples that are economically distressed, but whether economic distress triggers intimate violence is not certain. Using data from waves 1 and 2 of the National Survey of Families and Households and from the 1990 U.S. Census, we investigate the effects of neighborhood economic disadvantage and individual economic distress on intimate violence against women. Controlling for violence at time 1 and other individual level characteristics, we find that neighborhood economic disadvantage, neighborhood residential instability, male employment instability, and subjective financial strain influence the likelihood of violence at time 2. The relationship between neighborhood disadvantage and intimate violence appears to reflect both compositional and contextual effects.     

A comparison of the effects of witnessing community violence and direct victimization among children in Cape Town, South Africa

This study is based on a sample of children from the Cape Town area in South Africa. The study compares the effects of witnessing school or neighborhood violence compared with being victimized in each context on psychological distress. The findings suggest that in the context of the school, victimization has a somewhat stronger effect on distress than witnessing violence. However, in the neighborhood, the opposite was the case. "Unknown locus of control" was also analyzed as a moderating variable. The findings are interpreted in the context of violence in South African society. The study also investigates the overlap between witnessing violence, victimization, and perpetration in the child's school and neighborhood. The vast majority of victims had been witnesses as well as perpetrators. Longitudinal research, which could track involvement in various forms of violence starting at a very early age, is needed to clearly assess the differential impact of each form of violence.     

THE VICTIM–OFFENDER OVERLAP IN CONTEXT: EXAMINING THE ROLE OF NEIGHBORHOOD STREET CULTURE*

Although numerous studies have found a strong relationship between offending and victimization risk, the etiology of this relationship is not well understood. Largely absent from this research is an explicit focus on neighborhood processes. However, theoretical work found in the subculture of violence literature implies that neighborhood street culture may help to account for the etiology of this phenomenon. Specifically, we should expect the magnitude of the victim–offender overlap to vary closely with neighborhood‐based violent conduct norms. This research uses waves 1 and 2 of the Family and Community Health Study (FACHS) to test the empirical validity of these notions. Our results show that the victim–offender overlap is not generalizeable across neighborhood contexts; in fact, it is especially strong in neighborhoods where the street culture predominates, whereas it is significantly weaker in areas where this culture is less prominent. These results indicate that neighborhood‐level cultural processes help to explain the victim–offender overlap, and they may cause this phenomenon to be context specific.     

Intimate Partner Violence in Extremely Poor Women: Longitudinal Patterns and Risk Markers

Despite high revalence rates of intimate partner violence in the lives of extremely poor women with dependent children, few studies have investigated the patterns of violence that occur over time, and the characteristics of women that serve as risk markers for partner violence. This paper describes patterns of domestic violence longitudinally and uses multivariate analyses to delineate childhood and adult risk markers for recent intimate partner violence in this population of women. Analyses draw upon a sample of 436 homeless and extremely poor housed mothers receiving welfare, in a mid-sized city in Massachusetts with a large Hispanic population of Puerto Rican descent and relatively fewer Blacks. We found that among women with complete longitudinal data (N=280), almost two-thirds experienced intimate partner violence at some point during their adult life by the end of study follow-up, and that the abuse before and after the baseline interview was episodic and limited over time. To examine the role of individual women's factors, while controlling for partner characteristics, we used baseline data on women who had been partnered during the past year (N=336). Among childhood predictors, we found that sexual molestation contributed most significantly to adult intimate partner violence that occurred during the past year prior to the baseline interview. Adult risk markers included inadequate emotional support from non-professionals, poor self-esteem, and a partner with substance abuse problems. Having a partner with poor work history was another independent predictor of recent abuse. Ethnicity did not significantly predict whether women were abused or not during the past year, contrary to other findings reported in the literature.     

NEIGHBORHOOD CONTEXT AND NONLINEAR PEER EFFECTS ON ADOLESCENT VIOLENT CRIME*

Although evidence of the strong correlation between deviant behavior and exposure to deviant peers is overwhelming, researchers have yet to investigate whether a nonlinear functional form better captures this relationship than does a linear form. Researchers also have yet to examine the extent to which peer effects vary as a function of the neighborhood context. To address these issues, we use data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine 1) the functional form of the relationship between peer violence exposure and self‐reported violent crime and 2) the extent to which the effect of exposure to violent peers on violence is ecologically structured. Estimates from logistic hierarchical models indicate that the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime decreases at higher values of peer violence, as reflected in a nonlinear relationship (expressed in terms of log‐odds). Furthermore, exposure to violent peers increases along with neighborhood disadvantage, and the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime is attenuated as neighborhood disadvantage increases, which is reflected in a cross‐level peer violence/disadvantage interaction.     

Mental Disorder, Violence, and Gender

Recent studies have reported comparable rates of violence among men and women with mental disorder, raising important issues for clinical risk assessment. This study examines the relationship between gender and violence using data from the MacArthur Violence Risk Assessment Study. Patients in acute psychiatric wards were interviewed 5 times over the year following their discharge to the community. Results showed some differences between men and women in the violence committed immediately following discharge, with rates for men being higher. But the prevalence of violence over the 1 year was similar for female and male discharged patients. However, there were substantial gender differences in the situational context of the violence committed. Men were more likely to have been drinking or using street drugs, and less likely to have been adhering to prescribed psychotropic medication, prior to committing violence. The violence committed by men was more likely to result in serious injury than the violence committed by women, and men were more likely than women to be arrested after committing a violent act. Women were more likely to target family members and to be violent in the home.     

ASSESSING NEIGHBORHOOD AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGICAL INFLUENCES ON CHILDHOOD VIOLENCE IN AN AFRICAN‐AMERICAN SAMPLE*

The present study examines the extent to which neighborhood and social psychological influences predict childhood violence among 867 African‐American youth. The results showed that neighborhood affluence was the only neighborhood‐level variable to exert a significant influence on childhood violence. Furthermore, childhood violence was significantly related to social psychological influences, such as adopting a street code, associating with violent peers, parental use of violence, and quality parenting. Overall, the findings suggested that simply living in a violent neighborhood does not produce violent children, but that family, peer, and individual characteristics play a large role in predicting violence in childhood.     

Intimate Partner Homicide: Risk Assessment and Prospects for Prediction

Little is known about assessing the risk of intimate partner homicide (IPH). Research has shown that women killed by an intimate partner scored higher than abuse survivors in retrospectively measured risk for IPH. In this study, we examined the characteristics of 146 men who committed an actual or attempted act of IPH. Of these, 42% had prior criminal charges, 15% had a psychiatric history, and 18% had both; events which could feasibly have permitted a prior formal assessment of risk. We also identified a subsample of 30 who could be scored on the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA; Hilton et al., Psychological Assessment, 16, 267–275, 2004). The mean ODARA score was at the 80th percentile of risk for domestic violence, although only 13 had a previously documented partner assault. We conclude that co-operation among sectors responding to domestic violence and the shared use of validated risk assessment will increase the prediction and potential prevention of IPH.     

Neighborhood Advantage,Relative Status,and Violence Among Foreign-Born Adolescents

Immigrant families and contexts are protective for delinquency, even though recent immigrants are more likely to be poor and reside in disadvantaged settings. Yet it is unclear whether the protective effects of immigrant status depend on the match between family SES and neighborhood advantage. This study examines the interplay among immigrant status, family SES, and neighborhood advantage in predicting adolescent violence. Using multilevel longitudinal data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (N = 1,908), findings show that first-generation adolescents from low-SES families have the highest odds of violence in the most advantaged contexts, exceeding that of even third-generation adolescents. In contrast, high-SES first-generation adolescents have the highest probability of violence in less advantaged contexts, but the lowest in the most advantaged neighborhoods. The results identify conditions under which the protective nature of immigrant status is eroded, and highlight the importance of relative status for understanding violence among foreign-born adolescents.     

MENTAL DISORDER AND VIOLENT VICTIMIZATION: THE MEDIATING ROLE OF INVOLVEMENT IN CONFLICTED SOCIAL RELATIONSHIPS*

This study examines whether the relationship between mental disorder and violent victimization is attributable to the disproportionate involvement of mentally disordered people in conflicted social relationships. The data consist of a sample of discharged psychiatric patients (N= 270) and a sample of nonpatients (N= 477) drawn from the same neighborhoods. Results show that mentally disordered patients were more likely to be victimized by violence and to be involved in conflicted social relationships. Moreover, involvement in conflicted social relationships mediated the effect of mental disorder on violent victimization, a result that held when illegal drug use by the patients was taken into account. Implications for research and theory are discussed.     

Neighborhood Characteristics, Peer Networks, and Adolescent Violence

Although ecological researchers consistently find high rates of crime and violence within socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods, there is little consensus as to why this pattern exists. To address this question, we use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (n=12,747) to examine three related research questions. Are neighborhood characteristics associated with adolescent violence net of compositional and selection effects? Are neighborhood characteristics associated with adolescents’ exposure to violent and prosocial peers? Does peer exposure mediate the neighborhood characteristics–violence association? Results indicate that across a wide range of neighborhoods, socioeconomic disadvantage is positively related to adolescent violence net of compositional and selection effects. Additionally, neighborhood disadvantage is associated with exposure to violent peers, and peer exposure mediates part of the neighborhood disadvantage–violence association. Joining structural and cultural explanations for violence, our findings suggest that neighborhood disadvantage influences adolescent violence indirectly by increasing opportunities for youth to become involved in violent peer networks.     

Risk Factors of Violence against Women in Peru

Based on the results of previous investigations, this study seeks for individual, relationship and community characteristics among women living with their partner associated with intimate partner violence [IPV] victimization. The sample of 19,131 women was taken from the 2016 Peru Demographic and Health Survey. A binomial logistic regression model showed among the most significant risk factors: heavy drinking by the woman’s partner (OR = 8.655, p < .001), having witnessed parental domestic violence (OR = 1.496, p < .001) and having experienced physical punishment during childhood (OR = 1.306, p < .001). Other factors related to higher odds of IPV at the individual level include employment and low educational attainment. Relationship risk factors comprise, 25 to 29 years of relationship duration, living in cohabitation, previous unions and low socioeconomic status. At the community level, living in an urban residence increases the likelihood of abuse. These findings highlight the need to include these factors, in the IPV prevention strategies.