Politics, culture, and political crime: Covariates of abortion clinic attacks in the United States

This study examined crime and violence against abortion clinics, testing elements of several theories that may help explain the variation of such attacks. The study theoretically and methodologically improved upon the prior research on abortion-related crime and violence. Theoretically, it investigated previously unexamined hypotheses from the social movement literature that may be relevant to this type of behavior. Methodologically, it used more careful measures for several variables, employed unique and heretofore ignored data bases, and examined hundreds of criminal acts across several types of crime (e.g., violence, vandalism, and harassment) directed at abortion clinics. Employing robust logistic regression and correcting for clustering of clinics by state, the study investigated the cross-sectional effects of state-level cultural and structural characteristics on anti-abortion crimes against clinics and staff. Results indicated that some crimes against clinics are more likely in areas where female empowerment is weaker, female victimization is more tolerated, and the anti-abortion movement has failed to reduce abortions.     

Laws without teeth: An overview of the problems associated with corruption in Ukraine

This paper presents an overview of the current problems of corruption in Ukraine. It provides an example of specific corruption practices in the country and describes the general provisions related to the fight against corruption in Ukraine. The paper presents preliminary results of a pilot study of corruption in Ukraine to examine the impact of corruption on thefinancial markets. We support the proposition of Claessens, Djankov, andKlingebiel (2000) that the development of financial institutions and the improvement of financial market services in a nation can be viewed as indicators of the effectiveness of the economic, political, and legal reforms and the dedication of the government to these reforms. The paper ends with a discussion of the role of the international community in the fight against corruption in Ukraine.     

Democratization and Political Change as Threats to Collective Sentiments: Testing Durkheim in Russia

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.     

Education and Marriage as Protective Factors Against Homicide Mortality: Methodological and Substantive Findings from Moscow

This study examines the protective effects of education and marriage against homicide mortality in Russia. Individual data are obtained from death records and population data from the 1994 micro-census, and differentials in mortality from homicide are estimated employing two different methods: a straightforward approach using census data and proportional mortality analysis. We find that the latter underestimates the impact of education on homicide mortality. Despite differences in effect sizes, however, both methods reveal a significantly higher risk of homicide victimization for those that are unmarried and less educated. We conclude that education and marriage likely provide social capital and coping skills that protect individuals against violent victimization, even during times of dramatic social change and dire economic circumstances such as those faced in transitional Russia.     

Differences in female and male involvement in lethal violence in Russia

Relatively little is known of the distributions of homicide event characteristics in non-Western nations in which women relative to men are involved. This article utilizes unique homicide narratives drawn from Russian court and police records to compare homicide victim, offender, and event characteristics by sex of victim and separately by sex of offender. Results from logistic regression show that homicides in which a female was the victim or offender were more likely to occur between intimates and to occur in the home, whereas homicides involving males were more likely to occur in a public place, to be alcohol-related, to involve a firearm, and to involve a victim and offender who did not know each other well. These results not only present an important first glimpse at women as homicide victims and offenders in Russia specifically, but also provide a point of comparison with findings from similar analyses undertaken in the West, and present further initial observations upon which to construct a cohesive theory about female involvement in serious violent events.     

The Impact of State Laws Protecting Abortion Clinics and Reproductive Rights on Crimes Against Abortion Providers: Deterrence, Backlash, or Neither?

Since Roe v. Wade, most states have passed laws either restricting or further protecting reproductive rights. During a wave of anti-abortion violence in the early 1990s, several states also enacted legislation protecting abortion clinics, staff, and patients. One hypothesis drawn from the theoretical literature predicts that these laws provide a deterrent effect and thus fewer anti-abortion crimes in states that protect clinics and reproductive rights. An alternative hypothesis drawn from the literature expects a backlash effect from radical members of the movement and thus more crimes in states with protective legislation. We tested these competing hypotheses by taking advantage of unique data sets that gauge the strength of laws protecting clinics and reproductive rights and that provide self-report victimization data from clinics. Employing logistic regression and controlling for several potential covariates, we found null effects and thus no support for either hypothesis. The null findings were consistent across a number of different types of victimization. Our discussion contextualizes these results in terms of previous research on crimes against abortion providers, discusses alternative explanations for the null findings, and considers the implications for future policy development and research.     

Social support and homicide in transitional Russia

Like the United States, Russia is a large industrialized nation with high violence rates. Although its overall homicide rate is among the highest in the world, however, local rates of crime vary widely. Similarly, the level of social support provided by the state varies throughout Russia due to former Soviet policies, the differential pace of political and economic change, and the level of development. Relying upon recent criminological literature on social support theory, this study tested the hypotheses that areas with higher levels of social support will have lower homicide rates and that the effects of negative socioeconomic change on homicide rates will be moderated by levels of social support. Utilizing data from Russian regions (n = 78) and controlling for other structural covariates, negative binomial regression was employed to estimate the effects of social support on regional homicide rates. As expected, negative socioeconomic change was associated with higher homicide rates, but the results provided no support for direct or conditioning effects of social support on homicide. The findings are discussed in the context of Russia-specific conditions and of the meaning of these findings for recent research on social support and crime.     

Specifying the role of exposure to violence and violent behavior on initiation of gun carrying: a longitudinal test of three models of youth gun carrying

Two waves of longitudinal data from 1,049 African American youth living in extreme poverty are used to examine the impact of exposure to violence (Time 1) and violent behavior (Time 1) on first time gun carrying (Time 2). Multivariate logistic regression results indicate that (a) violent behavior (Time 1) increased the likelihood of initiation of gun carrying (Time 2) by 76% after controlling for exposure to violence at Time 1, which is consistent with the stepping stone model of youth gun carrying, and (b) youth who were both exposed to violence at Time 1 and engaged in violent behavior at Time 1 were more than 2.5 times more likely to initiate gun carrying at Time 2 compared to youth who had neither of these characteristics, which supports the cumulative risk model of youth gun carrying. The authors discuss the implications of these findings in clarifying the role of violence in the community on youth gun carrying and the primary prevention of youth gun violence.