Race,Place, and Police-Caused Homicide in U.S. Municipalities

We test structural hypotheses regarding police-caused homicides of minorities. Past research has tested minority threat and community violence hypotheses. The former maintains that relatively large minority populations are subjectively perceived as threats and experience a higher incidence of police-caused homicide than whites do, the latter that higher rates of violent crime among minorities create objective threats that explain these disparities. That research has largely ignored some important issues, including: alternative specifications of the minority threat hypothesis; the place hypothesis, which maintains highly segregated minority populations are perceived as especially threatening by police; and police-caused homicide in the Hispanic population. Using data for large U.S. cities, we conducted total-incidence and group-specific analyses to address these issues. A curvilinear minority threat hypothesis was supported by the Hispanic group-specific findings, whereas the place hypothesis found strong support in both total and group-specific analyses. These results provide new insights into patterns of police-caused homicide.     

Population Size, Change, and Crime in U.S. Cities

The sometimes noted contradiction between cross-sectional and longitudinal relationships concerning city population size and crime rates is reexamined using more complex analytic procedures, controlling for extraneous variables, and allowing for non-monotonic relationships. Instead of a simple cross-sectional relationship between population size and crime rates, the more sophisticated analysis reveals either no association or a quadratic relationship. Similarly, instead of a simple lack of longitudinal relationship or a negative one, the more complicated analysis shows a non-monotonic pattern for three of six offenses. However, we contend that these divergent patterns for cross-sectional relative to longitudinal data are not necessarily indicative of an “anomaly.” Instead, they represent different aspects of a dynamic process in need of more extensive theorizing. Finally, the cross-sectional results showing that city size and crime rates are either not linked or when linked are in a non-monotonic pattern call into question one of the accepted relationships in criminology that have long guided thinking about crime.

Forcible rape,poverty, and economic inequality in U.S. metropolitan communities

In this paper we review and extend a recent analysis of the structural determinants of forcible rape by Smith and Bennett (1985) that builds upon the theoretical works of Blau and Blau (1982) and Schwendinger and Schwendinger (1983). They find that poverty, but not racial economic inequality, is a major contributor to the rape problem. Our replication and extension of their study question these findings and point to serious theoretical and methodological limitations of their analysis. Correcting for these difficulties, we find support for Blau and Blau's argument that high rates of metropolitan rape are an apparent cost of general and racial economic inequality (two forms of relative deprivation) but not poverty (absolute deprivation). The analysis strongly suggests that the rape problem is not beyond the reach of general and racial economic reform.     

Formal and informal control views in China,Japan, and the U.S.

Purpose

This study compared and contrasted the views of formal and informal crime control among college students from China, Japan, and the U.S., and examined the correlates behind the views.

Methods

Using the same questionnaire, this study collected data from 1,275 completed surveys in the three nations.

Results

The study revealed that both Chinese and Japanese respondents evaluated formal and informal control and their combination in crime control as more important than American counterparts did. The variable trust in police was a predictor of attitudes toward formal control and the mix of formal and informal control in all the three nations. Demographics in the U.S. were more important factors than in China and Japan in predicting the respondents' ranking of the importance of formal control and informal control and their combination in crime control.

Conclusions

This is the first empirically comparative study of the perceived importance of formal and informal mechanisms in crime prevention and control in China, Japan and the U.S. The study found both similarities and differences in the perceived importance and reasons behind them. More research is needed in the future.