Does Media Violence Cause Violent Crime?

Over the past 60 years, hundreds of studies have shown that viewing violence in the media can influence aggressive behaviour. However, the vast majority of these studies are laboratory based, and tell us little about how media violence influences real criminal behaviour. This paper reviews research involving crime statistics, offender populations, and longitudinal studies to evaluate the claim that such a link exists. When integrated with other long-term studies on the development of crime, it is concluded that the link between media violence and crime is weak after other environmental factors are taken into account.     

From ethnocide to ethnoviolence: Layers of native American victimization

The contemporary phenomenon of ethnoviolence - otherwise known as hate crime - has its roots deeply embedded in the historical persecution of Native Americans by representatives of 'the state and private individuals alike. Genocidal policies and practices of the past have their present counterparts in anti-activist and anti-treaty violence, as well as in isolated acts of violence against individual Native Americans. This paper traces the threads that bind together the (d)evolution from ethnocide to ethnoviolence.     

A Multilevel Analysis of the Vulnerability,Disorder, and Social Integration Models of Fear of Crime

The current research tests three conceptual models designed to explain citizens’ fear of crime—vulnerability, disorder, and social integration. These models are assessed for differential impact across the cognitive and affective dimensions of fear of crime. The analysis reported here considers the consecutive and simultaneous influence of individual- and city-level factors using multilevel modeling techniques. Recently collected survey data for 2,599 citizens nested within 21 cities across Washington State provide the empirical evidence for the analysis. Results indicate that the disorder model is best able to explain variation in both the cognitive and affective dimensions of citizens’ fear of crime across cities. The vulnerability and social integration models explain significantly less variation. Further, the vulnerability model lacks directional consistency across the observed dimensions of fear. Societal implications of the research findings are discussed.

The Gender Gap in Violent Victimization, 1973–2004

In this paper, data from the NCS and NCVS are developed for the purpose of describing long-term trends in male and female violent victimization for the period 1973–2004. More specifically, gender-specific trends in violence are compared according to crime type and victim–offender relationship. Despite their potential usefulness, these data have not been published previously. The data reveal that the gender gap in robbery victimization has remained relatively stable while the gender gaps in aggravated and simple assault victimization have narrowed over time. Results varied when the data were disaggregated by victim–offender relationship. Male and female rates of nonstranger simple assault and nonstranger robbery were roughly equivalent throughout the period, and the greater risk for male nonstranger aggravated assault that was evident three decades ago has largely disappeared. The gender gap persists in stranger assault, but has narrowed somewhat because male rates of victimization have declined more than female rates. In addition, male and female trends and the gender gap in nonlethal intimate partner violence differ from the patterns established in intimate partner homicide studies. The paper concludes with a discussion of research that is needed to understand why the gender gap in violent victimization has changed for some types of violence but not others, and how greater attention to gender will improve efforts to understand crime trends.

Fear of Crime in the Swedish Daily Press—Descriptions of an Increasingly Unsafe Society

Fear of crime is a subject that is described increasingly often in the daily press. In spite of this, very few studies have examined how the press describes fear of crime. This article focuses on how fear of crime is presented, in what context, and who is labelled as fearful in the Swedish daily press. The theoretical frameworks are theories about the risk society and how fear of crime can be understood in a society characterized by risk, uncertainty, and worry. The current study analyses articles from four national daily newspapers employing a qualitative, thematic content analysis. In the analysis, four principal themes were distinguished: fear of crime defined, fear of crime personified, fear of crime situationalized, and fear of crime contextualized. The articles examined describe an increasingly unsafe society characterized by rising crime, particularly in the suburbs, which is producing fear among women and children. Male police officers are also described as being afraid and as no longer being able to protect the public. The daily press establishes clearly who should be afraid of crime, which crimes produce fear, and where and why people are afraid. The articles formulate special ways of describing fear of crime, in which fear appears as a natural and expected reaction to life in an increasingly unsafe and violent society.     

Is the Impact of Alcohol Consumption on Violence Relative to the Level of Consumption?

Two ideas concerning the link between bullying in school and violence on the streets are investigated. (1) Bullying and victimization in school is a product of the school situation and people's inability to choose their levels of exposure to others. According to this hypothesis, bullying is largely a phenomenon that is isolated to the school context. (II) Bullying behaviour in school and inflicting damage to others outside school is a reflection of a more general aggressive behaviour pattern and, hence, bullying in school and violence on the streets will, to a great extent, involve the same individuals. The literature offers suggestions that either could be the case. Participants were 2915 14-year-olds in a medium-sized county in Sweden who responded to a self-report questionnaire.Theresults showed that bullying others in school was strongly linked to violent behaviour and weapon-carrying on the streets, both among boys and girls. It was also found that bullying others in school was related to being violently victimized on the streets. The findings remained the same when statistically controlling for loitering and nights spent away from home, which were both related to bullying behaviour. It is concluded that bullying behaviour in school is in many cases a part of a more general violent and aggressive behaviour pattern and that preventive efforts targeting individuals with bullying behaviour in school could, according to the present study, decrease violence among adolescents out in the community as well.     

Understanding the Role of Repeat Victims in the Production of Annual US Victimization Rates

Victimization incidence rates produced from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) are a generally accepted annual indicator of the amount and type of crime in the United States. However, persons who report a large number of similar victimizations—known as series victimizations in the NCVS—are currently excluded in government reports of annual violent victimizations. This paper quantifies the effect of series incident counting procedures on national estimates of violent victimization. The findings suggest that these high-volume repeat victims can have a significant impact on the magnitude and distribution of violent victimization. Current government counting rules that exclude series incidents do not include about three out of every five violent victimizations and distorts the characterization and risk of violence in the United States. However, the inclusion of series incidents introduces significant estimate instability. One remedy is to use prevalence rates in concert with incidence rates to present a more complete and reliable picture of victimization.

Perception of Seriousness and Concern about White-Collar Crime: Some Results of an Opinion Survey Among Swiss Banks

Scientifically, little is known about white-collar crime in Switzerland or concern about white-collar crime and even less about how concerned bank employees are about this criminality. This article is based on a small opinion survey of Swiss bank employees and tries to explore perceptions of seriousness and concern about white-collar crime among people who, in their position, might have to face this issue regularly. Past assumptions on the public’s indifference towards white-collar crime seem not to be confirmed in this study as the results obtained demonstrate a greater sensitivity with respect to white-collar crime and especially towards crimes perpetrated by corporations. Even though Swiss bank employees do qualify white-collar offences as very serious acts, they are still more punitive with regard to ordinary crimes.     

Alcohol and rape: An “economics-of-crime” perspective

Using a panel of state-level data over the years 1982–2000, this study explores the potential relationship between alcohol policy, alcohol consumption, and rape by considering a number of theoretical and methodological issues. First, the potential relationship is examined in the context of an economics-of-crime model, controlling for various deterrence and opportunity cost variables. Second, unlike most studies, consumption of liquor and wine are considered as well as consumption of beer. A third focus is on the potential endogeneity of alcohol consumption. A fourth consideration dictates the focus on rape-rates rather than other violent crime rates. Several studies have discovered a tendency for relatively high alcohol consumption by both offenders and victims. Since rape victims are virtually all female, and at least some alcohol policy variables appear to have differential impacts on females and heavy-drinking males, an examination of policy impacts for rape-rates, unlike other types of violent crime, can suggest the nature of the alcohol-consumption–violence relationship. The empirical results support an “alcohol-increases-potential-victims-vulnerability” hypothesis. In the context of the economic theory of crime, this lowers the expected cost of rape to potential offenders and raises rape-rates. Tests for endogeneity of alcohol consumption and resulting simultaneous equation estimates reinforce this implication because they suggest that potential victims respond to relatively high rape-rates by reducing alcohol consumption.     

Secondary Victimizations in Missing Child Events

This paper examines the incidence and nature of secondary victimizations (attempted and completed physical assault, sexual assault, and robbery) in a population of missing children (nonfamily abducted, family abducted, runaway/thrownaway, general/benign missing). Using data from the NISMART-2 studies, the following questions are addressed: How much secondary criminal victimization of children occurs in the context of missing children events, and what is the nature of this victimization? Are some categories/ types of missing children event more likely to result in secondary victimization than others? Is the risk for secondary victimization greater for some missing children than others (e.g., are age or race factors)? Are the outcomes of missing child events which include secondary victimizations different in significant ways from those which do not (more likely to be associated with harm for children or more likely to involve public resources like law enforcement)?     

Rape Co-occurrence: Do Additional Crimes Affect Victim Reporting and Police Clearance of Rape?

Despite the increased research attention given to rape and violence against women, little is known about rape co-occurrence, or rape incidents that involve another crime. Although previous research has found certain incident characteristics increase the likelihood that a victim reports her rape to police and that the offender is arrested and prosecuted, the relationship between co-occurrence and these responses is unknown. Given this gap in the literature, the main goal of the present research is to provide an initial understanding of rape co-occurrence and its effect on victim reporting and police clearance. To explore these issues, this study uses two national data sources that collect the requisite incident-level information: the National Crime Victimization Survey and the Uniform Crime Reporting Program’s National Incident-Based Reporting System. Few rapes are found to co-occur with other crimes. When rapes do occur with other crimes, though, they are more likely than solo-occurring rapes to involve weapons, strangers, additional injury to the victim, and multiple offenders. Rapes that co-occur also are more likely to be reported to police and cleared by police than rapes that occur with no other crimes.

The natural history of extended co-offending

Most criminal acts are committed in very small groups or alone, and are repeated sporadically. But that is not always the case. Co-offending can include larger groups, cooperating sequentially or simultaneously, knowing each other or at least knowing about one another. We may use the term “extended co-offending” to subsume varieties of crime organization, crime networks, gangs, and criminal clusters. Extended co-offending also includes vaguely organized crime repetitions, and is a matter of degree. Criminal cooperation can be extended in time, space, numbers of persons involved, and types of criminal action. The extension process has a very wide span of possibilities. Drawing ideas from Max Weber and others, this paper suggests that the natural history of criminal cooperation progresses in four stages, with steeply decreasing prevalence: (1) primordial clusters of offenders, (2) small-scale charismatic leadership of offenders, (3) a medium-scale patrimonial system of offenders, and (4) and an extended patrimonial system of criminal cooperation. Primordial co-offending occurs on a very local level, with little or no hierarchy or systematic repetition. Extended criminal cooperation usually requires personal trust among offenders, favoring patrimony over formal organization.     

New Evidence on the Monetary Value of Saving a High Risk Youth

There is growing interest in crime prevention through early youth interventions; yet, the standard United States response to the crime problem, particularly among juveniles, has been to increase the use and resource allocation allotted toward punishment and incapacitation and away from prevention and treatment. At the same time, longitudinal studies of delinquency and crime have repeatedly documented a strong link between past and future behavior and have identified a small subset of offenders who commit a large share of criminal offenses. These findings suggest that if these offenders can be identified early and correctly and provided with prevention and treatment resources early in the life course, their criminal activity may be curtailed. While researchers have studied these offenders in great detail, little attention has been paid to the costs they exert on society. This paper provides estimates of the cost of crime imposed on society by high risk youth. Our approach follows and builds upon the early framework and basic methodology developed by Cohen (J Quant Criminol 14: 5–33, 1998), by using new estimates of the costs of individual crimes, ones that are more comprehensive and that significantly increased the monetary cost per crime. We also use new estimates on the underlying offending rate for high risk juvenile offenders. We estimate the present value of saving a 14-year-old high risk juvenile from a life of crime to range from $2.6 to $5.3 million. Similarly, saving a high risk youth at birth would save society between $2.6 and $4.4 million.