Evaluating the impact of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) initiative on violence and gun crime in Tampa: does it work and does it last?

Journal of Experimental Criminology - Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN) is an increasingly popular violence and gun crime prevention program which aims to identify prolific violent offenders, and...     

Inked into Crime? An Examination of the Causal Relationship between Tattoos and Life-Course Offending among Males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development

Purpose

There have been a number of prior studies that have investigated the relationship between tattoos and crime with most documenting evidence of an association. Specifically, prior research often suggests that individuals with tattoos commit more crime, are disproportionately concentrated in offender and institutionalized populations, and often have personality disorders. Having said this, the bulk of the prior research on this topic has been correlational.

Methods

In the current study, we rely on data from a prospective longitudinal study of 411 British males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and employ propensity score matching to determine if the link between tattoos and crime may in fact be causal.

Results

Results suggest that having tattoos is better considered as a symptom of another set of developmental risk factors and personality traits that are both related to tattooing and being involved in crime rather than as a causal factor for predicting crime over the life-course.

Conclusions

Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.     

The Question of Religion and World Politics

ABSTRACT

In this essay we introduce this special volume on the role of religion in world conflict. We develop a common definition of religion which focuses on five ways religion can influence society and politics: (1) as a basis for identify; (2) as a belief system that influences behavior; (3) through formal religious doctrines; (4) as a source of legitimacy; and (5) through its religious institutions. We discuss why the issue of religion has in the past received little attention from social scientists. Finally, we develop a set of common questions which the other authors in this volume address. These questions are designed to create a better understanding of the role religion plays in world conflict as well as how international relations theory can help us understand this role.     

Adaptation and the foreign policy bureaucracy: The experience of federal states

Members of the Commonwealth do not use the title ‘ambassador’ for the heads of diplomatic missions which they send to one another. Instead, they use the title ‘high commissioner’. This article firstly examines how the office of high commissioner emerged to meet the representational needs of states owing allegiance to a common sovereign. Secondly, it explains why the office survived the transformation of the British empire into the modern Commonwealth of sovereign states. Thirdly, the article considers the factors that continue to make the office appealing to its holders and a diplomatic asset to their states.     

What the surrender of extra‐territoriality will mean to us

The paper argues that during the Mandate period the Labor Zionist movement was able to successfully create a Sabra identity based on its ideology that was constructed in opposition to the presumed characteristics of the “exile Jew” and how such an identity played a central role in the formation of a security oriented foreign policy. Labor's creation of the Sabra through the "Hebrew Revolution" can be considered as one of the most successful episodes of the twentieth century in which a new identity was created in order to serve ideological goals. Labor's Zionist ideology, which sought to create a “new Jew” that would form the basis of the Jewish national movement, was translated into an identity that in contrast to the diaspora Jew relied on collectivism, agriculture, secularism, and most important of all physical strength and sacrifice in defence of the Jewish nation. This translated into a security-oriented foreign policy that heavily relied on military force and emphasized internal power and strength, which Labor elites argued could only be achieved through self-reliance and independence particularly in regards to defence issues. Such an orientation would form the basis of Israeli foreign policy for years to come.     

Do perceptions of neighborhood disorganization predict crime or victimization? An examination of gang member versus non-gang member jail inmates

This study examines the effects of perceptions of social disorganization on crime perpetration and victimization among a sample of incarcerated adult gang and non-gang members. Using survey data from 2,414 jail inmates, results suggest that gang members are significantly more likely than non-gang members to be both perpetrators and victims of property and personal crimes. Results also indicate substantive similarities and differences between gang members and non-gang members with regard to crime, victimization, and perceptions of social disorganization. Inmates’ perceptions of the level of social disorganization in their neighborhoods are more strongly related to their reported offending behavior than to their reported victimization.     

Look who's stalking: Obsessive pursuit and attachment theory

Few criminological theories have been applied to the study of stalking perpetration, and even fewer address the presence of underlying psychological mechanisms. Attachment theory describes the ways in which an individual with a chaotic family environment in childhood may develop feelings of insecurity that may lead to increased aggression and violent behavior in adolescence and adulthood. In this study, a sample of college students (N = 2,783) were queried on self-reported stalking behaviors and the revised Experiences in Close Relationships (ECR-R) measure of adult attachment. Stalkers scored significantly higher on the insecure-anxious scale of attachment and lower on insecure-avoidant scale. Other psychological variables (major/minor psychiatric diagnoses, depression, and anger-related issues) were also examined, with a history of anger-related diagnosis or treatment positively and significantly associated with stalking perpetration. Implications for theory development in stalking and future research directions are discussed.     

Neuropsychological and Criminological Features of Female Homicide Offenders

Few studies have examined life history and cognitive characteristics unique to female homicide offenders. Understanding these characteristics could aid in risk assessment for extreme violence in this group of offenders. The current study utilized t‐tests or chi‐square tests to compare 27 female and 81 male homicide offenders on psychiatric, neurologic, criminal, and cognitive characteristics. Additionally, we explored the role of abuse history in female offenders through Kruskal–Wallis or Fisher's exact tests. Results indicate that in comparison with male counterparts, females are more likely to have history of mood disorder, borderline personality disorder, and abuse. Cognitively, female homicide offenders exhibit circumscribed cognitive impairment in verbal abilities and perform similarly to male homicide offenders across most cognitive tasks. Within the female offender group, history of sexual abuse is associated with higher rates of impulsive homicide and poorer verbal abilities. These findings provide preliminary evidence for distinct factors associated with homicide in women.