The Politics of Negotiating the Terrorist Problem in Indonesia

Although Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) is a pan-Southeast Asia jihadi network, it has been able to headquarter itself in Indonesia, where it has also been able to find the lion's share of its recruits. This article finds that there is little support for hardline Islamic political movements, or even violent jihadi groups, from the wider population. Yet at the same time the public is skeptical about the existence of an international terrorist problem. Not only is there general denial amongst the Indonesian population but Indonesia's political leaders have had to tread carefully on the issue. Indonesia has had a degree of success in denting the JI network but confronting terrorism on the whole is fraught with political difficultiesnotably the impression that the war on terrorism might be a plot to weaken the Islamic world.     

Gender-Based Differences

One of the most pressing concerns of women's rights groups is the reform of sexist attitudes and practices within the criminal justice system. One method of redressing the problem would be a major increase in the number of women in positions of power within the criminal justice system. This study casts doubt on the effectiveness of this strategy to meliorate the sexist attitudes and practices. Not only were the attitudes of female probation officers regarding sexual assault more benign than those of their male colleagues, but also sex offenders processed by female officers received significantly more lenient sentences.     

CAN HOT SPOTS POLICING REDUCE CRIME IN URBAN AREAS? AN AGENT‐BASED SIMULATION*

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing consensus among researchers that hot spots policing is an effective strategy to prevent crime. Although strong evidence exists that hot spots policing will reduce crime at hot spots without immediate spatial displacement, we know little about its possible jurisdictional or large‐area impacts. We cannot isolate such effects in previous experiments because they (appropriately) compare treatment and control hot spots within large urban communities, thus, confounding estimates of area‐wide impacts. An agent‐based model is used to estimate area‐wide impacts of hot spots policing on street robbery. We test two implementations of hot spots policing (representing different levels of resource allocation) in a simulated borough of a city, and we compare them with two control conditions, one model with constant random patrol and another with no police officers. Our models estimate the short‐ and long‐term impacts on large‐area robbery levels of these different schemes of policing resources. These experiments reveal statistically significant effects for hot spots policing beyond both a random patrol model and a landscape without police. These simulations suggest that wider application of hot spots policing can have significant impacts on overall levels of crime in urban areas.     

REASONS FOR REPORTING AND NOT REPORTING DOMESTIC VIOLENCE TO THE POLICE*

The National Crime Victimization Survey is used to examine factors that encourage and inhibit victims of domestic violence from calling the police. Victims of domestic violence are less likely than victims of other types of violence to call the police because of their privacy concerns, their fear of reprisal, and their desire to protect offenders, but they are more likely to call for self‐protection and because they perceive domestic assaults as more serious. As a result of these and other offsetting factors, victims of domestic violence are just as likely as other victims of assault to call the police.