Exploring the Drugs-Homicide Connection

Although research generally assumes a close relationship between drugs and violence, very little is known about the many different roles drugs can play in criminal events. Drug related as an event classification scheme is relatively common in homicide research, as well as other areas of inquiry, and is usually understood to be an important component in the causal processes of criminal events. Yet such classification schemes often suggest a simple, unidimensional construct. In reality, drug-related crimes are com-plex events. The purpose of this researchwas first to disaggregate the concept of drug-related homicide by providing an event classification scheme that conceptualizes the diverse roles drugs play in drug-related events.Acategorical coding scheme is presented that is similar to that proposed by Goldstein (1995) and later tested by Brownstein and colleagues (Brownstein & Goldstein, 1990; Brownstein, Baxi, Goldstein, & Ryan, 1992) that specifies three distinct types of homicide events. Included among these are (a) events that involved no evidence of illicit drugs associated with the homicide event, (b) those that involved the presence of drugs or drug use at the scene as well as events where either the victim and/or offender were buying or selling drugs (we term this peripherally drug-related homicides), and (c) events where the sale or use of drugswas the motivating feature of the homicide event. In some situations, there may be overlap between categories b and c; however, category c is distinct in that it includes features of motivation. The second purpose was to determine the relative importance of various situational and contextual characteristics of homicide events in understanding different types of drug-related events. Delineating these features will be an important step in filling in the gaps of knowledge about the assumed relationship between drugs and violence

Modeling Violence against Women in India: Theories and Problems

This paper examined the following issues: 1. Is ‘violence against women’ a variable? What kind of variable is it? 2. Is it theoretically plausible to model ‘violence against women’? 3. If it is theoretically plausible to model ‘violence against women’, then is it feasible to estimate such a model and perform simulation exercises? Following are findings: 1. The decision to perpetrate ‘violence against women’ is a binary variable, which takes value unity (1) when the decision is ‘yes’ and zero (0) when the decision is ‘no’. 2. It is theoretically plausible to construct the models of estimating and forecasting the probability of occurrence of ‘violence against women’ facing a typical woman in a particular society on the basis of necessary information. 3. It is not feasible in practice to apply above models for the purposes of policy-formulation and policy-simulation in India because of absence of compilation or systematic compilation of the data on ‘violence against women’ and the variables determining ‘violence against women’

Spatial Concentration of Opioid Overdose Deaths in Indianapolis: An Application of the Law of Crime Concentration at Place to a Public Health Epidemic

The law of crime concentration at place has become a criminological axiom and the foundation for one of the strongest evidence-based policing strategies to date. Using longitudinal data from three sources, emergency medical service calls, death toxicology reports from the Marion County (Indiana) Coroner’s Office, and police crime data, we provide four unique contributions to this literature. First, this study provides the first spatial concentration estimation of opioid-related deaths. Second, our findings support the spatial concentration of opioid deaths and the feasibility of this approach for public health incidents often outside the purview of traditional policing. Third, we find that opioid overdose death hot spots spatially overlap with areas of concentrated violence. Finally, we apply a recent method, corrected Gini coefficient, to best specify low-N incident concentrations and propose a novel method for improving upon a shortcoming of this approach. Implications for research and interventions are discussed

Group Threat, Police Officer Diversity and the Deadly Use of Police Force

Prior research indicates that (perceived) group threat measured in terms of population shares and race-specific crime rates are important explanations for variations in police killings across cities in the United States. The authors argue that a diverse police force that proportionally represents the population it serves mitigates group threat and thereby reduces the number of officer-involved killings. The findings represent one of the first analysis of a highly relevant contemporary issue based on a recent and high-quality dataset from 2013 to 2015. By highlighting the interaction between group threat and the proportional representation of minority groups in police departments, the research advances group conflict and threat theories with important theoretical and policy implications for law enforcement and representative bureaucracies more broadly

Gang Wars: The Failure of Enforcement Tactics

This report attempts to clarify some of the persistent misconceptions about gangs and to assess the successes and failures of approaches that have been employed to respond to gangs. We undertook an extensive review of the research literature on gangs because we believe that the costs of uninformed policy making -- including thousands of lives lost to violence or imprisonment -- are simply too high

Women’s disengagement from legal proceedings for intimate partner violence in southern Spain: Variables related to legal proceedings

This article studies the relationship between a set of variables related to the legal process and women’s disengagement from legal proceedings against their (ex)partners in Southern Spain. A total of 345 women answered a questionnaire. Results evidenced that request for a protection order (PO), granting such PO, imprisonment of the offender, and women’s perception of who decided during the process were significantly related to disengagement (medium effect size). In addition, a logistic regression model was developed to predict disengagement with two variables: granting a PO and women’s perception of who decided. Results are interpreted in terms of the necessity that the judicial system gives support, protects, and provides women with opportunities to participate in the recovery process.Junta de Andalucía 1071/0453Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (España) FPU15/0037

Fluctuation Scaling, Taylor’s Law, and Crime

Fluctuation scaling relationships have been observed in a wide range of processes ranging from internet router traffic to measles cases. Taylor’s law is one such scaling relationship and has been widely applied in ecology to understand communities including trees, birds, human populations, and insects. We show that monthly crime reports in the UK show complex fluctuation scaling which can be approximated by Taylor’s law relationships corresponding to local policing neighborhoods and larger regional and countrywide scales. Regression models applied to local scale data from Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire found that different categories of crime exhibited different scaling exponents with no significant difference between the two regions. On this scale, violence reports were close to a Poisson distribution (α = 1.057±0.026) while burglary exhibited a greater exponent (α = 1.292±0.029) indicative of temporal clustering. These two regions exhibited significantly different pre-exponential factors for the categories of anti-social behavior and burglary indicating that local variations in crime reports can be assessed using fluctuation scaling methods. At regional and countrywide scales, all categories exhibited scaling behavior indicative of temporal clustering evidenced by Taylor’s law exponents from 1.43±0.12 (Drugs) to 2.094±0081 (Other Crimes). Investigating crime behavior via fluctuation scaling gives insight beyond that of raw numbers and is unique in reporting on all processes contributing to the observed variance and is either robust to or exhibits signs of many types of data manipulation

One-punch laws, mandatory minimums and ‘alcohol-fuelled’ as an aggravating factor: implications for NSW criminal law

Abstract: This article critically examines the New South Wales State Government’s latest policy response to the problem of alcohol-related violence and anxiety about ‘one punch’ killings: the recently enacted Crimes and Other Legislation Amendment (Assault and Intoxication) Act 2014 (NSW). Based on an analysis of both the circumstances out of which it emerged, and the terms in which the new offences of assault causing death and assault causing death while intoxicated have been defined, I argue that the Act represents another example of criminal law ‘reform’ that is devoid of principle, produces a lack of coherence in the criminal law and, in its operation, is unlikely to deliver on the promise of effective crime prevention in relation to alcohol-fuelled violence

An Ethical Duty to Charge Batterers Appropriately

Access to a gun increases the likelihood that a batterer will kill his victim. Studies indicate that the risk of fatality increases five‐fold when a firearm is available during an incident of domestic abuse. This risk led Congress to pass the Lautenberg Amendment,18 U.S.C. § 922(g)(9), which criminalizes the possession of a firearm by any person convicted of domestic violence. When the Supreme Court recently accepted certiorari in a case involving the Lautenberg Amendment, many observers feared that a restrictive interpretation would jeopardize the efficacy of the gun ban for domestic abusers. The Court’s ruling on March 26, 2014, did not seem to weaken the Lautenberg Amendment. The reality, however, is that the Lautenberg Amendment was egregiously ineffective even before the Court’s ruling, and the “victory” in the recent case masks an enduring problem in the enforcement of the gun ban. Specifically, the charging practices of local prosecutors have minimized the opportunities to apply the federal firearms disability for convicted abusers. When local prosecutors undercharge domestic violence – by sidestepping charges that would clearly signal the defendant’s disability, or by consenting to charges that would likely result in expunction – they thwart the intent of Congress to disarm convicted batterers. Each year federal prosecutors only charge approximately fifty among hundreds of thousands of convicted domestic abusers who possess guns. This article proposes an ethical rule that would obligate all prosecutors to charge domestic violence offenses appropriately. In jurisdictions adopting the rule, the federal gun ban and other ancillary consequences intended by federal and state legislators would be more likely to attend a conviction for domestic violence. The article concludes by addressing foreseeable objections to the proposed rule