Neighborhood Influences on Perceived Social Support Among Parents: Findings from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods

Background: Social support is frequently linked to positive parenting behavior. Similarly, studies increasingly show a link between neighborhood residential environment and positive parenting behavior. However, less is known about how the residential environment influences parental social support. To address this gap, we examine the relationship between neighborhood concentrated disadvantage and collective efficacy and the level and change in parental caregiver perceptions of non-familial social support. Methodology/Principal Findings: The data for this study came from three data sources, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) Study's Longitudinal Cohort Survey of caregivers and their offspring, a Community Survey of adult residents in these same neighborhoods and the 1990 Census. Social support is measured at Wave 1 and Wave 3 and neighborhood characteristics are measured at Wave 1. Multilevel linear regression models are fit. The results show that neighborhood collective efficacy is a significant ($\beta$ = .04; SE = .02; p = .03), predictor of the positive change in perceived social support over a 7 year period, however, not of the level of social support, adjusting for key compositional variables and neighborhood concentrated disadvantage. In contrast concentrated neighborhood disadvantage is not a significant predictor of either the level or change in social support. Conclusion: Our finding suggests that neighborhood collective efficacy may be important for inducing the perception of support from friends in parental caregivers over time

A Test of Evolutionary Policing Theory with Data from Human Societies

In social groups where relatedness among interacting individuals is low, cooperation can often only be maintained through mechanisms that repress competition among group members. Repression-of-competition mechanisms, such as policing and punishment, seem to be of particular importance in human societies, where cooperative interactions often occur among unrelated individuals. In line with this view, economic games have shown that the ability to punish defectors enforces cooperation among humans. Here, I examine a real-world example of a repression-of-competition system, the police institutions common to modern human societies. Specifically, I test evolutionary policing theory by comparing data on policing effort, per capita crime rate, and similarity (used as a proxy for genetic relatedness) among citizens across the 26 cantons of Switzerland. This comparison revealed full support for all three predictions of evolutionary policing theory. First, when controlling for policing efforts, crime rate correlated negatively with the similarity among citizens. This is in line with the prediction that high similarity results in higher levels of cooperative self-restraint (i.e. lower crime rates) because it aligns the interests of individuals. Second, policing effort correlated negatively with the similarity among citizens, supporting the prediction that more policing is required to enforce cooperation in low-similarity societies, where individuals' interests diverge most. Third, increased policing efforts were associated with reductions in crime rates, indicating that policing indeed enforces cooperation. These analyses strongly indicate that humans respond to cues of their social environment and adjust cheating and policing behaviour as predicted by evolutionary policing theory

Common trends in the US state-level crime. What do panel data say?

This paper aims to investigate the long-run relationship between crime, inequality, unemployment and deterrence using state-level data for the US over the period 1978- 2013. The novelty of the paper is to use non-stationary panels with factor structures. The results show that: i) a simple crime model well fits the long run relationship; ii) income inequality and unemployment have a positive impact on crime, whereas deterrence displays a negative sign; iii) the effect of income inequality on crime is large in magnitude; iv) property crime is generally highly sensitive to deterrence measures based upon police activities

Participatory values-based risk management for the water sector

Water planning and management are faced with increasing levels of uncertainty, complexity and conflict. Multiple decision makers and managers, legislative requirements, competing interests, scarcity of resources, deskilling of management agencies and large uncertainties about the future in a more connected and rapidly changing world, are all drivers for the need to develop improved approaches to aid decision making in the water sector. This paper proposes a participatory valuesbased risk management approach , designed to help to make uncertainties explicit, structure complexity in more understandable forms, increase collaboration and manage conflict. The approach will be explained through a case study example: the creation of the Lower Hawkesbury Estuary Management Plan in NSW, Australia. This process, driven by local government, included three interactive stakeholder workshops based on stages of a generalised participatory modelling process to aid decision making and the Australian and New Zealand Standard for Risk Management (AS/NZS 4360:2004), as well as an external scientific and legislative review. A range of stakeholders from state and local governments, the water authority, local industries, community associations and residents took part in the process stages of: initial context establishment including the definition of estuarine values, issues and current management practices; risk assessment based on the stakeholder defined values (assets) and issues (risks); and strategy formulation to treat the highly prioritised risks as input to the estuary management action (or risk response plan). As the plan has not been finalised or implemented, the external process effectiveness can not yet be properly gauged. However, preliminary evaluation results appear to demonstrate that the process is efficient from time and budgetary perspectives and has a number of other potential benefits which will be outlined in this paper. Other lessons learnt and possible suggestions for best-practice when using such an approach in future water sector applications will also be highlighted

Participatory values-based risk management for the water sector

International audienc

Crime, deterrence and unemployment in Greece: a panel data approach

This study empirically examines the relationship among crime, deterrence and unemployment in Greece. A regional dataset over the period 1991-1998 was collected and analysed. Our econometric methodology follows the Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator applied to dynamic models of panel data. The results show that property crimes are significantly deterred by higher clear-up rates and that unemployment increases crime. For violent crimes, however, the effect of the clear-up rate and unemployment are found to be generally insignificant. Finally, our results may provide support to policy makers in forecasting criminal activity in the current economic downturn under a wave of harsh austerity measures, budget cuts and increased unemployment. © 2011 Western Social Science Association