The southern subculture of violence is a theoretical perspective that has been examined by numerous scholars in an attempt to explain the high rates of violence in the Southern United States. Research over the past several decades has converged on a few explanations for this violence, including a culture of honor, a frontier mentality, and a presence of evangelical Protestantism. The primary focus of this research has been on either male offending or race disaggregated offending. The influence of the southern subculture of violence on female offending has only recently come to the forefront and has concentrated on relatively recent time periods (1990s to present). The present study examines the effect of southern culture on female-perpetrated homicides in the 1970s, a time when female offending was on the rise. Utilizing a southern subculture of violence index, our county-level negative binomial regression analysis finds that in counties with more Southern-born residents and a higher presence of evangelical Protestantism, female homicide offending is higher. Implications of these results and avenues for future research are discussed.
Civic community theory has emerged in the last 10 years as a middle range theory to explain community variation in rates of crime. It has proven to be particularly powerful for explaining variations in violent crime across rural communities in the U.S. This essay provides a review of the available published literature testing components of the theory. The three main conceptual dimensions of the civic community thesis are outlined, and the nature of the empirical evidence is evaluated. The essay concludes with several suggestions for future research.
We draw on in-depth interview data collected from participants in communities impacted by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita to explore how public and private sector decision makers express their understanding of the disaster recovery process. Two key themes emerged from our interviews and served as the central categories under which other issues were grouped: 1) disaster impacts; and 2) recovery activities. Disaster impacts included effects on community-level human capital, infrastructure, and the psychological/psychosocial toll wrought by the hurricanes. Community recovery activities in the wake of the storms included navigating financing/funding issues, employment growth, and more ambitious planning processes. A key finding from our analysis is the interconnectedness of the various themes discussed by participants. The implications of our findings are then discussed.
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