We examine the effect of alcohol consumption on an individual's risk of victimization for physical and sexual assault. Analyses of the National Violence Against Women Survey suggest that the frequency and amount of alcohol people consume has strong effects on their risk of victimization when drinking, but is not associated with their victimization while sober. This evidence suggests that drinking has a situational causal effect on victimization, and cannot be attributed to opportunity factors associated with drinking. This effect is particularly strong for men and young adults, who may be more likely to behave provocatively when under the influence. Victims of sexual assaults and men assaulted by their female partners are also particularly likely to be drinking.
We use data from the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Study (LAFANS) to examine the degree to which social ties and collective efficacy influence neighborhood levels of crime, net of neighborhood structural characteristics. Results indicate that residential instability and collective efficacy were each associated with lower log odds of robbery victimization, while social ties had a positive effect on robbery victimization. Further, collective efficacy mediated 77 percent of the association between concentrated disadvantage and robbery victimization, while social ties had no mediating effect. The mediation effect for concentrated disadvantage, however, was substantially weaker in the Latino neighborhoods (where it was 52%) than in the non‐Latino neighborhoods (where it was 82%), suggesting that a “Latino paradox” may be present in which crime rates in Latino neighborhoods appear to have less to do with local levels of collective efficacy than in non‐Latino neighborhoods. Implications for future research bearing on both the Latino paradox and the systemic model of social control are discussed.
Community registration laws requiring sex offenders to register with local law enforcement have become increasingly popular and increasingly restrictive in recent years. Although these laws were passed under the auspices of protecting communities from dangerous and violent sexual predators, little research has addressed their efficacy or their consequences. Building on a social capital framework that emphasizes the resources provided by local ties to family, friends, and the community, data from semistructured interviews with 23 sex offenders were analyzed to explore their experiences with local social capital while being registered and on and off of parole. Sex offenders discuss problems accessing and participating in networks of local social capital, incidents of community residential mobilization against them, and their experiences with formal barriers to social capital, including parole restrictions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.