In 2000 about half the violent crimesrape, sexual assault, robbery, and simple and aggravated assaultcommitted against persons age 12 or older were reported to the police, according to the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). About a third of both property crimesburglary, motor vehicle theft, and property theft-and pocket pickings or purse snatchings were also reported. Thirty-nine percent of the 25.4 million crimes estimated from victims' survey responses were reported to law enforcement authorities. On average from 1992 through 2000, 57% of robberies and 55% of aggravated assaults were reported to police. Thirty-one percent of rapes/sexual assaults were brought to the attention of the police. Overall violent crimes, rapes/sexual assaults, simple assaults, and serious violent crimes were reported to the police in higher percentages for 2000 than for the period 1992 through 1999. The reporting to police of violent crime victimizations overall increased from an annual average 43%, 1992-99, to 49% for 2000. The reporting of simple assaults increased from 37% to 44%.
Sex offender registries have been established throughout the United States. To date, 16 states have adopted additional residency restriction policies, precluding registered sex offenders from living within a certain distance of places where children gather. This study quantifies the impact of residency restrictions on housing options for registered sex offenders using Orange County, Florida, as a case study. A Geographic Information System (GIS) is employed to identify all occupied residential properties using parcel-level zoning data as well as those that fall within the 1,000-foot restricted buffer zones around attractions, bus stops, daycares, parks, and schools. Results indicate that housing options for registered sex offenders within urban residential areas are limited to only 5% of potentially available parcels and that bus stop restrictions impact the amount of livable area the most, followed by daycares, schools, parks, and attractions. The limited options to establish residency exist mostly in low-density rural areas. This supports the argument that residency restrictions for sexual offenders are a strong contributing factor to their social and economic isolation. The impacts of increasing the buffer to a proposed 2,500-foot zone are discussed, and a comparison of the individual restriction categories is presented.
The current research explores two important issues related to the study of bystander intervention during nonfatal violent victimization. First, using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), conjunctive analysis of case configurations is conducted to identify the most dominant situational contexts in which a bystander is present during violent crime. Second, the prevalence of responses in which a bystander helps or hurts during these events is determined. Results and the analytical approach used in this investigation are discussed in terms of their implications for future research on the normative and deviant reactions to crime by third parties and its victims.
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of user-defined parameters settings (e.g. interpolation method, grid cell size, and bandwidth) on the predictive accuracy of crime hotspot maps produced from kernel density estimation (KDE).
Design/methodology/approach
– The influence of variations in parameter settings on prospective KDE maps is examined across two types of interpersonal violence (e.g. aggravated assault and robbery) and two types of property crime (e.g. commercial burglary and motor vehicle theft).
Findings
– Results show that interpolation method has a considerable effect on predictive accuracy, grid cell size has little to no effect, and bandwidth as some effect.
Originality/value
– The current study advances the knowledge and understanding of prospective hotspot crime mapping as it answers the calls by Chainey et al. (2008) and others to further investigate the methods used to predict crime.
This study explores nonfatal violent victimization of Hispanic college students using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey. It compares annual victimization rates characterizing Hispanic students to non-Hispanic students and similarly aged Hispanics not enrolled in college. Results suggest a dramatic decline in student violent victimization rates for Hispanic and non-Hispanic students as well as Hispanics not enrolled in college over the past several years. Differences in the rates of violent victimization among Hispanic college students are identified, including factors related to characteristics of the victim, offender, and criminal incident. Finally, results are discussed in terms of their implications on future research as well as campus policies and administration.
Existing scholarship suggests that crime concentrates in close proximity to public bus stop locations. However, the importance of particular combinations of crime generators and attractors in the proximate environment around public bus stops has not been empirically documented. Drawing on previous environmental criminology research, the current study uses conjunctive analysis of case configurations to address questions about interpersonal violence around bus stops and other activity nodes in the proximate environment in Henderson, Nevada. Findings reveal that street robberies are highly clustered within a relatively small number of environmental contexts that are defined by specific combinations of activity nodes. They also show that bus stops are more likely than any other activity node to be found across dominant situational profiles of robbery, and that the relative risk of robbery associated with the presence/absence of bus stops varies widely on the basis of specific combinations of other activity nodes.
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