Sexual Violence in the Backlands

Abstract

This research focuses on structural covariates of sex crimes in rural communities (using urban and urbanizing communities as comparison groups), with particular analysis on exploring how the magnitude and direction of such covariates differ with respect to type of sex crime. Using 2000 sex crime data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for the population of reporting U.S. cities, negative binomial and logistic regression procedures were used to explore the relationship between resource disadvantage, local investment, and economic inequality and sex crime subtypes. For sex crimes that occurred almost exclusively in the home, urban and urbanizing community rates were largely influenced by resource disadvantage and local investment, while these measures did not reach significance for explaining rural rates. Conversely, local investment was a significant predictor of sex crimes that occurred outside the home in rural communities. This research indicates that a structural analysis of sexual victimization (widely absent from the scientific literature) does yield significant findings and that disaggregation of crime into subtypes allows for a more detailed differentiation between urban and rural communities.

Pathways to delinquent and sex offending behavior: The role of childhood adversity and environmental context in a treatment sample of male adolescents

“…Both exposure to community violence and community economic adversity have been identified as factors associated with poor outcomes among youth Jutte et al, 2015;Tolan, 2016). A third community variable, rurality, has similarly been noted in the criminological research as deserving of consideration in clarifying pathways to criminality and sexually abusive behavior (Braithwaite, 2015;Kaylen & Pridemore, 2013;Osgood & Chambers, 2000). Thus, these three community-level factors -community violence, economic adversity, and rurality -will be reviewed in the context of how they interact with individual-level adversity to influence pathways to delinquent and sexual offending.…”

“…Numerous prevailing theories emphasize the role of early developmental adversities in the etiology of delinquent and sexually abusive behaviors (e.g., Grady, Levenson, & Bolder, 2016;Lussier, 2015;Moffitt, 1993;Piquero, Jennings, & Barnes, 2012;Ward & Beach, 2005). Others focus primarily on sociological explanations of crime and use a macro-level approach to conceptualizing these problem behaviors (e.g., Bandura, 1969Bandura, , 1977Braithwaite, 2015;Sampson & Groves, 1989;Shaw & McKay, 1942). While no theoretical framework is without criticisms and limitations, some models have prevailed in receiving substantial empirical support thus far.…”

“…Regarding empirical study, previous research demonstrated how the disorganization of communities and neighborhoods is associated with criminal offending and delinquency (Shaw & McKay, 1942;Sampson & Groves, 1989), violence (Sampson, Raudenbush, & Earls, 1997), and sexual offending (Braithwaite, 2015;Tewksbury, Mustaine, & Covington, 2010). Furthermore, indicators of social disorganization have been identified as so-called "concentrated disadvantage", a concept which includes community poverty level, use of public assistance, unemployment rates, percentage of ethnic minorities, number of female-headed households, residential stability, and concentration of immigrants (Mustaine, Tewksbury, Huff-Corzine, Corzine, & Marshall, 2014).…”

“…In sum, there is substantial evidence suggesting that indicators of social disorganization are related to rates of delinquency and sexual offending in a given area. However, there are few studies investigating community correlates of sexual offending patterns, particularly in rural and underserved communities (Braithwaite, 2015).…”

“…More specifically, economic adversity has been linked to symptoms of psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depression; PTSD; Finkelhor et al, 2013), lower academic achievement (Nikulina, Widom, & Czaja, 2011), chronic conduct problems (Schonberg & Shaw, 2007), and being arrested (Nikulina et al, 2011), all of which can exacerbate already perilous situations (Hetling & Zhang, 2010). With regard to sexual offenses, Braithwaite (2015) found that resource disadvantage -measured as an aggregate of poverty level, family disruption, low educational achievement, and unemployment -explained a significant variation in sexual offense rates in urban and urbanizing communities. Hence, economic adversity is a public health concern that impacts millions of U.S. residents each year and has a wide range of consequences.…”