Vicarious Violence: Spatial Effects on Southern Lynchings, 1890-1919

Likelihood Based Inference and Prediction in Spatio-Temporal Panel Count Models for Urban Crimes

“…In parallel with this variance reduction the estimated spatial lag coecient ρ has also been reduced from 0.442 to 0.374 but remains statistically highly signicant indicating that socio-economic similarities between census tract help to explain part, but not all, of the spatial clustering in severe crime rates. Also, it conrms the spatially diusive and contagious nature of severe crime (Tolnay et al, 1996, Moreno and Sampson, 1997and Loftin, 1996.…”

“…Those theories point to several indicators of structural (environmental, urbanistic, sociological and economic) conditions which may help predicting the geographical distribution of crime rates. Structural predictors used in empirical studies include measures for population structure (size and density), composition of the resident population (percentage of white and African-American population, age structure), family cohesion (percentage of female-headed households, divorce rate), socio-economic structure (income gures, unemployment rates), and condition of buildings and houses (rental and homeowner vacancy rates) see, e.g., Land et al (1990), Tolnay at al. (1996, Baller et al (2001), Kubrin (2003), and Helbich and Arsanjani (2014).…”

“…Thus, modelling spatial correlation is critical when assessing the marginal eects of structural covariates on crime rates. The second reason is that spatial dependence by itself is of substantive importance in crime analysis since positive spatial autocorrelation is interpreted as evidence of the spatially diusive and contagious nature of certain types of crime (see, Tolnay et al, 1996 andSampson, 1997). Such eects may reect interacting criminals and gangs linked together by rivalry networks (Tita and Greenbaum, 2008) and/or`subcultural' processes in which case violence spreads throughout the population and regional areas via direct social contacts (Loftin, 1986).…”

The Diffusion of Collective Violence: Infectiousness, Susceptibility, and Mass Media Networks

“…Tolnay, Deane, and Beck (1996) show spatial effects among lynching events in southern counties, although some of these effects are difficult to classify as diffusion since lynching events seem to depress rates of lynching in nearby counties. Using the event history approach, Soule (1997) found evidence of diffusion effects among a series of college antiapartheid shantytown protest in the 1980s (Strang and Soule [1998] provide a more thorough review of this and related work).…”

“…Two related but distinct approaches have been taken to diffusion issues. The first approach focuses on spatial effects, which may provide evidence of social diffusion effects (Land and Deane 1992;Land, Deane, and Blau 1991;Tolnay 1995;Tolnay, Deane, and Beck 1996;Morenoff and Sampson 1997). Under this approach, the dependent variable is assumed to be affected not just by the usual kinds of predictors, but also by the value of the dependent variable in nearby areas.…”