Crime In The United States Research Articles

Levels and Changes in Defensive Firearm Use by US Crime Victims, 1987‒2021.

Objectives. To examine levels and temporal changes in the frequency of defensive gun use by US crime victims. Methods. We computed national-level counts of criminal incidents involving firearm defense during 3 periods: 1993 to 2005, 2007 to 2015, and 2016 to 2021. We also considered earlier national estimates for 1987 to 1990. The data came from the US Bureau of Justice Statistics National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). We counted firearm defenses as incidents in which victims used a gun to threaten or attack an offender. Results. Over the 4 periods, for all crimes, victims reported gun defenses in an average range of between 61 000 and 65 000 incidents per year. This included between 38 000 and 53 000 personal (violent) incidents and between 12 000 and 23 000 household (property) incidents. Conclusions. Firearm defenses occurred at a relatively low and nearly constant level over the 35-year period. Although some victims use guns for defense, these uses are infrequent compared with the incidence of crime. Public Health Implications. The continuing relative rarity of NCVS armed defenses suggests that claims about the protective benefits of widespread firearm ownership may be overstated. (Am J Public Health. 2024;114(12):1384-1387. https://doi.org/10.2105/AJPH.2024.307838).

Interstate Highway Connections and Traced Gun Transfers Between the 48 Contiguous United States

Interstate gun flow has critical implications for gun violence prevention, as gun transfers across state lines can undermine local gun control policies. To identify possible gun trafficking routes along interstate highways in the US. This repeated-measures, ecological, cross-sectional study used data from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives from January 1, 2010, to December 31, 2019, to examine associations between interstate connections via 13 highways that each spanned at least 1000 miles and interstate traced gun transfer counts for the 48 contiguous United States. Analyses were completed in November 2023. Characteristics of the origin states and the transportation connections between the destination state and the origin states. The main outcome was the total count of guns used in crimes in each destination state per year that were originally purchased in the origin state. Bayesian conditional autoregressive Poisson models were used to examine associations between the count of guns used in crime traced to interstate purchases and interstate highway connections between origin and destination states. Between 2010 and 2019, 526 801 guns used in crimes in the contiguous 48 states were traced to interstate purchases. Northbound gun transfers along the Interstate 95 corridor were greater than expected to New Jersey (incidence rate ratio [IRR], 2.80; 95% credible interval [CrI], 1.01-7.68) and Maryland (IRR, 3.07; 95% CrI, 1.09-8.61); transfers were similarly greater along Interstate 15 southbound, Interstate 25 southbound, Interstate 35 southbound, Interstate 75 northbound and southbound, Interstate 10 westbound, and Interstate 20 eastbound and westbound. This repeated-measures, ecological, cross-sectional study identified that guns used in crimes traced to interstate purchases moved routinely between states along multiple major transportation routes. Interstate gun transfers are a major contributor to gun crime, injury, and death in the US. National policies and interstate cooperation are needed to address this issue.

The relationship between psychopathy facets and types of criminal offences

AbstractThe Psychopathy Checklist—Revised (PCL‐R) is a widely used measurement of psychopathy comprising interpersonal, affective, lifestyle, and antisocial facets representing narrow‐band characteristics associated with the construct. However, there is little research on whether the distinct facets of psychopathy show specialised relationships with different types of criminal offences. The PCL‐R was administered to 138 adults incarcerated at a county jail. Arrests were coded into broad categories (i.e., crimes against persons, property or society), as well as for specific offence types (e.g. burglary, assault) using US crime definitions. Zero‐order correlations and zero‐inflated regression models showed significant relationships between: the lifestyle facet and property and societal crimes, mainly drug offences; the affective facet and crimes against persons; and the antisocial facet with all three major crime categories, as well as burglary, motor vehicle theft, robbery and assault. Overall, these results indicate that the PCL‐R facets offer unique information about specific forms of criminal behaviour.

Public Knowledge About White-Collar Crime in France and the US: A Cross-National Comparison

The few studies that measured public knowledge about white-collar crime and its consequences suggested a positive relationship between awareness and punitiveness. However, the participants were found to be, at best, only partially informed about upper-class criminality. Almost a decade later, whether public levels of information have increased is unknown. The present study proposes to (1) capture current levels of public knowledge about white-collar crime in the US and (2) determine if such knowledge is unique or shared by French citizens. A total of 1068 subjects, half of them from the US and the other half from France, answered an online survey that measured their awareness and acceptance of several key evidence-based facts about white-collar crime. Although US participants were found to be more knowledgeable than their French counterparts, they were still largely misinformed about elite deviance and more likely to endorse various myths. These findings imply that more work needs to be done to educate the public about this serious social issue and dispel unfounded beliefs which might affect legal responses to upper-word offenses.

Borderlines of Home Privacy Against Warrantless Home Entries under the United States Criminal Procedure

The protection of privacy interest can be extended to the curtilage including a garage, driveways, a front porch, and back yards surrounding the home for a single family home and locked common spaces for multi-unit dwellings. The United State Supreme Court in 2021 decided on whether a warrantless entry into a home is in violation of the Fourth Amendment of the United State Constitution which requires warrants before entering into private premises to search and seizure. The Court in Caniglia v. Strom held that the police need to obtain a warrant before entering into a home even if they perform community caretaking duties. The Court reasoned that community caretaking duties alone do not justify a warrantless home entry without exigent circumstances. In addition, the Court in Lange v. California ruled that the exigency-circumstances exception to the warrant requirement does not apply to a warrantless home entry during a hot pursuit in case of a fleeing misdemeanor. The Court relied on a case-by-case or case-specific approach, by rejecting a categorical approach in determining exigencies in hot pursuit of a fleeing misdemeanor suspect.
 The two cases emphasized the importance to protect an individual’s privacy interest in a home against the government’s unreasonable intrusions and warned a flat or categorical approach or application of previously-established case laws.
 This paper reviews the warrant requirement and its exceptions in relation to a warrantless home entry of the police. It analyzes two decisions together to observe how a community caretaking exception and an exigency-circumstances exception are applied to warrantless home entries. In addition, the paper attempts to review some provisions of Korean law addressing exceptions to the warrant requirement in case of exigencies related to home entries.

Understanding the battleground of identity fraud

Identity fraud has rapidly expanded into one of the fastest-growing white-collar crimes in the US. Beyond its substantial economic toll, resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the economy, identity fraud inflicts significant financial losses and mental distress upon its victims. With increasing online activity and the growing frequency of significant data breaches, the complexity and scale of identity fraud continue to grow. However, most academic research in this space has been focused on identifying cognitive behaviors and interventions at the individual level. Addressing a complex, multifaceted social issue like identity fraud necessitates a more comprehensive understanding of its underlying drivers at a broader macro level. We employed statistical methodologies to examine and analyze the factors influencing identity fraud in the US across a wide spectrum of variables using data from 2005 to 2021. A total of 12 explanatory variables, including macroeconomic indicators, sociodemographic factors, and criminal behavior, were analyzed. We identified the statistically significant variables associated with identity fraud through multiple linear regression, ANOVA, and multicollinearity analysis. Our analysis supported the hypothesis that the national unemployment rate, online banking usage, and incidence of fraud-related offenses were statistically significant variables in explaining identity fraud. Although not statistically significant, the increasing occurrence of data breaches and cyber-attacks and their implications for data security and privacy may warrant further attention. The overarching objective of this study was to establish a macro-level framework to understand identity fraud better, thereby fostering subsequent research and intervention efforts at both the individual and societal levels.

Money, Morality, and Modernity: A Javanese Remake of a 1930 American Whodunnit in 1960s Indonesia

Abstract Suparto Brata (1932–2015) belongs to the pioneers of the Western model of the whodunnit in modern Javanese literature. His early (1962) work Pethité Njai Blorong (The Tail of Nyai Blorong) is a remake of the 1930 whodunnit While the Patient Slept by the US crime novelist Mignon G. Eberhart (1899–1996), which is a murder mystery in true Agatha Christie fashion. This article shows how Suparto Brata did not simply reproduce Eberhart’s detective story in a postcolonial Indonesian setting but thoroughly and successfully reworked it until it hardly resembled its prototype anymore, turning a foreign example into a veritable modernist Javanese kind of Bildungsroman that mirrored 1960s Indonesian societal issues under the shadow of Sukarno’s nationalist policies and catastrophic economic conditions.

Forecasting US Crime Rates and the Impact of Reductions in Imprisonment: 1960–2025

Forecasting US Crime Rates and the Impact of Reductions in Imprisonment: 1960–2025

Understanding Public Opinion Toward the #StopAsianHate Movement and the Relation With Racially Motivated Hate Crimes in the US

#StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate are two of the most commonly used hashtags that represent the current movement to end hate crimes against the Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. We conduct a social media study of public opinion toward the #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate movement based on 46 058 Twitter users across 30 states in USA ranging from March 18, 2021 to April 11, 2021. To facilitate fine-grained analyses, the demographic information of the Twitter users, including age, gender, race/ethnicity, social capital, political affiliation, geolocation, family, income, and religious status, is either retrieved from the user profiles or inferred using classifiers. We find that the movement attracts more participation from women, younger adults, Asian, and Black communities. It is noteworthy that most of them are also active in other online movements related to racial or social issues, such as #BlackLivesMatter or #SayHerName; 51.56% of the Twitter users show direct support, 18.38% are news about anti-Asian hate crimes, and 5.43% show a negative attitude toward the movement. By conducting logistic regression, we find that the public opinion varies across user characteristics. Furthermore, among the states with most racial bias-motivated hate crimes, the negative attitude toward the #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate movement is the weakest. The majority of the top influencers are Asian–American reporters, journalists, or politicians. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first large-scale social media-based study to understand public opinion toward the #StopAsianHate and #StopAAPIHate movement. We hope that our study can provide insights and promote research on anti-Asian hate crimes and ultimately help address such a serious societal issue for the common benefits of all communities.

Beyond Policing: The Problem of Crime in America

Beyond Policing: The Problem of Crime in America

A Qualitative Systematic Review of Access to Substance Use Disorder Care in the United States Criminal Justice System.

Background: The majority of patients with a substance use disorder (SUD) in the United States do not receive evidence-based treatment. Research has also demonstrated challenges to accessing SUD care in the US criminal justice system. We conducted a systematic review of access to SUD care in the US criminal justice system. Methods: We searched for comprehensive qualitative studies in multiple databases through April 2021, and two researchers reviewed 6858 studies using pre-selected inclusion criteria. Once eligibility was determined, themes were extracted from the data. This review provides a thematic overview of the US qualitative studies to inform future research-based interventions. This review was conducted in compliance with the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA). Results: There were 6858 unique abstract results identified for review, and seven qualitative studies met the inclusion criteria. Two themes were identified from these results: (1) managing withdrawal from medication-assisted treatment, and (2) facilitators and barriers to treatment programs in the criminal justice system. Conclusions: Qualitative research evaluating access to SUD care in the US criminal justice system varied, with some interventions reported not rooted in evidence-based medicine. An opportunity may exist to develop best practices to ensure evidence-based treatment for SUDs is delivered to patients who need it in the US criminal justice system.

The Laws of Search, Seizure, and Custodial Interrogation: Searching the Orchard of American Constitution

The United States Criminal Justice System and court structure are two separate court systems, one at the federal level and another at the state level. In criminal proceedings, many courtrooms principally convict either by trial or by guilty plea, and many result in dismissing cases. It is necessary to examine the scope of the crime problems that criminal courts face and the organizational context as well as the policies in which they operate. The Fourth Amendment rights in particular, limits to searches and seizures are important procedures in the ongoing prosecution of crimes in America. The right of the people to remain secure in persons and properties against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. The police have the power to search and seize, but individuals are protected against unreasonable police intrusion. The Fifth Amendment Miranda rights protect any person from custodial interrogation by the police. It is required that all arrestees be given their Miranda warnings and if they are invoked they must be scrupulously honoured.

A nonparametric estimation method for the multivariate mixture models

In this paper we study the estimation of the mixing proportions and component density functions for a nonparametric multivariate mixture model that satisfies the condition of identifiability. We propose a new estimation method which combines the advantages of the matrix simultaneous diagonalization method and the basis method. The consistency of the estimator is proved and its convergence rate is derived. Simulations are conducted to evaluate the performance of the proposed method. The method is also applied to the US communities and crime data set. Numerical simulations and real data analysis show the good performance with low computational cost of the new method in the estimation for the multivariate mixture models.

Density-Based Spatial Anomalous Window Discovery

The focus of this paper is to identify anomalous spatial windows using clustering-based methods. Spatial Anomalous windows are the contiguous groupings of spatial nodes which are unusual with respect to the rest of the data. Many scan statistics based approaches have been proposed for the identification of spatial anomalous windows. To identify similarly behaving groups of points, clustering techniques have been proposed. There are parallels between both types of approaches but these approaches have not been used interchangeably. Thus, the focus of our work is to bridge this gap and identify anomalous spatial windows using clustering based methods. Specifically, we use the circular scan statistic based approach and DBSCAN- Density based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise, to bridge the gap between clustering and scan statistics based approach. We present experimental results in US crime data Our results show that our approach is effective in identifying spatial anomalous windows and performs equal or better than existing techniques and does better than pure clustering.

Understanding Chinese Christian Far-Right Narrative in the COVID-19 Context: A Cross-Disciplinary Perspective

AbstractThis article introduces the controversy over the naming of COVID-19 as the “Chinese Virus” and the related hate crimes in the US. It focuses on a group of Chinese Christians in North America who devote themselves to defending and legitimising the concept of the “Chinese Virus” within various social media. This research analyses the content of the related texts and videos and defines the Christian far-right narrative and reviews the relationship between the Christian far-right narrative, Christian fundamentalism, and Christian nationalism. It explores the frame alignment process of American Christian nationalism and evaluates the frame bridging, amplification, extension, and transformation dynamics of the Chinese Christian far-right narrative. It discusses the similarity between Chinese Christian far-right and religious nationalism in different countries and evaluates the cultural and structural factors that contributed to Christian nationalism with Chinese characteristics. The Chinese Christian far-right narrative tends to adopt a friend/foe binary interpretation of political issues, moralise the goal of nation-building, downplay the democratic process and legal systems, and put religious communitarian values over the secular state’s responsibility to protect human rights. The Christian far-right narrative reflects a religious nationalist sentiment to exclude political, religious, and cultural others, which is fundamentalist theologically, opposing to system politically, anti-secular humanism culturally, and anti-progressive morally.

Miranda v. Arizona and Duties to Police for Criminal Suspects in Criminal Justice under the Constitution of United States of America

The United States Criminal Justice System and court structure are two separate court systems, one at the federal level and another at the state level. In criminal proceedings, many courtrooms principally convict either by trial or by guilty plea, and many result in dismissing cases. It is necessary to examine the scope of the crime problems that criminal courts face and the organizational context as well as the policies in which they operate. The Fourth Amendment rights in particular, limits to searches and seizures are important procedures in the ongoing prosecution of crimes in America. The right of the people to remain secure in persons and properties against unreasonable searches and seizures shall not be violated. The police have the power to search and seize, but individuals are protected against unreasonable police intrusion. The Fifth Amendment Miranda rights protect any person from custodial interrogation by the police. It is required that all arrestees be given their Miranda warnings and if they are invoked they must be scrupulously honoured.

Run Away from History

Run Away from History Kazim Ali (bio) I’m at the tail end of this conversation but also at the tail end of history. Fanny Howe says five Black boys on a corner (any corner) are “runaways from history.” Meaning they are still enslaved. Still a slave. Tongo Eisen-Martin says, “I am arrested all the time for nothing.” And yet there is no white crime in America, statistically speaking, no police crime. When a dog wagged its tail and approached Christian Cooper in Central Park a white woman began screaming. That is the mythic beginning of the end for a Black man: a white woman screaming. It doesn’t matter what laws apply to his body because Blackness is the first law. It happened exactly when George Floyd was expiring. I thought of his breathlessness when I read about Amy Cooper screaming into her phone in Central Park. “Cooper,” every newspaper found it necessary to mention, “is of no relationship to Cooper.” Floyd being pressed from breath is what Cooper in her brutal imagination wanted to happen to Cooper. Fanny is the mother of a novelist and a designer, mother-in-law of another novelist and a poet, aunt to a novelist, sister to a poet, daughter of an actress and a Pink Boy, mentored by a playwright called Beckett, mentor to an aspirant named Ali, who followed her from the Vineyard to the Western shore, as did the characters in her novels, obsessed also with understanding race in America, trying to understand what is the worth of a person. I saw Tongo Eisen-Martin recite his poetry twice, and each time—for twenty minutes or a half hour—he recited off the page, only from memory, no, not from memory, membery, but from breath. In breath his lines arose. I kept checking against the page because I thought he might be engaging in a more ancient practice of inspiration, but no, not that: the words were as inscribed. [End Page 139] What words inscribe laws on bodies? Old Western ones that began with the representation of wealth: value placed upon labor and bodies required to transfer wealth. But from whom to whom? One Cooper was looking for birds. But in Black life in America the most ordinary event brushes up against death. [End Page 140] Kazim Ali Kazim Ali is the author of numerous books of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and cross-genre work. He is professor and chair of the Department of Literature at the University of California San Diego. Copyright © 2022 State University of New York

Club convergence of crime rates in the United States of America

PurposeThe cyclical behavior of US crime rates reflects the dynamics of crime in the country. This paper aims to investigate the US's club convergence of crime rates to provide insights into whether the crime rates increased or decreased over time. The paper also analyzes the factors influencing the probability of states converging to a particular convergence club of crime.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on balanced panel data from all 50 states and the district of Columbia on violent and property crime rates covering 1976–2019. This yields a cross-state panel of 2,244 observations with 55 time periods and 51 groups. In addition, the author used a club clustering procedure to investigate the convergence hypothesis in the study.FindingsThe empirical results support population convergence of violent crime rates. However, the evidence that supports population convergence of property crime rates in the study is not found. Further analysis using the club clustering procedure shows that property crime rates converge into three clubs. The existence of club convergence in property crime rates means that the variation in the property crime rates tends to narrow among the states within each of the clubs identified in the study. Analysis based on an ordered probit model identifies economic, geographic and human capital factors that significantly drive the state's convergence club membership.Practical implicationsThe central policy insight from these results is that crime rates grow slowly over time, as evident by the convergence of violent crime and club convergence of property crime in the study. Moreover, the existence of club convergence of property crime is an indication that policies to mitigate property crime might need to target states within each club. This includes the efforts to use state rather than national crime-fighting policies.Social implicationsAs crimes are committed at the local level, this study's primary limitation is the lack of community-level data on crime and other factors considered. Analysis based on community-level data might provide a better representation of crime dynamics. However, the author hopes to consider this as less aggregated data are available to use in future research.Originality/valueThe paper provides new insights into the convergence of crime rates using the club convergence procedure in the USA. This is considered an improvement to the methods used in the previous studies.

Book Review: The Measurement of Hate Crimes in America

Book Review: The Measurement of Hate Crimes in America

The Relationship Between Crime-Related Television Viewing and Perceptions of the Death Penalty: Results of a Large Cross-Sectional Survey Study.

Background: According to cultivation theory, distorted representations of social reality on television can lead to distorted perceptions of reality among viewers. For example, the death penalty has been abolished in most Western countries a long time ago, but is often portrayed or mentioned in US crime shows, which are very popular outside the United States. Previous research suggests that the amount of television viewing can be associated with erroneous perceptions of the use of the death penalty—even when the death penalty is not used in the respective country. Unfortunately, available evidence on this association is inconclusive.Methods: In a cross-sectional web-based survey, we used quota-based sampling techniques to recruit 1,002 individuals representative of the Austrian population in terms of gender, age, education, and region of residence. We asked about their weekly amount of television viewing and use of US crime dramas and measured their beliefs on the use of the death penalty in Austria.Results: Although television viewing in general was not associated with erroneous perceptions of the death penalty (i.e., no overall across-the-board cultivation effect), data analysis provided supporting evidence for the idea of a genre-specific cultivation effect: The more US crime shows participants watched, the more likely they were to mistakenly believe that the death penalty is used in Austria. This association held true even after controlling for the gender, age, and education of participants.Conclusion: The finding that watching US crime shows, which are based on social reality in the United States, is associated with Austrian viewers' confusion with regards to perceptions of the death penalty is consistent with the genre-specific cultivation hypothesis. Some viewers may be guided more by mediated reality than by actual social reality.