Variation In Violence Research Articles

Seasonal variation of seclusion incidents from violent and suicidal acts in forensic psychiatric patients

BackgroundA seasonal variation in violence and suicidal behaviour has been reported in several studies with partially congruent results. Most of forensic psychiatric patients have a history of severe violent behaviour that often continues in spite of regular treatment. In the forensic psychiatric hospital environment aggressive and suicidal acts are often sudden and unpredictable. For reasons of safety, rapid and intensive coercive measures, such as seclusion and restraint, are necessary in the treatment of such patients. ObjectiveTo examine whether these involuntary seclusions have a seasonal pattern, possibly similar than the reported seasonal variation in violence and suicidal behaviour. By investigating the possibility of a seasonal variation of seclusion incidents from violent and suicidal acts, it may become possible to improve the management of forensic psychiatric patients. MethodsThe hospital files of all secluded patients at Niuvanniemi Hospital from 1 January 1996 to 31 December 2002 were examined. In total, 385 patients (324 male and 61 female) were identified as being secluded at least once in 1930 different incidents (1476 from male and 454 from female patients). Seasonal decomposition and linear regression with dummy month variables were used to examine the possibility of annual variations for seclusions. ResultsThe seasonal variation of involuntary seclusion incidents was statistically significant. According to the linear regression model, most of the seclusion incidents, affecting many different patients, began in July and August, and were concentrated throughout the fall until November. The sum of all seclusion days was lowest in January and highest between July and November (difference +31% to +37%). ConclusionsThese findings are mainly in agreement with results from other studies on seasonal variation and violent behaviour. The allocation of staff for late summer and fall might enhance the management of forensic psychiatric patients, thus leading to possible decreases in seclusion incidents. The factors affecting violent, aggressive and suicidal behaviours are complex and more investigation is needed to understand, identify, intervene and effectively reduce such behaviours.

Community Variations in Violence: The Role of Social Ties and Collective Efficacy in Comparative Context

This article explores the relative roles of social ties and collective efficacy in explaining community variations in violent victimization in Australia. Using data from a survey of 2,859 residents across 82 communities in the city of Brisbane, coupled with official reported crime data provided by the Queensland Police Service and Australian Bureau of Statistics census data for 2001, the authors employ multilevel statistical models to depict the relative importance of social ties and collective efficacy in predicting between-neighborhood violent victimization in an Australian context. The models include measures of social relationships and community-based crime prevention programs, and the authors compare and contrast their findings with studies of collective efficacy in Chicago and Stockholm, finding similar results. These findings suggest that despite structural and cultural differences between the United States and Australia in particular, collective efficacy is a significant mechanism in explaining the spatial distribution of self-reported violent victimization in the Australian context. This research underscores the importance of cross-cultural theory testing and the need to further develop the measurement of ecological constructs such as social ties and organizational behavior.

Riots

The past century of research has identified a host of economic, political, demographic, and other factors that seem to be associated with the prevalence of riots. The study of riots has, however, probably focused too much on these “push” factors that lead to violence and not enough on understanding the response of the state to riots. Understanding the political incentives that motivate democratic and authoritarian states to sometimes allow riots to take place and at other times to take the strongest possible law-and-order measures to prevent them is key to understanding variation in violence. Scholars also need to pay more attention to the psychological factors that encourage people to riot, and to the micro-logic of target choice within these larger events.

Neighborhood and Community Effects on Individual Behavior and Social Functioning

Since social work first began as a profession some 100 years ago, the influence of neighborhood and community conditions on individual behavior and social functioning has been a major concern of our profession. For example, pioneers such as Jane Addams argued that improving neighborhood conditions and enhancing economic opportunities were among the most promising strategies for ameliorating family conflict and child and adolescent behavior problems (Addams, 1912). Social scientists from other disciplines, most notably sociology, concurred with social work's emphasis on understanding, preventing, and treating neighborhood and community conditions that lead to poor social functioning. To illustrate, an early study by criminologists Shaw and McKay (1942) recognized the importance of neighborhood and community influences on juvenile delinquency in Chicago. The authors' careful mapping of delinquency rates in the city's neighborhoods during the 1930s identified neighborhood and community characteristics that fostered delinquent conduct. In subsequent years theorists such as Hirschi (1969) and Sampson (1993) advanced the idea that neighborhood and community context was essential to understanding and preventing antisocial behavior in young people. Studies by these and other investigators planted the seed for recent research aimed at understanding the effects of neighborhood and community conditions on individual and social behaviors. STUDYING NEIGHBORHOODS AND COMMUNITIES In the past 15 years, research identifying neighborhood and community influences on child, adolescent, and adult outcomes has increased significantly. The renewed interest in neighborhoods and communities has resulted in at least two research directions. First, the interaction between individual--and community-level variables in the onset and persistence of behaviors such as substance abuse, crime, and violence has been examined with increasing frequency. This interest is illustrated by recent studies aimed at disentangling neighborhood effects from well-documented individual and family influences on antisocial conduct. For example, Elliott and colleagues (2006) examined how some children and adolescents raised in adverse neighborhoods in Chicago and Denver have overcome negative community influences and become successful in the face of considerable risk. Their study, supported by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation's Network on Successful Adolescent Development (2007), has shed new light on neighborhood and community factors associated with resilience among high-risk youths. Similarly, a longitudinal study led by Earls and colleagues (Obeidallah, Brennan, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2004) at Harvard University has used self-report interviews with 6,000 youths and their caregivers and a neighborhood survey of nearly 9,000 residents to examine the onset of violent conduct among young people in 80 Chicago neighborhoods. The study, the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods, has produced a number of findings regarding racial and ethnic variations in violence (Sampson, Morenoff, & Raudenbush, 2005), the effects of exposure to firearms on violence (Bingenheimer, Brennan, & Earls, 2005), and the onset of violent behavior among girls (Obeidallah, Brennan, Brooks-Gunn, & Earls, 2004). The availability of individual--and community-level data in this study has allowed investigators to pose and answer complex questions that are normally impossible to address in studies using only individual-level data. A second emphasis in studying neighborhood and community influences on individual and social functioning is illustrated by the increasing number of investigations aimed at understanding and ameliorating poverty and economic disadvantage (for example, Brooks-Gunn, Duncan, & Aber, 1997; Coulton, 2005). Particularly encouraging in the study of community and poverty is the recent attention paid to developing and testing poverty prevention approaches. …

Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence

Inside Rebellion: The Politics of Insurgent Violence, Jeremy M. Weinstein, Cambridge UK: Cambridge University Press, 2007, pp. 429.Inside Rebellion combines clear and sharp theoretical insights with multiple and well-designed methods to address an important issue and moves the debate substantially forward. How can we explain variations in violence in civil wars, particularly the targeting of civilians? Weinstein argues that the structure of opportunities at the outset of rebel mobilization dominate the movement's destiny.

Revisiting the Southern Culture of Violence

This analysis revisits the Southern culture of violence thesis. Several limitations of prior research are addressed by probing for a cultural influence on situation- and race-specific rates of homicide in both rural and urban communities. Negative binomial regression analyses of county-level homicide and census data indicate that the density of Southern-born whites is positively associated with white argument-based homicide rates in rural areas. When this relationship is examined outside of the spatial boundaries of the South—a critical test for a regionally based cultural influence on violence—the results are identical. We interpret these findings as suggestive of a cultural influence and situate them in a discussion of the broader theoretical state of research on regional variations in violence.

States, scarcity, and civil strife in the developing world

List of Illustrations ix List of Tables xi Acknowledgments xiii List of Abbreviations xv Chapter 1: Plight, Plunder, and Political Ecology 1 Chapter 2: States, Scarcity, and Civil Strife: A Theoretical Framework 28 Chapter 3: Green Crisis, Red Rebels: Communist Insurgency in the Philippines 65 Chapter 4: Land and Lies: Ethnic Clashes in Kenya 117 Chapter 5: From Chaos to Calm: Explaining Variations in Violence in the Philippines and Kenya 163 Chapter 6: Conclusions and Implications 209 Notes 249 Index 323

The Enduring Puzzle of Southern Homicide

The purpose of this study is to examine the issue of regional differences in homicide rates by focusing on the role of religious culture—specifically, the influence of the southern brand of conservative Protestantism in sustaining and legitimating distinctive forms of violence. A rationale for focusing on Southern religious culture is outlined and several hypotheses derived from these arguments are tested using 1980 data on homicide rates, religious concentrations, and socioeconomic and other characteristics of 247 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). After controlling for a number of relevant covariates, this study finds a positive relationship between percent conservative Protestant and homicide rates; the effect is significant in Southern MSAs but not in non-Southern MSAs. The findings' implications for research on regional variations in violence are discussed and promising directions for future research on this issue are outlined.

EXTENDING SOCIAL DISORGANIZATION THEORY: A MULTILEVEL APPROACH TO THE STUDY OF VIOLENCE AMONG PERSONS WITH MENTAL ILLNESSES*

Prior studies of violence among individuals with mental illnesses have focused almost exclusively on individual‐level characteristics. In this study, I examine whether the structural correlates of neighborhood social disorganization also explain variation in violence. I use data on 270 psychiatric patients who were treated and discharged from an acute inpatient facility combined with tract‐level data from the 1990 U.S. Census. I find that living in a socially disorganized neighborhood increased the probability of violence among the sample, an effect that was not mediated by self‐reported social supports. Implications for future research in the areas of violence and mental illness are discussed.

Neighborhoods and violent crime: a multilevel study of collective efficacy.

It is hypothesized that collective efficacy, defined as social cohesion among neighbors combined with their willingness to intervene on behalf of the common good, is linked to reduced violence. This hypothesis was tested on a 1995 survey of 8782 residents of 343 neighborhoods in Chicago, Illinois. Multilevel analyses showed that a measure of collective efficacy yields a high between-neighborhood reliability and is negatively associated with variations in violence, when individual-level characteristics, measurement error, and prior violence are controlled. Associations of concentrated disadvantage and residential instability with violence are largely mediated by collective efficacy.

Violence and self-injury

Abstract This is an empirical study of the relationship between self-injury and violence in female Special Hospital patients. The relationship between self-injury and violence over the course of admission was assessed for 80 patients. The temporal relationship between weekly rates of violence and self-injury for 5 psychopathic disorder patients was assessed. There is an association between the level of self-injury and violent behaviour in Special Hospital patients with a legal category of psychopathic disorder but not for those with a category of mental illness. However, variations in self-injury explain only a small part of the variation in violence. There is a temporal association between the two behaviours, with violent behavier more likely to occur in the same week as self-injury in certain psychopathic disorder patients, but the association is not strong.

Violent Criminal Behavior Over the Life Course: A Review of the Longitudinal and Comparative Research

In this paper we review the existing longitudinal research on violent criminal behavior. Although interested in comparative research on this topic, we found that virtually all of the longitudinal studies comprised individuals from Western societies. The primary issue we examine concerns the extent to which there are universal patterns of violent behavior over the life course. Based on the available evidence, our best guess is that universal patterns do not exist. It cannot be answered definitively, however, to what extent sociocultural variations in violence reflect differences in opportunity structures or differences in developmental trajectories and transitions over the life course. In order to address these issues, specific recommendations for future research, both within countries and cross-nationally, are presented and discussed.

Cross-national variations in violence

This study tries to explain why modernization is positively associated with property offenses, while it is negatively correlated with violent offences. The explanation is based on sociobiology and on the distinction between r and K evolutionary strategies. It is argued that modern societies are more likely to benefit from channeling their aggressive drive to the relatively less serious property crimes. Another derivative from the same theoretical argument is the hypothesis that in modern societies lethal aggression would be directed toward the self (resulting in suicide) rather than toward others (a behavior which would lead to homicide).

A macro view of two decades of violence in America

This paper attempts to predict variations in violence at the state level using structural indicators. Multiple regression models were constructed for 1960, 1970, and 1980. Percent Black and Percent Urban were found to be the strongest predictors of violent crime in all three years. Additionally, two longitudinal models for changes in violence from 1960–1970, and from 1970–1980 were constructed. Changes in Per Capita Income and Percent Black were strongest predictors in the 1960–1970 model. From 1970–1980, changes in violence were best predicted by changes in Density Per Square Mile and Per Capita Income.

Area Variations of Violence in Northern Ireland

Abstract A marked pattern of area-to-area differences in violence is described for Northern Ireland during 1969–74. Violence, measured by death rates, is especially high in the two largest cities and in the southwestern area. Two variables which together account for most of the area variation in violence are population density and proportion Roman Catholic. These findings underline the relative importance of group mobilization for political challenge as a basis of recent Ulster violence.