Browsing by Subject "Crime"

Now showing 1 - 10 of 10
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    Board of Health advertisement connecting better hygiene with crime prevention.
    (Indiana State Board of Health, 1915-09)
    [Text in image] Health First. HYGIENE can prevent more crime than any law. Indiana State Board of Health.
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    Creating profiles of juvenile offenders using functions of aggression and callous-unemotional traits: relations to crime type
    (Taylor & Francis, 2022-09-18) Pederson, Casey A.; Griffith, Rebecca L.; Nowalis, Sarah; Fite, Paula J.; Pediatrics, School of Medicine
    A rich line of criminological theories and research has suggested that individual characteristics may be important to predicting criminal activity. However, there is limited research examining how individual characteristics may be related to the type of crime committed (e.g. violent, sex, drug). To provide guidance to these questions, the current set of two studies used latent profile analysis to identify groups of offenders based on individual factors (i.e. proactive and reactive aggression, and callous-unemotional traits), chosen for their interrelatedness and their established associations with crime, and examined whether these groups relate to type, severity or the number of crimes committed across two studies. In both studies, four groups of offenders were identified, but these groups were not associated with offending behaviors or patterns. Findings and implications are discussed.
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    Epidemiology of Sexually Transmitted Infections Among Offenders Following Arrest or Incarceration
    (American Public Health Association, 2015-12) Wiehe, Sarah E.; Rosenman, Marc B.; Aalsma, Matthew C.; Scanlon, Michael L.; Fortenberry, J. Dennis; Department of Pediatrics, IU School of Medicine
    OBJECTIVES: We sought to estimate rates of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) among criminal offenders in the 1 year after arrest or release from incarceration. METHODS: We performed a retrospective cohort study of risk of having a positive STI (chlamydia, gonorrhea, or syphilis) or incident-positive HIV test in the 1 year following arrest or incarceration in Marion County (Indianapolis), Indiana. Participants were 247,211 individuals with arrest or incarceration in jail, prison, or juvenile detention between 2003 and 2008. RESULTS: Test positivity rates (per 100,000 and per year) were highest for chlamydia (2968) and gonorrhea (2305), and lower for syphilis (278) and HIV (61). Rates of positive STI and HIV were between 1.5 and 2.8 times higher in female than male participants and between 2.7 and 6.9 times higher for Blacks than Whites. Compared with nonoffenders, offenders had a relative risk of 3.9 for chlamydia, 6.6 for gonorrhea, 3.6 for syphilis, and 4.6 for HIV. CONCLUSIONS: The 1-year period following arrest or release from incarceration represents a high-impact opportunity to reduce STI and HIV infection rates at a population level.
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    Examining the Legal Consciousness of Residence Life Staff
    (Association of College and University Housing Officers - International, 2018) Nguyễn, David Hòa Khoa; Collier, Joan; Watts, Angela; Cartwright, Camille; King-Kostelac, Amelia; School of Education
    Understanding the law has become an integral part of the work of higher education professionals, especially residence life staff. For decades, courts have contributed an increasingly important role in shaping the litigious nature of society at large and within higher education (Greenleaf, 1982). Barr and Associates (1988) noted the increasingly major influence of the law on campus life. Even in the mid-1990s, Gehring and Penney (1995) highlighted the critical need to understand legal issues for those professionals entering the field of higher education and student affairs. Since Olivas (2013) found that higher education law is a rapidly changing area in the field, knowledge of the law is critical to anyone in a professional position in higher education. [Discussion questions developed by Amelia King-Kostelac.]
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    Impact of social distancing during COVID-19 pandemic on crime in Los Angeles and Indianapolis
    (Elsevier, 2020-05-01) Mohler, George; Bertozzi, Andrea L.; Carter, Jeremy; Short, Martin B.; Sledge, Daniel; Tita, George E.; Uchida, Craig D.; Brantingham, P. Jeffrey; Computer and Information Science, School of Science
    Governments have implemented social distancing measures to address the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The measures include instructions that individuals maintain social distance when in public, school closures, limitations on gatherings and business operations, and instructions to remain at home. Social distancing may have an impact on the volume and distribution of crime. Crimes such as residential burglary may decrease as a byproduct of increased guardianship over personal space and property. Crimes such as domestic violence may increase because of extended periods of contact between potential offenders and victims. Understanding the impact of social distancing on crime is critical for ensuring the safety of police and government capacity to deal with the evolving crisis. Understanding how social distancing policies impact crime may also provide insights into whether people are complying with public health measures. Examination of the most recently available data from both Los Angeles, CA, and Indianapolis, IN, shows that social distancing has had a statistically significant impact on a few specific crime types. However, the overall effect is notably less than might be expected given the scale of the disruption to social and economic life.
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    Learning to rank spatio-temporal event hotspots
    (BMC, 2020) Mohler, George; Porter, Michael; Carter, Jeremy; LaFree, Gary; Computer and Information Science, School of Science
    Background Crime, traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, and other space-time random events are unevenly distributed in space and time. In the case of crime, hotspot and other proactive policing programs aim to focus limited resources at the highest risk crime and social harm hotspots in a city. A crucial step in the implementation of these strategies is the construction of scoring models used to rank spatial hotspots. While these methods are evaluated by area normalized Recall@k (called the predictive accuracy index), models are typically trained via maximum likelihood or rules of thumb that may not prioritize model accuracy in the top k hotspots. Furthermore, current algorithms are defined on fixed grids that fail to capture risk patterns occurring in neighborhoods and on road networks with complex geometries. Results We introduce CrimeRank, a learning to rank boosting algorithm for determining a crime hotspot map that directly optimizes the percentage of crime captured by the top ranked hotspots. The method employs a floating grid combined with a greedy hotspot selection algorithm for accurately capturing spatial risk in complex geometries. We illustrate the performance using crime and traffic incident data provided by the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department, IED attacks in Iraq, and data from the 2017 NIJ Real-time crime forecasting challenge. Conclusion Our learning to rank strategy was the top performing solution (PAI metric) in the 2017 challenge. We show that CrimeRank achieves even greater gains when the competition rules are relaxed by removing the constraint that grid cells be a regular tessellation.
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    Making Claims About the Immigration-Crime Nexus in Major U.S. Newspapers
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Barber, Mariah
    News media serve as a platform for claims-makers to share their views on important policy issues like immigration and crime. One theory posited by some media claims-makers is that immigration leads to more crime in American communities, a view that often resonates with segments of the public. In contrast, academic study findings have generally refuted a causal relationship between immigration and crime, with some prominent sociologists suggesting that immigration may serve to revitalize communities. To date, there have been few studies empirically examining the politicians, advocacy groups, and others who use the news media to promote views of immigration, crime, and responses to crime. Addressing this gap in research, we conduct an ethnographic content analysis of news articles from major U.S. newspapers that frame immigration as having either criminogenic or revitalizing effects on communities. In this study, we identify the relative frequency of claims-makers and common themes emerging from their quotes. Findings from this study will advance our understanding of how news media help construct public narratives of the immigration-crime nexus. Based on our findings, we will suggest ways that claims-makers can inform future public discussion about immigration and crime based on social science research.
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    The Orlando shooting: exploring the link between hate crimes and terrorism
    (The Conversation US, Inc., 2016-06-15) Freilich, Joshua D.; Gruenewald, Jeff; Chermak, Steven; Parkin, William; School of Public and Environmental Affairs
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    Women's Descent into Crime
    (2018-10) Pierce, Allison Bianca; Aponte, Robert; Foote, Carrie E.; Bell, Linda G.
    The rate of criminal involvement of women has historically been lower than that of men; however, that is changing. Changes in societal norms and progress toward gender equality have broadened the scope of female behaviors, and modified traditional female responsibilities and roles in the home potentially influencing their participation in the crime market. However, the bulk of research on criminal activity is based on the male experience. Thus, less is known about female criminals and their motivations. A closer look at women’s trajectories into crime therefore will likely yield important insights. This study investigates the descent into drugs and crime from the perspective of women who have previously been charged with crimes beyond simple possession of illegal substances. The key interest lies in shedding light on the experiences that set these women on the path to criminal activity. Specifically, this project aims to explore what the women themselves perceive as precursors to their criminal experience. Our findings suggest that female descent into crime may run contrary to many widely held beliefs, such as: that criminal careers begin in adolescence; that women become participants in crime through the influence of significant others; and that criminals come from lower class households.