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Social and Behavioral Sciences Commons

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Macalester College

2009

Violence

Articles 1 - 2 of 2

Full-Text Articles in Social and Behavioral Sciences

Does Violent Crime Cause Individuals To Join Gangs?, Colin Hottman May 2009

Does Violent Crime Cause Individuals To Join Gangs?, Colin Hottman

Economics Honors Projects

This paper examines the hypothesis that violent crime causes gang membership. I construct a theoretical model of the individual’s decision to join a gang based on the protection that gang membership provides from violent crime. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 cohort and a probit specification, I test three different measures of the threat of violent crime: a dummy variable for experiencing gun violence, a dummy variable for being the victim of repeated bullying, and a dummy variable for being the victim of a violent crime. In my regressions, I find support for the hypothesis that …


A Tale Of Two Townships: Political Opportunity And Violent And Non-Violent Local Control In South Africa, Alex Park Jan 2009

A Tale Of Two Townships: Political Opportunity And Violent And Non-Violent Local Control In South Africa, Alex Park

Award Winning Sociology Papers

A number of recent gains in social science have found that periods of violent civil disorder marked by chaos may actually exhibit an underlying order and a rationale on part of perpetrators in response to specific political conditions of the time. The conjecture is that violent control emerges as a grassroots effort to establish authority in areas experiencing a vacuum of central authority. Given those conditions, can these same theories of violence be applied to incidents of widespread non-violent control as well, where and when the political conditions are similar? Using a variety of accounts, from research conducted by human …