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Criminology Commons™

Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®

2017

University of Missouri, St. Louis

Articles 1 - 6 of 6

Full-Text Articles in Criminology

Homicide And The World Religions, Allen Shamow Dec 2017

Homicide And The World Religions, Allen Shamow

Dissertations

Cross-national studies seeking to explain the variation in rates of homicide have examined a multitude of factors including religion, but fewer studies have examined how religion may influence homicide through a society’s institutional structure. Social institutions include entities such as the economy, the family, the political structure, and educational system; and these institutions serve as guides for human action and behavior. Through its emphasis on values, religion may influence the interests and legitimize the functioning within societal institutions. In the present study, I examine how the major world religions of Protestantism, Catholicism, Orthodox Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and Buddhism may …

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Aggregate-Level Lead Exposure, Gun Violence, Homicide, And Rape, Brian Boutwell, Erik Nelson, Zhengmin Qian, Michael Vaughn, John Wright, John Wright, Kevin Beaver, Kevin Beaver, J. Barnes, Melissa Petkovsek, Roger Lewis, Mario Schootman, Richard Rosenfeld Nov 2017

Aggregate-Level Lead Exposure, Gun Violence, Homicide, And Rape, Brian Boutwell, Erik Nelson, Zhengmin Qian, Michael Vaughn, John Wright, John Wright, Kevin Beaver, Kevin Beaver, J. Barnes, Melissa Petkovsek, Roger Lewis, Mario Schootman, Richard Rosenfeld

Criminology and Criminal Justice Faculty Works

Context An increasing body of research has linked the geographic distribution of lead with various indicators of criminal and antisocial behavior. Objective The current study, using data from an ongoing project related to lead exposure in St. Louis City, MO, analyzed the association between aggregate blood lead levels and specific indicators violent crime within the city. Design Ecological study. Setting St. Louis, Missouri. Exposure measure Blood lead levels. Main outcome measure Official reports of violent crimes were categorized as 1) crimes involving a firearm (yes/no), 2) assault crimes (with or without a firearm), 3) robbery crimes (with or without a …

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Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Temporal Stability Of Crime Hot Spots And The Criminology Of Place, Michael J. Deckard Sep 2017

Here Today, Gone Tomorrow: The Temporal Stability Of Crime Hot Spots And The Criminology Of Place, Michael J. Deckard

Dissertations

It is widely recognized that the distribution of crime in urban areas is not randomly distributed, but is highly concentrated in small pockets of space known as crime “hot spots”. While the empirical evidence supporting the law of crime concentration is strong, most studies that have examined the stability of crime hot spots over time have aggregated crime across years. This dissertation seeks to expand our understanding of the temporal stability of micro-geographic crime hot spots by addressing three research questions: (1) How are high-crime micro-places distributed at the monthly level? How much variation exists in the distribution of crime …

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Routine Activity Theory At The Census Tract-Level, Abigail G. Orscheln Apr 2017

Routine Activity Theory At The Census Tract-Level, Abigail G. Orscheln

Theses

The purpose of this study is to better understand predictors of neighborhood crime in metropolitan areas through a routine activity theory (RAT) lens. This paper examines whether neighborhood-level aspects of RAT have varying explanatory power for different crimes. This is accomplished by drawing on a sample of census tracts from the National Neighborhood Crime Study (NNCS). Using these data, multiple independent variables are regressed on four different types of crime using an ordinary least squares (OLS) regression. The results do not suggest that there is a strong degree of variation in the ability of specific measures to predict specific forms …

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A Multilevel Examination Of The Black Middle Class, Segregation, And Neighborhood Crime, Claire A. Greene Apr 2017

A Multilevel Examination Of The Black Middle Class, Segregation, And Neighborhood Crime, Claire A. Greene

Theses

In The Declining Significance of Race, William Julius Wilson (1987) raised key questions about the fate of urban black class structure and the social organization of black communities in the wake of civil rights era reforms. Unlike in previous decades, Wilson asserted that today’s black neighborhoods comprise almost exclusively of the most disadvantaged segments of the African American population, and therefore lack the basic opportunities, resources, and social controls necessary to reduce crime. In response, this study moves away from a focus on the “ghetto” poor to contextualize the neighborhood crime conditions of middle class blacks. Drawing on social …

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Understanding The Decline In Child Victimization: A National-And-State-Level Analysis Of Child Abuse And Neglect Trends, Maribeth L. Rezey Mar 2017

Understanding The Decline In Child Victimization: A National-And-State-Level Analysis Of Child Abuse And Neglect Trends, Maribeth L. Rezey

Dissertations

Figures from the National Child Abuse and Neglect Data System (NCANDS) suggest that national rates of child maltreatment declined during the last decade of the 20th century and into the 21st century. These data, which are derived from official state child protective service agency record systems, have frequently been used to measure changes in child abuse and neglect in the U.S. and in individual U.S. states. However, because the NCANDS has yet to be assessed for methodological issues surrounding the validity of the data to measure temporal change, it is unknown if the decline revealed in the NCANDS …

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