Garth Davies

Crime and Enforcement in Immigrant Neighborhoods: Evidence from New York City

Immigration and crime have received much popular and political attention in the past decade and have been a focus of episodic social attention for much of the history of the United States. Recent policy and legal discourse suggests that the stigmatic link between immigrants and crime has endured, even in the face of evidence to the contrary. This study addresses the relationship between immigration and crime in urban settings, focusing on areal units where immigrants tend to cluster spatially as well as socially. The authors ask whether immigration creates risks or benefits for neighborhoods in terms of lower crime rates. The question is animated in part by a durable claim in criminology that areas with large immigrant populations are burdened by elevated levels of social disorder and crime. In contrast, more recent theory and research suggest that “immigrant neighborhoods” may simply be differentially organized and function in a manner that reduces the incidence of crime. Accordingly, this research investigates whether immigrants are associated with differences in area crime rates. In addition, the authors ask whether there are differences in the effects of immigration on neighborhood crime rates by the racial and ethnic makeup of the foreign-born populations. Finally, the authors examine the effects of immigration on patterns of enforcement.

Social Contagion of Violence

Since 1968, violence and other crimes in New York City have followed a pattern of recurring epidemics. There have been three consecutive and contiguous cycles characterized by sharp increases in homicides and assaults to an elevated rate followed by equally steep declines to levels near the previous starting point. The most recent epidemic, from 1985-96, had the sharpest rise and steepest decline of the three epidemics. Popular explanations of the current epidemic fail to account for both the rise and fall of the decline, or for the repetitive pattern of these epidemics. In this article, we use public health data to identify factors associated with the cyclical rise and fall of homicides and non-lethal injury violence in this most recent of the three epidemics. Homicides in this period were concentrated among minority males, ages 15-24, while victimization rates for females of all ages remained stable. Gun homicides and non-lethal gun assaults accounted for all the increase and decline in interpersonal violence from 1985-95; intentional injuries caused by other means also were stable or declining over this period. Next, we use hierarchical linear regression models, with a rich set of time-varying covariates and controls for both temporal and spatial autocorrelation, to identify whether the rise and fall of homicide are explained by processes of diffusion across adjacent neighborhoods. We estimate the probabilities of homicides and assaults in a neighborhood controlling for rates of homicide or assault in the surrounding neighborhoods in the preceding year, and find that gun violence diffuses across neighborhoods over time. Epidemic patterns of violence disproportionately affected African Americans as victims of gun violence, both homicides and non-lethal gun assaults. Diffusion was strongest in neighborhoods where social control was compromised by extreme poverty and concentrated racial segregation. Concentrations of immigrant households in neighborhoods were a protective factor in suppressing the violence epidemic. We then use social contagion theories to link contagion of violence across neighborhoods to individual data on social interactions that may animate the transmission and diffusion of violence. Analyses of the social contexts and interpersonal dynamics of violent events reveals how street interactions in interpersonal disputes link individuals within and across social networks in a competition for status that is skewed by the presence of firearms. Decisions to carry, show and use weapons are based on perceptions of threat and danger, which are shaped by the presence of firearms and the potential stigma associated with non-action. These events occur across multiple contexts - bars, streetcorners, drug markets - to reinforce perceptions of risk and expectations of the threat or reality of lethal violence.

Catch and release

Purpose – Factors influencing crime location choices are not only significant to rape investigations, but they are especially important for geographic profiling. The purpose of the current study is to use temporal, hunting behavior, and modus operandi factors to determine those variables that influence the victim encounter and release locations in serial sexual crime.Design/methodology/approach – Due to the possible correlated nature of serial rapes, the authors use generalized estimating equations (GEE) on a sample of 361 rapes committed by 72 serial sex offenders.Findings – Results indicate that temporal factors, offender hunting behavior, and modus operandi strategies are significant predictors of both the victim encounter and release sites, but the importance of these factors varies depending on whether the location is in a residential land use area, a private site, inside location, or a site that is familiar to the offender.Practical implications – Police can learn from the current findings and apply...

Onset, Offending Trajectories, and Crime Specialization in Violence

Using data from the Montreal Longitudinal Study, the current study investigates whether age of onset is informative about the dynamic aspects of violent behaviors in males over time, in terms of violent offending frequency, crime trajectory, and, most importantly, crime specialization in violence. Self-reported data at three time points were used. Group-based modeling showed much heterogeneity in the shape of violent trajectories, which were associated with various crime specialization patterns over time. Most importantly, the number and shape of these trajectories were not accounted for by overall age of onset. Study findings show that while age of onset, especially the age of onset of violence, might be informative of the likelihood of committing a violent crime in middle adolescence, it is not informative about the dynamic process of violent offending. Of importance, violent adult offenders specializing in such crimes in adulthood were not necessarily early starters.

Race and Selective Enforcement in Public Housing

Drugs, crime, and public housing are closely linked in policy and politics, and their nexus has animated several intensive drug enforcement programs targeted at public housing residents. In New York City, police systematically conduct “vertical patrols” in public housing buildings, making tens of thousands of Terry stops each year. During these patrols, both uniformed and undercover officers systematically move through the buildings, temporarily detaining and questioning residents and visitors, often at a low threshold of suspicion, and usually alleging trespass to justify the stop. We use a case‐control design to identify the effects of living in one of New York Citys 330 public housing developments on the probability of stop, frisk, and arrest from 2004–2011. We find that the incidence rate ratio for trespass stops and arrests is more than two times greater in public housing than in the immediate surrounding neighborhoods. We decompose these effects using first differences models and find that the difference in percent black and Hispanic populations in public housing compared to the surrounding area predicts the disparity in trespass enforcement and enforcement of other criminal law violations. The pattern of racially selective enforcement suggests the potential for systemic violations of the Fourteenth Amendments prohibition on racial discrimination.

The 2011 Stanley Cup Riot: police perspectives and lessons learned

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine crowd violence in relation to the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot from the perspective of those police officers who were involved in the event, and identify any lessons that can be learned from this incident. Design/methodology/approach – A total of 460 Vancouver police officers participated in this study. Police perceptions of the riot were elicited via mailed questionnaires, which focused on key themes related to crowd disorder and police response, including preparations, deployment, training, safety, causes, and future prevention. Questionnaire responses were analyzed using descriptive approaches and one-sample t-tests. Findings – The study findings revealed that, in general, police felt ill-prepared prior to the riot, and ill- and unsafe during the riot. Their responses also suggested that their negative perceptions of the riot were the result of a few prominent factors, namely inadequate deployment, a lack of operational planning, and the presence of a large an...

Spreading the Message Digitally: A Look into Extremist Organizations’ Use of the Internet

Why would a terrorist choose to utilize the Internet rather than the usual methods of assassination, hostage taking, and guerrilla warfare? Conway (2006) identified five major reasons why extremist groups used the Internet: virtual community building, information provision, recruitment, financing, and risk mitigation. Terrorist and extremist organizations can use the Internet to increase their visibility and provide information about the group along with its goals without posing an increased risk to the members. It also allows them to easily ask for, and accept, donations through anonymous financial services such as Dark Coins. These benefits allow these groups to promote awareness of their cause, to convey their message to, and perhaps foster sympathy from a much larger pool of potential supporters and converts (Weimann 2010). Finally, the Internet also provides asynchronous services with global access, with the sender and recipient located at any place, at any time, without the need to link up at a specific time (Wagner 2005). In short, unlike the real world, cyberspace is borderless without limitation, and this makes identification, verification, and attribution a challenge.

Searching for signs of extremism on the web: an introduction to Sentiment-based Identification of Radical Authors

ABSTRACT As violent extremists continue to surface in online discussion forums, law enforcement agencies search for new ways of uncovering their digital indicators. Researchers have both described and hypothesized a number of ways to detect online traces of potential extremists, yet this area of inquiry remains in its infancy. This study proposes a new search method that, through the analysis of sentiment, identifies the most radical users within online forums. Although this method is applicable to web-forums of any type, the method was evaluated on four Islamic forums containing approximately 1 million posts of its 26,000 unique users. Several characteristics of each user’s postings were examined, including their posting behavior and the content of their posts. The content was analyzed using Parts-Of-Speech tagging, sentiment analysis, and a novel algorithm called ‘Sentiment-based Identification of Radical Authors’, which accounts for a user’s percentile score for average sentiment score, volume of negative posts, severity of negative posts, and duration of negative posts. The results suggest that there is no simple typology that best describes radical users online; however, the method is flexible enough to evaluate several properties of a user’s online activity that can identify radical users on the forums.

Spoonful of sugar or strong medicine: ‘Meet and Greet’ as a strategy for policing large-scale public events

ABSTRACT Recognising that the police response may have a significant impact on the type of behaviour displayed by the crowd has prompted many police departments to adopt less obtrusive approaches to crowd management. Low-profile, negotiation-based public-order policing strategies have been used successfully in low-risk crowd situations. However, it remains unclear as to whether or not this style of policing can be effectively applied in more high-risk environments. Focusing on the 2011 Stanley Cup Riot as a case study, this research provides valuable insight into a situation in which the low-profile policing strategy was perceived to have failed. Surveying members of the Vancouver Police Department (VPD), the findings highlight what the police perceive to be the strengths and limitations of, as well as the potential consequences for implementing a low-profile policing strategy. Based on this police perspective, this article will provide information useful for helping the VPD, and other police departments, improve future crowd management efforts.

Gender differences in understanding police perspectives on crowd disorder

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature and dynamics of crowd disorder from the perspective of the police in a Canadian context, as well as to extend this perspective to include the opinions of female police officers. Design/methodology/approach A total of 460 Vancouver police officers participated in this study. Following the 2011 Stanley Cup riot, police officers received mail-based questionnaires focussed on gathering information concerning police perceptions of the crowd and the police response in riot situations. A total of 15 response items were analysed using descriptive approaches and confirmatory factor analyses. Findings The study findings revealed that, in addition to being multidimensional, the police perspective of crowd disorder may be contingent upon certain officer characteristics. Although, the police perspective can generally be categorized by four overarching constructs: dichotomous crowd, homogeneous threat, strict policing and tactical response; it becomes more complex once the officers’ gender is taken into consideration. The results suggest that the male and female police officers may have some differing views about the nature of crowds and the type of police response required to manage disorderly crowd situations. Originality/value In addition to being the first study to analyse police perceptions of crowd disorder in a Canadian context, this research is the first to include the points of view of female officers.