Stewart J. D'Alessio

Police organizational factors, the racial composition of the police, and the probability of arrest

While past research has considered the effects of police organizational characteristics on various outcomes, including arrest rates, relatively little research has explored the role of the racial composition of the police and its association with race‐specific arrest rates. Furthermore, no research has explored the association between arrest probabilities for Black and White offenders and police organizational factors. Using data from the 2000 National Incident‐Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the 2000 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Statistics (LEMAS), and the 2000 decennial Census, the present exploratory study employs multilevel modeling to examine the association between police organizational factors including the percentage of the police force that is Black and arrest probabilities for offenders involved in 19,099 aggravated assaults and 100,859 simple assaults across 105 small cities. Results show that for simple assaults, the relative size of the Black police force is associated with the risk of arrest for both Black and White offenders. Furthermore, departments with relatively more Black police officers are found to have the largest gap in the arrest probabilities for White and Black offenders, although Whites are more likely to be arrested for assaults than Blacks, regardless of the racial composition of the police. Results also show those departments with more written policy directives, relatively larger administrative component, a higher educational‐level requirement, and centralized police departments have the highest arrest probabilities. Implications of these findings and recommendations for further research are discussed.

Socioeconomic status and the sentencing of the traditional offender

Conflict theory postulates that lower-class criminal defendants receive the most severe legal sanctions. The empirical literature testing the validity of this proposition, however, is equivocal. This study examined the sentencing of property, violent, and moral order offenders in a southeastern state with legally mandated sentencing guidelines. It was hypothesized that the severity of imposed legal sanction would depend on the interplay between an offenders socioeconomic status and offense type. Results from four different regression models indicate some support for this hypothesis. A significant inverse relationship was observed between socioeconomic status and length of sentence for manslaughter and the possession of narcotics. Findings also show that extralegal factors played a greater role in the sentencing of violent and moral order offenders while prior criminal record was more salient in the sanctioning of property offenders. Further offense-specific analyses are needed to shed light on the relationship between socioeconomic status and criminal sentencing.

A Crime of Convenience The Environment and Convenience Store Robbery

The role of the physical and social environment as a catalyst for criminal activity has become prominent in recent years as an issue deserving scholarly attention. More specifically, several scholars have investigated the relationship between environmental factors and convenience store robbery. This study adds a dimension to previous empirical research by assessing, through multivariate statistical methods, whether the physical features and surrounding demographics of 30 randomly sampled convenience stores in Leon County, Florida, significantly affect the vulnerability of those stores to robbery. Results show that environmental factors are not important predictors of whether a convenience store is robbed, but parking lot size, degree of social disorganization surrounding the store, number of hours open, and whether gasoline service is provided are significant in determining the severity of robbery. These findings suggest that offenders may not be uniform in their determination of what constitutes vulnerability. The implications of these findings for primary prevention strategies are discussed.

Handling missing data with SPSS/PC+: a test and a tutorial

The statistical analysis of data with missing information occurs with great frequency in quantitative research. Although an enormous amount of literature has been produced on this subject, most of it assumes a strong background in statistics. In this paper we use SPSS/PC+ 4.0 to illustrate seven statistical procedures commonly employed by researchers to deal with missing data. We also assess how the use of a particular technique impacts findings in a multivariate regression analysis. Our results show that parameter estimates differ depending on which missing-data procedure is selected for use in an analysis. The implications of these findings are discussed. Keywords: Missing data, SPSS/PC+, incomplete data, missing observations.

“Eyes on the Street”: The Impact of Tennessee's Emergency Cellular Telephone Program on Alcohol-Related Fatal Crashes:

Using longitudinal data drawn from Tennessees Fatality Analysis Reporting System (FARS) and a multiple time-series research design, the authors assessed whether an emergency cellular telephone program, established on April 1, 1995, reduced alcohol-related fatal crashes. Maximum-likelihood results revealed a 2.5 percent decline in the alcohol-related fatal crash rate on roads serviced by the program. No significant change in the monthly percentage of fatal crashes attributed to drunk drivers was observed on roads where the program was not implemented. Emergency cellular telephone programs show promise as an effective and relatively inexpensive means for improving highway safety.

Sicarii and the Rise of Terrorism

Abstract The Jewish Sicarii, active during the Roman imperial period, are considered by many to be the worlds first political terrorists. The Sicarii rejected not only Roman dominance over Judea, but all mortally imposed authority. They effectively used assassination and kidnapping to incite a Jewish uprising against Rome. Once war was inevitable, the Sicarii vied against other extremist factions for sole leadership of the rebellion. When they proved unsuccessful, they fled Jerusalem and sought refuge at Masada, where eventually they died at their own hands.

Stepchildren, community disadvantage, and physical injury in a child abuse incident: a preliminary investigation.

It is proffered that stepchildren are more likely than genetic children to be physically abused because they are unable to ensure the genetic survival of their adoptive parents. This abuse is theorized to be more pronounced in communities where social and economic resources are scarce. The salience of this cross-level interaction hinges on the assumption that the limited resources of a family are first allocated to genetic offspring because these children, unlike their nongenetic siblings, carry the genes of their parents. A multilevel analysis of child abuse incidents reported to police in 133 U.S. cities during 2005 shows that in cities with a high level of community disadvantage, stepchildren are much more apt than are genetic children to suffer a physical injury in a child abuse incident. Such a finding buttresses the position articulated by proponents of sociobiology.