William Alex Pridemore

Vodka and violence: alcohol consumption and homicide rates in Russia.

In Russia, rates of alcohol consumption and homicide are among the highest in the world, and already-high levels increased dramatically after the breakup of the Soviet Union. Rates of both, however, vary greatly among Russias 89 regions. We took advantage of newly available vital statistics and socioeconomic data to examine the regional covariation of drinking and lethal violence. Log-log models were employed to estimate the impact of alcohol consumption on regional homicide rates, controlling for structural factors thought to influence the spatial distribution of homicide rates. Results revealed a positive and significant relationship between alcohol consumption and homicide, with a 1% increase in regional consumption of alcohol associated with an approximately 0.25% increase in homicide rates. In Russia, higher regional rates of alcohol consumption are associated with higher rates of homicide.

Heavy Drinking and Suicide in Russia

Russian levels of alcohol consumption and suicide are among the highest in the world. While observers have long suspected an association between the two, they were unable to investigate this hypothesis until recently due to past Soviet secrecy and thus a lack of data. This study took advantage of the newly available data during the post-Soviet era to examine the cross-sectional association between heavy drinking and suicide mortality in Russia. Aggregate mortality data for the Russian regions (n = 78) for the year 2000 were used to measure heavy drinking and suicide rates. Government data were used to control for the regional economic situation and strength of social institutions. Ordinary Least Squares regression was employed to estimate the effect of a proxy for heavy drinking on overall and sex-specific age-adjusted suicide rates. The results showed a positive and significant association between the two, and the association held for overall, male and female rates. These results not only confirmed an association between heavy drinking and suicide in Russia, but when compared to findings from previous studies of other countries they led to the hypothesis that a nations beverage preference may be as important as its wet/dry drinking culture in the sensitivity of its suicide rates to alcohol consumption.

The changing nature of murder in Russia

The death rate from homicide in Russia increased rapidly during the 1990 s. It is now about 20 times higher than in western Europe and is among the highest recorded anywhere in the world. However, this issue has received little attention so far from public health researchers or policymakers. This paper describes the changing nature of homicide during the 1990 s in Russia as a whole and, in more detail, in the Udmurt Republic. The study uses data from three sources: routine mortality data for Russia from 1970 to 1999; statistics on criminal investigations and convictions in Russia between 1990 and 1997; and an in-depth study of homicide trial records in the Udmurt Republic in 1989-1991 and 1998.Deaths from homicide increased between 1970 and 1985, falling slightly during the 1985 anti-alcohol campaign and then resuming their increase until 1994. Another fall in the late 1990 s was arrested in 1998, with an increase in 1999. By 1999 the age standardised homicide death rate in Russia was 81% higher than in 1990, an increase almost twice that of all causes of death combined. Throughout the 1990 s about 10% of those convicted of homicide were female. Of those homicides leading to convictions in the Udmurt Republic, 71% of those killed by males were male, as were 76% of those killed by females. Killings of women by men often involved sexual assaults. In Russia as a whole, about 80% of those convicted of homicide were reported to be under the influence of alcohol at the time. In the Udmurt Republic, where data on both offender and victim were available, victims were also commonly intoxicated. The nature of homicide in Russia has changed considerably in less than a decade, with many more now involving aggravating circumstances, such as murder to conceal another crime, in association with robbery or rape, or by a group of people. Although still a small proportion of the total convicted, the number of murders by hired killers is also on the rise. The characteristics of those convicted of homicide have also changed during the 1990 s. They are now younger, less likely to have previous convictions, and to have a more diverse range of educational levels. The previous urban-rural gap, with higher levels in rural areas, has also narrowed.

Measuring homicide in Russia: a comparison of estimates from the crime and vital statistics reporting systems

The Russian homicide rate more than tripled between 1988 and 1994 and is now among the highest in the world. This dramatic increase, together with newly available data from a post-Soviet Russian government that is becoming more transparent, has led to a growing number of studies of homicide in Russia. As of yet, however, there has been no systematic evaluation of the homicide reporting systems in the country. This article examines the comparability of the two main sources of homicide estimates in Russia, crime data from the Ministry of the Interior and mortality data from the vital statistics registration system. These estimates are compared annually and by administrative region. Annual estimates from the vital statistics reporting system have reported an average of nearly 40% more homicides than the crime reporting system over the last decade and a half. Regionally, mortality estimates are higher than crime estimates in 66 of 78 regions, and eight of the 12 regions where crime estimates are higher are in areas where previous validation procedures suggest mortality data are suspect. As the regional homicide rate increases, so does the gap between the two estimates. Case definitions of these sources lead us to expect small discrepancies between them, but this does not account for the large differences revealed here. Both systems under-report, for different reasons, and some of the under-enumeration in both systems is purposeful and/or results from a lack of human and monetary resources. Mortality data are probably better for most purposes, especially when comparing Russia to other nations and when estimating causal models. Both systems should be used with caution, however, and the choice between them should depend on the nature of each study.

An Interrupted Time-Series Analysis of Durkheim's Social Deregulation Thesis: The Case of the Russian Federation.

The dissolution of the Soviet Union resulted in sudden, widespread, and fundamental changes to Russian society. The former social welfare system—with its broad guarantees of employment, healthcare, education, and other forms of social support—was dismantled in the shift toward democracy, rule of law, and a free‐market economy. This unique natural experiment provides a rare opportunity to examine the potentially disintegrative effects of rapid social change on deviance, and thus to evaluate one of Durkheims core tenets. We took advantage of this opportunity by performing interrupted time‐series analyses of annual age‐adjusted homicide, suicide, and alcohol‐related mortality rates for the Russian Federation using data from 1956 to 2002, with 1992–2002 as the postintervention time‐frame. The ARIMA models indicate that, controlling for the long‐term processes that generated these three time series, the breakup of the Soviet Union was associated with an appreciable increase in each of the cause‐of‐death rates. We interpret these findings as being consistent with the Durkheimian hypothesis that rapid social change disrupts social order, thereby increasing the level of crime and deviance.

Reduction in Suicide Mortality Following a New National Alcohol Policy in Slovenia: An Interrupted Time-Series Analysis

OBJECTIVES We assessed the impact on suicide mortality of a new national policy in Slovenia that limits the availability of alcohol. METHODS We obtained monthly total, male, and female suicide counts in Slovenia between January 1997 and December 2005 and then employed autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) techniques to model the effect of the alcohol policy (implemented in March 2003). RESULTS There was a significant decrease in the total number of monthly suicides following the policys implementation. Subsequent analyses revealed this association to be caused solely by the impact on male suicides. Specifically, there was an immediate and permanent reduction of 3.6 male suicides per month (95% confidence interval = -0.4, -6.9), or approximately 10% of the preintervention average. The policy had no statistically significant effect on female suicides. CONCLUSIONS Our results show the effectiveness of this specific policy in reducing male suicides in Slovenia and also hint at the potential of public policy in reducing the public health burden of alcohol-related harm more generally.

Alcohol outlets and clusters of violence.

BackgroundAlcohol related violence continues to be a major public health problem in the United States. In particular, there is substantial evidence of an association between alcohol outlets and assault. However, because the specific geographic relationships between alcohol outlets and the distribution of violence remains obscured, it is important to identify the spatial linkages that may exist, enhancing public health efforts to curb both violence and morbidity.MethodsThe present study utilizes police-recorded data on simple and aggravated assaults in Cincinnati, Ohio. Addresses of alcohol outlets for Cincinnati, including all bars, alcohol-serving restaurants, and off-premise liquor and convenience stores were obtained from the Ohio Division of Liquor Control and geocoded for analysis. A combination of proximity analysis, spatial cluster detection approaches and a geographic information system were used to identify clusters of alcohol outlets and the distribution of violence around them.ResultsA brief review of the empirical work relating to alcohol outlet density and violence is provided, noting that the majority of this literature is cross-sectional and ecological in nature, yielding a somewhat haphazard and aggregate view of how outlet type(s) and neighborhood characteristics like social organization and land use are related to assaultive violence. The results of the statistical analysis for Cincinnati suggest that while alcohol outlets are not problematic per se, assaultive violence has a propensity to cluster around agglomerations of alcohol outlets. This spatial relationship varies by distance and is also related to the characteristics of the alcohol outlet agglomeration. Specifically, spatially dense distributions of outlets appear to be more prone to clusters of assaultive violence when compared to agglomerations with a lower density of outlets.ConclusionWith a more thorough understanding of the spatial relationships between alcohol outlets and the distribution of assaults, policymakers in urban areas can make more informed regulatory decisions regarding alcohol licenses. Further, this research suggests that public health officials and epidemiologists need to develop a better understanding of what actually occurs in and around alcohol outlets, determining what factors (whether outlet, neighborhood, or spatially related) help fuel their relationship with violence and other alcohol-related harm.

Alcohol Outlets and Community Levels of Interpersonal Violence Spatial Density, Outlet Type, and Seriousness of Assault

This study examined the association between alcohol outlets and violence. Employing Cincinnati block groups as units of analysis, the authors estimated spatially lagged regression models to determine if the variation in spatial density of alcohol outlets is related to the spatial density of simple and aggravated assaults. The authors estimated separate models for off-premise outlets, bars, and restaurants. The results revealed a positive and significant association between outlet density and assault density. This association held for simple and aggravated assaults and for total outlet density and the density of each type of outlet. Further tests showed the outlet-violence association to be stronger for off-premise outlets relative to bars and restaurants and for simple relative to aggravated assaults. Estimation of attributable fractions (AFs) showed that off-premise outlets may account for approximately one-quarter and one-third of simple and aggravated assaults, respectively.

Do the Invariant Findings of Land, McCall, and Cohen Generalize to Cross-National Studies of Social Structure and Homicide?

The Land, McCall, and Cohen study is one of the most highly cited articles in the social structure and homicide literature. In it, the authors found that three structural covariates—resource deprivation, population size and density, and divorce—were consistently associated with U.S. homicide rates over several decades, even when employing different units of analysis. In this article, we review 65 studies to determine whether Land, McCall, and Cohen’s invariant findings for these three structural covariates generalize to the cross-national empirical literature on social structure and homicide. We conclude that the findings for population structure and divorce are inconsistent in this literature but that there is relatively consistent evidence for an association between homicide and some form of resource deprivation cross-nationally. Based on our review, we also discuss two current directions of this literature and critically assess—much like Land, McCall, and Cohen did for the U.S. literature at the time—the current state of the scientific record on the topic of social structure and homicide at the cross-national level.

Incarceration and Health

The expansion of the penal system has been one of the most dramatic trends in contemporary American society. A wealth of research has examined the impact of incarceration on a range of later life outcomes and has considered how the penal system has emerged as a mechanism of stratification and inequality in the United States. In this article, we review the literature from a comparatively new vein of this research: the impact of incarceration on health outcomes. We first consider the impact of incarceration on a range of individual outcomes, from chronic health conditions to mortality. We then consider outcomes beyond the individual, including the health of family members and community health outcomes. Next, we discuss mechanisms linking incarceration and health outcomes before closing with a consideration of limitations in the field and directions for future research.