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Although temperature aggression theory maintains that a high temperature engenders more aggressive behavior by irritating individuals, routine activity theory asserts that violent crime increases as temperature rises because of enhanced interaction among the public in outdoor settings. We investigate the effect of maximum daily temperature on whether crime victims are physically injured during the commission of an outdoor criminal offense in Cleveland, Ohio. We focus on violent crimes occurring outdoors because most U.S. households have central air-conditioning or room air conditioners. Two autoregressive integrative moving average (ARIMA) analyses provide support for routine activity theory because although maximum daily temperature has a strong positive effect on the frequency of violent crimes occurring outdoors, it has little influence on the physical injury of crime victims. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The primary objective of this study is to determine the effect of a victim's race on the likelihood of him or her being seriously injured during the commission of an interracial crime. We also assess the probability of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. A multilevel city analysis shows that black offenders are no more apt than white offenders to injure their victims seriously during an interracial robbery or rape. A black offender also does not have a greater proclivity to kill his or her victim during the commission of an interracial crime. Some evidence suggests that white victims are more likely than black victims to suffer serious physical harm during an aggravated assault. Results also reveal that contextual factors related to racial animosity, such as residential segregation, white-to-black economic inequality, and black-to-white unemployment, fail to have any moderating effect on either the severity of victim injury or the likelihood of a homicide occurring during an interracial crime. Overall, the results generated in this study tend to cast doubt on the validity of racial animosity theory. Our findings also lead us to question the veracity of the often made claim that black-on-white crimes are punished more severely because these types of offenses are somehow more heinous in circumstance. At least in regard to serious victim injury and victim death, black-on-white crime is no more violent than white-on-black crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social scientists remain unsure as to whether divorce acts to alleviate domestic violence or whether ex-spouses become the targets of the displaced violence. Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System and the Census, this study investigates the relationship between the divorce rate and the domestic crime rate. The study contributes to the literature by distinguishing between spouse and ex-spouse victimization and by using a comprehensive measure of domestic crime. Results show a strong positive effect of the divorce rate on spouse and ex-spouse victimization. The length of time a married couple must be separated prior to finalizing a divorce was also found to amplify the spouse victimization rate. This finding suggests that mandatory separation periods may need to be eliminated or shortened in length to help attenuate crime between married couples seeking a divorce. Overall, these results support the view that divorce acts to shift domestic strife to ex-spouses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The current study used data drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) and the census to investigate the relationship between indicators of interracial and intraracial economic inequality and violent crime rates, including White-on-Black, White-on-White, Black-on-White, and Black-on-Black offenses. Multivariate regression results for ninety-one cities showed that while total inequality and intraracial inequality had no significant association with offending rates, interracial inequality was a strong predictor of the overall violent crime rate and the Black-on-Black crime rate. Overall, these results were interpreted as consistent with J.R. Blau and Blau''s (1982) relative deprivation thesis, with secondary support for P.M. Blau''s (1977) macrostructural theory of intergroup relations. The findings also helped to clarify the unresolved theoretical issue regarding which reference group was most important in triggering relative deprivation among Blacks. It appeared that prior studies were unable to find support for the relative deprivation thesis for Black crime rates because of data and methodological limitations. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Efforts to apply racial threat theory to explain interracial violence in America are restricted to historically dated events such as lynchings or to relatively infrequently occurring events such as race riots, hate crimes or interracial homicides. The present study extends extant research by using county-level data, drawn from South Carolina's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), race-specific voting data, and demographic data to investigate the relationship between racial threat and interracial and intraracial violent crimes. Results from a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis show that one dimension of racial threat, economic competition, has a modest substantive effect on interracial crimes involving white perpetrators and black victims--as economic competition increases between whites and blacks, whites commit more violent crimes against blacks. Political threat has no statistically discernable effect on the white-on-black crime rate. Further, neither measure of racial threat, economic competition nor political threat is associated with the black-on-white crime rate, the white-on-white crime rate or with the black-on-black crime rate. The implications of these findings for racial threat theory are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]