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This study advances the literature by examining the effect of carbon monoxide emissions on the degree of physical violence exhibited by a criminal offender during the commission of a criminal offense. A multilevel analysis is conducted to probe the relationship between carbon monoxide levels and whether a criminal offender physically injures his or her victim. The offender-level data are drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System and represent 139,709 single offender/single victim crime incidents for 109 cities in 22 states during 2015. Carbon monoxide concentration and city-level contextual control variables are drawn from other sources. Results show that while carbon monoxide emissions have little effect on the overall level of physical violence displayed by a criminal offender, both the offender's race and sex moderate the relationship between air pollution and victim injury. As carbon monoxide levels rise in a city, both black and male offenders are more likely to injure their victims physically. We theorize that black and male offenders are more vulnerable to the violence-inducing effects of air pollution because of pronounced racial and sex differences in carbon monoxide exposure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A contentious issue regarding immigration is the contempt that many natives hold for immigrants. Studies report that enhanced job competition, the potential for cultural misunderstandings, and security fears are salient in predicting native population discontent for immigrants. However, the threat posed by terrorism has been overlooked in prior research. Using data drawn from twenty mostly European countries and a nonlinear hierarchical modeling statistical procedure, we find that acts of terrorism are associated with a substantive decrease in the desire for outgroup immigration. No effect of terrorism on ingroup immigration is observed. The theoretical implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although blacks are arrested disproportionately for most types of violent crimes, disagreement persists as to the extent to which official arrest data are indicative of differential offending behavior or selection bias on the part of law enforcement personnel Using data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), we assess the effect of an offender's race on the probability of arrest for 335,619 incidents of forcible rape, robbery, and assault in 17 states during 1999. The baseline model for these comparisons is the equiprobability hypothesis that relative to violation frequency as reported by crime victims, the likelihood of arrest for white and black offenders is roughly equal. Multivariate logistic regression results show that the odds of arrest for white offenders is approximately 22% higher for robbery, 13% higher for aggravated assault, and 9% higher for simple assault than they are for black offenders. An offender's race plays no noteworthy role in the likelihood of arrest for the crime of forcible rape. These findings suggest that the disproportionately high arrest rate for black citizens is most likely attributable to differential involvement in reported crime rather than to racially biased law enforcement practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The often observed association between the size of the black population and the amount of social control imposed on blacks has been interpreted as consistent with one of three conceptually distinct perspectives: (1) the political threat hypothesis, (2) the economic threat hypothesis, and (3) the threat of black crime hypothesis. Although these three hypotheses advance differing conceptualizations of threat, adjudicating between them has proven difficult. The current study uses county-level data drawn from South Carolina's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), race-specific voting data, and demographic data to investigate the validity of each of these racial threat hypotheses. Results from a pooled cross-sectional time-series analysis show that black-on-white crime has a substantive positive effect on black arrest levels. In contrast, no such effect is observed for black-on-black crime. These findings taken together furnish strong support for the threat of black crime hypothesis. The curvilinear relationship between the ratio of black-to-white votes cast in a general election and black arrest levels hypothesized by the political threat hypothesis does not hold for the data analyzed. Additionally, we find no empirical support for the economic threat hypothesis. The implications of these findings are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is often proffered that as a fiscal crisis worsens, the capitalist state increasingly relies on incarceration to better manage labor surplus. Using a multilevel study design, we analyze the interplay between the employment status of male criminal defendants charged with burglary and armed robbery and the unemployment rate on pretrial incarceration. We theorize that in cities with high unemployment, unemployed criminal defendants will be more likely to be incarcerated before trial. Additionally, because the state's punitive apparatus is thought to be geared specially to control that segment of the surplus labor population which is most threatening to established interests, we examine whether unemployed African-American defendants are more apt to be incarcerated before trial in cities with a high enemployment rate. Results shoe that the unemployment rate moderates the relationship between employment status and pretrial incarceration. In cities with high unemployement, unemployed defendants have a substantially higher probability of pretrial detention. This effect withstands the introduction of control variable measuring a variety of individual and contextual factors. No support is found for the social dynamite thesis. That is, unemployed African-American defendants do not face a higher probability of pretrial confinement in cities with a high umemployement rate. We conclude that pretrial incarceration in determined, to a large extent, by the interaction between a defendant's employement status and aggregate labor market condition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using four years of county-level data drawn from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) for South Carolina and a pooled cross-sectional time-series research design, we investigate whether gun availability is related to violent crime, gun crime, juvenile gun crime, and violent crimes committed with a knife. We contribute to the literature by distinguishing between illegal and legal gun availability and by using a comprehensive measure of gun crime. Results show a strong positive relationship between illegal gun availability and violent crime, gun crime, and juvenile gun crime. Little or no effect for the legitimate gun availability measure is observed in any of the estimated models. Findings also reveal that illegal guns have little influence on violent crimes committed with a knife. Offenders seem not to be substituting knives or other cutting instruments when illegal firearms become less available. A supplemental analysis also indicates no evidence of simultaneity between gun availability and violent crime. The strong and consistent effect of illegal rather than legal gun availability on violent crime has important policy implications, because it suggests that greater attention should be directed at devising ways for legitimate gun owners to better secure their weapons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]