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Traditional bullying and cyberbullying are common problems faced by today's youth. Research seeking to explain bullying perpetration has often invoked Agnew's general strain theory (GST). However, research to date has often explored within a given study only a single emotion at a time that can result from strain. Further, prior research has tended to take the causal ordering arguments of GST at face value. The current study seeks to focus on the correlation of strains related to socioeconomics with traditional and cyberbullying perpetration and negative emotions. Utilizing the Add Health data and path modeling in Mplus, results suggest that socioeconomic strain positively correlates with bullying perpetration and recent negative emotions. However, results suggest a potential causal chain that is the opposite of an expectation of GST, with bullying perpetration potentially affecting negative emotions, and not the other way around. Implications of the results for theory and policy are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The discussion of race and crime has been a long-standing interest of researchers, with statistics consistently showing an overrepresentation of non-white offenders compared to their white counterparts – specifically in relation to violent crimes such as murder and rape. Prior research has found that about 46 percent of identified serial rapists are black, which correlates with other sensationalized violent crimes such as mass murder and serial murder (Wright, Vander Ven, & Fesmire; 2016). The news media are the primary sources of this kind of information for the general public, with previous studies acknowledging that the media primarily focus on discussing non-white offenders in their crime-based news stories. With the majority of Americans receiving their information about crime from the news media, it is important to increase our understanding of how they present crime information. The current study explores the print media representations of serial rapists, from 1940–2010, from five prominent newspapers: The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, The Boston Globe, The Washington Post, and the Chicago Tribune. A content analysis was conducted on 524 articles covering 297 serial rape offenders from the data compiled by Wright and colleagues (2016) in which race of the offender was known. Results suggest that while newspapers dehumanize both white and non-white offenders, white offenders tend to have their behavior neutralized using techniques to garner more sympathy, while these same neutralization techniques are not generally applied to non-white offenders, thus potentially increasing racial and ethnic bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bullying victimization can have serious consequences for adolescents. This article examines the association between traditional and cyberbullying victimization, depressive symptoms, and suicidality in a national school-based sample, utilizing general strain theory (GST) as a guide to how these variables might relate to each other. We additionally examine whether the associations between these variables differ by gender. Results suggest that traditional and cyberbullying victimization have significant, positive associations with both depressive symptoms and suicidality. Results are partly supportive of the full model suggested by GST, with the associations between bullying and suicidality being weakened in some models when accounting for depressive symptoms. Gender differences also emerge. These findings are discussed in relation to their relevance for policy and theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Little is known about the social correlates of serial rape or about trends in offending across time and space in the United States. Furthermore, the limited serial rape scholarship that exists was largely generalized from small, captive samples. The current study aims to amplify our understanding of serial rape by pursuing three fundamental objectives. First, guided by theory and research we propose a new, more precise, and comprehensive conceptualization of serial rape. Next, we draw from media representations of serial rape published in five major American newspapers from 1940 to 2010 to develop an offender social profile and to identify patterns in attack style. Our analysis of a broad and diverse sample of serial offenders described in media accounts (N = 1,037) produced the following profile estimates—age: 27 years; race/ethnicity: African American, 46%; Caucasian, 29%; Latino, 19%; Asian, 5%. Most offenders were employed in unskilled or semiskilled occupations and the most common attack strategy was the surprise approach (47%). Finally, our data allow us to estimate and interpret historical trends as depicted in media accounts. Our analysis revealed low levels of serial rape in newspaper accounts during the 1940s to 1950s, followed by a steady increase (with periodic decreases) leading to a peak in 1991. This peak is followed by a steady and dramatic decline from 1992 to 2010. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]