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The authors explore the relation among social demographic characteristics, occupational prestige, and anti-Semitism in America. The National Opinion Research Center's General Social Survey (1986) data are used to assess Americans' attitudes toward Jews. The results suggest that respondents' age, gender, and educational level are important predictors of anti-Jewish sentiment. The influence of age, however, contravenes previous research in that young Americans report themselves to be anti-Semitic. Reanalysis of these same data, focusing on Americans' attitudes toward Israel, suggests that age is an important factor for explaining anti-Zionism. Implications of these findings are discussed.

A unique dataset is analyzed to investigate the effect of a criminal suspect's prior criminal record on the probability of arrest. Multivariate logistic regression results show that a criminal suspect with a prior criminal record is approximately 29 times more likely than a suspect without a criminal record to be arrested by police. While findings also reveal that Black suspects and Black suspects with a prior criminal record do not have an enhanced proclivity of arrest, Black suspects with a prior criminal record who target White victims are almost three times more apt to be arrested. When juxtaposed with the finding in the baseline model of a substantive relationship between a suspect's race and the likelihood of arrest absent the control for prior criminal record, our results suggest that any correlation evinced between a criminal suspect's race and the likelihood of arrest without controlling for the suspect's prior criminal history may be spurious due to omitted variable bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is proffered that incarcerating offenders will not attenuate criminal activity because new offenders are readily available to supplant those who are imprisoned. This situation, referred to as offender replacement, is mostly applicable for drug selling crimes where a market for illegal drugs exists. We hypothesize that if the incarceration of established drug offenders attenuates competition and creates a fertile environment for novice drug dealers to enter the market, a rise in the drug incarceration rate should increase the likelihood of first-time drug selling behavior. Using a multilevel modeling procedure, we find that a one-unit increase in the drug incarceration rate results in a 15% rise in the odds of a first-time offender being prosecuted for a drug-selling crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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, signifantly 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 consitutes vulnerability. The implications of these findings for primary prevention strategies are discussed.

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]

Using six years of data (2011–16) drawn from the Global Terrorism Database and from other sources for 127 countries, a pooled cross-sectional time-series research design is employed to investigate whether the health of a country's labor market influences the number of terrorist incidents a country experiences. Results show a strong negative relationship between labor force participation and the frequency of terrorist incidents. Neither the youth unemployment rate nor the unemployment rate has a notable influence on predicting acts of terrorism. Findings also reveal that the percent of a country's population living in urban areas does not condition the relationship between labor force participation and terrorism. The observed effect of labor force participation has methodological consequences for how a country's labor market ought to be conceptualized in future research studies on terrorism. Such a finding also has relevant policy implications because it suggests that greater attention should be directed at devising ways for countries to enhance employment opportunities not only to improve economic conditions, but also to assist in the reduction of terrorism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using data drawn from the 2015 School Crime Supplement to the National Crime Victimization Survey, we investigate whether specific types of bullying experienced by a youth influences his or her academic performance. The cross-sectional sample of adolescents is nationally representative and is composed of 4,610 middle and high school students ages twelve to eighteen (51% male, average age 14.7). Using General Strain Theory as a backdrop, we contribute to the extant literature by making an empirical distinction between social (also known as relational), verbal, physical, and cyberbullying victimization. Ordinal regression results show that while a composite measure of bullying victimization does attenuate a youth's academic performance, most of this effect is due to social bullying victimization which remains robust notwithstanding a multitude of model specifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debate persists as to the amount of influence criminal history should have in determining the severity of imposed legal sanction for a criminal offense. One position maintains that the punishment for repeat and first-time offenders convicted for the same type of offense should be similar, whereas an alternative viewpoint argues that the state should sanction repeat offenders more harshly. We contribute to this discourse by investigating whether the amount of weight given to an offender's prior criminal record in sentencing affects the likelihood of repeat offending. Although initial findings showed that a substantive negative bivariate relationship existed at the county level between the weight-accorded prior criminal record in sentencing and repeat offending, this association disappeared in a more sophisticated nonlinear multilevel analysis. Our findings suggest that sanctioning repeat offenders more harshly than first-time offenders for similar offenses has little effect on attenuating repeat offending once other factors are controlled. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social stigma accompanying an official criminal record hinders the ability of an individual to acquire quality and stable employment, which is problematic because of the often reported nexus between unemployment and criminal behavior. Ban the box laws that limit an employer's use of criminal background checks during the hiring process are being established across the country to help integrate ex-offenders into the labor force. The current study investigates whether Hawaii's 1998 ban the box law reduced repeat offending in Honolulu County. Logistic regression results show that a criminal defendant prosecuted in Honolulu for a felony crime was 57 % less likely to have a prior criminal conviction after the implementation of Hawaii's ban the box law. By mollifying the social stigma attached to a criminal record during the hiring process, Hawaii's ban the box law proved to be extremely successful in attenuating repeat felony offending. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

From January 1979 to December 2009, the Maoist insurgent Shining Path committed a total of 9,034 violent acts in a concerted attempt to topple the Peruvian government. These acts of violence included bombings, armed assaults, and assassinations. The Shining Path's leader Abimael Guzmán was captured by the Peruvian government on 12 September 1992. Using quarterly data and an interrupted times-series AutoRegressive Integrative Moving Average (ARIMA) study design, we investigated the effect of Abimael Guzmán's capture on the ability of the Shining Path to wage its war against the Peruvian government. Maximum-likelihood results revealed that the frequency of terrorist acts committed by the Shining Path dropped by 143 incidents per quarter a short time after Guzmán was captured. The analysis also evinced a positive relationship between the lethality of attacks and the frequency of the Shining Path's terrorist activity. We conclude that targeted capture shows some promise as an effective counterterrorism strategy, at least for terrorist groups such as the Shining Path that have a top-down type of organizational structure. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Research examining the connection between the unemployment rate and the aggregate crime is inconclusive. One explanation for the inconsistent findings is that the unemployment rate influences the criminal activity of repeat and first-time offenders in different ways. Results support this thesis by revealing an inverted U-shaped association between the unemployment rate and the probability of repeat offending. The curvilinear relationship likely results from repeat offenders and those lacking a criminal record entering and exiting the labor force at different levels of unemployment. Our findings highlight the role that the unemployment rate plays in affecting repeat offending and underscore the importance of distinguishing between repeat and first-time offending when analyzing the effect of the unemployment rate on crime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]