By J.M. Tamarit Sumalla, P. Romero Seseña, L. Arantegui Arràez, A. Aizpitarte

Sexual violence in an intimate relationship is a less studied phenomenon than other forms of intimate partner violence, despite data pointing to a high prevalence. Studies on how the cases are sentenced are scarce. Until recently, many laws did not allow marital rape to be punished as a crime of rape, and some studies showed a tendency for the courts to punish these cases less severely. The present study is based on an analysis of 964 rape cases of adult women in Spain. All the information was extracted from sentences of the Provincial Courts issued between 2015 and 2022. Results showed that significantly lower conviction rates and less severe penalties were imposed when the rape was committed by the intimate partner compared to other rape cases where the offenders were not partners (family members, acquaintances, or unknown strangers). The practical implications of these results in several areas are discussed.

European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research, Volume 30, pages 567–587, (2024)

By Our Watch

This report summarises the findings of a survey exploring young Australians' attitudes to gender, sex, relationships and pornography. It finds that early exposure to pornography can have a significant negative impact and that young people are accessing pornographic material earlier than previously reported. The report highlights measures governments can take to reduce the harmful impacts of pornography on children and young people.

The report argues that young people will continue to access all kinds of material, both in pornography and in other forms of media, to understand sex and relationships and so argues for a harm reduction approach, ensuring that young people and communities are equipped and supported to critically engage with this material.

Findings

• The average age at which the participants have first seen porn was 13.6 years.

• For young women, the average age is 2 years younger than it was in 2018.

• 31% of young people are watching porn as a form of sexual education.

• 25% of 16 to 17 year olds see porn as realistic.

• 73% of young people (65% of men and 80% of women) agree that porn is degrading to women.

• Access to information and education about pornography has the potential to mediate the negative impacts of pornography on young people, their wellbeing and relationships.

Key recommendations

• Integrate information on the topic of pornography in age-appropriate and sequential ways into respectful relationships education (RRE) across school sectors.

• Work in partnership with experts and uses co-design processes with young people to develop information and practical resources specifically for young people on pornography.

• Partner with research organisations to collect robust nationally representative data about young people’s pornography exposure and access, to inform ongoing work and responses.

Melbourne< Our Watch, 2024. 4p.

By Dana Stripling; Rick Dierenfeldt; Grant Drawve; Christina Policastro; Gale Iles

An extensive body of literature has described the influence of neighborhood characteristics, including socio-economic deprivation, residential turnover, and racial/ethnic composition on gun crime. There have been limited efforts, however, to examine the extent to which these effects might vary based on the nature of gun crime—particularly in communities outside of major cities like Chicago or St. Louis. This study attempts to address this issue through the application of negative binomial regression and equality of coefficients tests to data obtained from the crime logs and American Community Survey data of a medium-sized city in the Southeastern U.S. Specifically, this study examines (in)equality in the structural covariates of gun crimes when these offenses are disaggregated by gang-involved gun crime versus non-gang involved gun crime. Results indicate that the relative influence of neighborhood structural characteristics varies by gun crime type, illustrating the need for disaggregated measures for developing effective policy and assessment.  

The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Chattanooga, Tennessee , 2023. 56p.  

By Sarah A. Font and Reeve Kennedy

Despite sufficient evidence to conclude that maltreatment exposure affects the risk of crime and delinquency, the magnitude and specificity of effects of child maltreatment on crime and delinquency and the mechanisms through which those effects operate remain poorly identified. Key challenges include insufficient attention to the overlap of child maltreatment with various forms of family dysfunction and adversity and a lack of comprehensive measurement of the multiple, often comorbid, forms of child maltreatment. We then consider the potential impacts of the child welfare system on the maltreatment–crime link. Because the child welfare system typically provides voluntary, short-term services of unknown quality, it likely neither increases nor reduces risks of delinquency and crime for most children who are referred or investigated. For the comparatively small (although nominally large and important) subset of children experiencing foster care, impacts on delinquency and crime likely vary by the quality of environments within and after their time in care—issues that, to date, have received too little attention.

Annu. Rev. Criminol. 2022. 5:371–96

By Anthony A. Braga, Elizabeth Griffiths, Keller Sheppard, and Stephen Douglas

One of the central debates animating the interpretation of gun research for public policy is the question of whether the presence of firearms independently makes violent situations more lethal, known as an instrumentality effect, or whether determined offenders will simply substitute other weapons to affect fatalities in the absence of guns. The latter position assumes sufficient intentionality among homicide assailants to kill their victims, irrespective of the tools available to do so. Studies on the lethality of guns, the likelihood of injury by weapon type, offender intent, and firearm availability provide considerable evidence that guns contribute to fatalities that would otherwise have been nonfatal assaults. The increasing lethality of guns, based on size and technology, and identifiable gaps in existing gun control policies mean that new and innovative policy interventions are required to reduce firearm fatalities and to alleviate the substantial economic and social costs associated with gun violence.

Annual Review of Criminology, Vol. 4 (2021), pp. 147–164

By Tim Newburn

This review explores those varied bodies of work that have sought to understand crowd behavior and violent crowd conduct in particular. Although the study of such collective conduct was once considered central to social science, this has long ceased to be the case and in many respects, the study of protest and riot now receives relatively little attention, especially within criminology. In addition to offering a critical overview of work in this field, this review argues in favor of an expanded conception of its subject matter. In recent times, scholarly concern has increasingly been focused on questions of etiology, i.e., asking how and why events such as riots occur, with the consequence that less attention is paid to other, arguably equally important questions, including how riots spread, how they end, and, critically, what happens in their aftermath. Accordingly, as a corrective, the review proposes a life-cycle model of riots.

ANNUAL REVIEW OF CRIMINOLOGY, Vol. 4 (2021), pp. 53–73

By Alice M. Ellysona , Emma Gauseb, Vivian H. Lyonsd, Julia P. Schleimerb, Kimberly Dalveb, Margaret R. Kuklinskid, Sabrina Oesterlef , Elizabeth H. Weybrightg, Ali RowhaniRahbara 

Abstract Objectives.—This study builds on prior research showing a strong relationship between handgun carrying and delinquent behaviors among urban youth by examining the association between handgun carrying trajectories and various types of violence in a rural sample. Methods: This study uses data from a longitudinal cohort study of 2,002 public school students in the United States from 12 rural communities across 7 states from ages 12–26 (2005–2019). We used logistic regressions to assess associations of various bullying and physical violence behaviors with latent trajectories of handgun carrying from adolescence through young adulthood. Results.—Compared to youth with very low probabilities of carrying a handgun in adolescence and young adulthood, trajectories with high probabilities of handgun carrying during adolescence or young adulthood were associated with greater odds of using bullying (odds ratios (ORs) ranging from 1.9–11.2) and higher odds of using physical violence during adolescence (ORs ranging from 1.5–15.9) and young adulthood (ORs ranging from 1.9–4.7). These trajectories with higher probabilities of handgun carrying were also associated with greater odds of experiencing physical violence like parental physical abuse and intimate partner violence, but not bullying. Conclusion and implication.—Experiencing and using bullying and physical violence were associated with specific patterns of handgun carrying among youth growing up in rural areas. Handgun carrying could be an important focus of violence prevention programs among those youth 

Prev Med. 2023 February ; 167: 107416. doi:10.1016/j.ypmed.2022.107416. 

By Christopher R. Harper, Jingjing Li ; Kameron Sheats 

Community violence, including homicides involving firearms, is a significant public health concern. From 2019 to 2020, firearmrelated homicides increased by 39% for youths and young adults aged 10–24 years, and rates of suicide by firearm increased by approximately 15% among the same age group. Findings from the nationally representative 2021 Youth Risk Behavior Survey were used to analyze disparities and correlates of witnessing community violence and gun carrying among a nationally representative sample of high school students. Chi-square tests and logistic regression accounting for the complex sampling of the survey were used to assess demographic differences by student sex, race and ethnicity, age, and sexual identity in ever witnessing community violence, gun carrying in the past 12 months, and their associations with substance use and suicide risk. Measures of substance use included current binge drinking and marijuana use and lifetime prescription opioid misuse and illicit drug use. Suicide risk included seriously considered attempting suicide and attempted suicide in the past 12 months. Overall, approximately 20% of students witnessed community violence and 3.5% of students carried a gun. American Indian or Alaska Native, Black, and Hispanic students were more likely to witness community violence and to report carrying a gun than their White peers. Males were more likely to witness community violence and carry a gun than females. Lesbian, gay, or bisexual students were more likely to witness community violence than their heterosexual peers. Also, witnessing community violence consistently was associated with increased odds of gun carrying, substance use, and suicide risk for both males and females and when comparing Black, White, and Hispanic students. These findings highlight the importance of comprehensive violence prevention strategies that incorporate health equity to mitigate the effects of violence exposure on substance use and suicide risk among youths. 

  MMWR / April 28, 2023 / Vol. 72 / No. 1  

By: Ecaterina Balica

Objective. The present paper analyses the relation between the number of blows, location of wounds and the length between homicide and suicide in homicide-suicide (HS) cases committed in Romania in the timeframe 2002-2013. At the same time, the study presents the correlation between three types of HS (intimate partner homicide-suicide (IPH-S), filicide- suicides (FS), familicides-suicides (Fam-S) and the above mentioned variables.

Method. The data regarding the number of blows, location of wounds and length between homicide and suicide were extracted from the Homicide-suicides in Romania 2002-2013 database (N=132). The database includes information regarding all HS committed in Romania and the data were collected from the recordings of the Criminal Investigations Services, from criminal files in prosecutors’ custody and from articles published in online newspapers. The data analysis was done by using SPSS 22.0.

Results. More than a half of the suicides occurred immediately after the aggressor committed the homicide (N=71; 53.8%). In approximately two thirds of the cases (N=56; 57.1%), the death of the victim resulted from a great number of blows. Many aggressors preferred to hit their victims in the head area (21.5%) or neck area (22.3%) only. The most common suicide method recorded in HS cases was by hanging (34.8%).

Conclusions. The prevention of the HS seems to be a difficult task after the aggressor initiated the first act of aggression (the homicide). Therefore, prevention and intervention have to be focused on the initial phases of the acts of violence that precede HS.

Rom J Leg Med [26] 308-313 [2018]

By: David B. Johnson and Joshua J. Robinson

We explore the relationship between gun prevalence and homicides in the United States from 2003–2019. Unlike previous research, which typically uses an indirect, state-level measure of gun prevalence, we use a direct measure of guns in a narrow geographic area: gun dealers. We find an increase in gun dealer density is significantly and positively associated with increased homicides in subsequent years. We compare estimates from our preferred measure, the number of dealers per 100 square miles in a local area, to those found using other gun prevalence measures and find our preferred measure to be more consistent in magnitude across three different estimation methods and two different data sources. We additionally show the effect of gun dealer density is limited mostly to counties that have a high percent of Black residents. We propose that the so-called “Ferguson Effect”—a sharp increase in violent crime in urban and Black communities after 2014—might be partially explained by an influx of gun dealers in Black communities, rather than just a change in the propensity of Black residents to call the police or changes in police behavior.

October 1, 2021

By Charles Fain Lehman

Crime remains a pressing concern for Americans, even as rates of violence have receded from 2022 peaks. What explains these persistent concerns? This report investigates this question in the context of a small but rapidly growing American city: Chattanooga, Tennessee. A Manhattan Institute poll from earlier this year found that Chattanooga residents are worried about safety in their communities; this report investigates why. A review of Chattanooga data, it finds that the city experienced the same increases in certain kinds of crime that other American cities did over the past four years, but that, through the application of evidence-based practices, the city’s police and municipal government have brought the problem under control. But even as violent crime has largely receded, multiple indicators are suggesting that another problem persists: disorder. Data indicate that homelessness, trash, and certain kinds of petty crime remain elevated above pre-2020 levels. A reduction in city resources—especially police resources—appears to have caused a concentration on serious crime, at the expense of more minor but still significant issues. Disorder, this report argues, matters, especially for a growing city like Chattanooga. Consequently, this report concludes by outlining several principles for addressing this problem, while capitalizing on the gains that the city has already made in getting major crime under control.

New York: The Manhattan Institute, 2024. 26p.

Edited by Jonathan Adams and Cordelia Hess

Is research on antisemitism even necessary in countries with a relatively small Jewish population? Absolutely, as this volume shows. Compared to other countries, research on antisemitism in the Nordic countries (Denmark, the Faroe Islands, Finland, Greenland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden) is marginalized at an institutional and staffing level, especially as far as antisemitism beyond German fascism, the Second World War, and the Holocaust is concerned. Furthermore, compared to scholarship on other prejudices and minority groups, issues concerning Jews and anti-Jewish stereotypes remain relatively under researched in Scandinavia – even though antisemitic stereotypes have been present and flourishing in the North ever since the arrival of Christianity, and long before the arrival of the first Jewish communities.
This volume aims to help bring the study of antisemitism to the fore, from the medieval period to the present day. Contributors from all the Nordic countries describe the status of as well as the challenges and desiderata for the study of antisemitism in their respective countries.

Berlin ; Boston : De Gruyter, [2020]