Crime and Incarceration: Some Comparative Findings from the 1980s

1992 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-416 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheldon Ekland-Olson ◽  
William R. Kelly ◽  
Michael Eisenberg

Incarceration, crime, and unemployment rates from Texas, California, and the United States during the 1970s and 1980s are examined to explore the link between incarceration policies and crime rates. Comparing Texas and California, despite different incarceration policies in the 1980s, there are few differences in violent crime rate trends. By contrast, in the late 1980s, property crimes increased in Texas and decreased in California. These state-rate differences across types of crime parallel findings across four successive parolee cohorts in Texas, where increases in repetitious property offending patterns were noted, and repetitious violent offending remained stable. Variations in incarceration rates and economic conditions are noted as explanatory factors.

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 5-14
Author(s):  
Richard Fast

This paper summarizes the arguments and counterarguments within the scientific discussion on the issue of the effect of education on violent crime, specifically in the U.S. state of Alabama. The main purpose of the research is to determine whether more education leads to a decrease in the rate of violent crime. Systematization of the literary sources and approaches for reducing the violent crime rate indicate that increasing education, particularly the number of people with at least a high school or associate’s degree, can be one influential tool in cutting crime. The relevance of this scientific problem analysis is that Alabama has one of the highest violent crime rates in the United States according to crime watch sources, and Alabama residents desire safer neighborhoods. Investigation of what effect education has on crime in the paper is carried out in the following logical sequence: Introduction, literature review, data and analysis, and conclusion. Methodological tools of the research methods include econometric analysis using log-linear, linear-log, and log-log models covering population, educational attainment, violent crime rate, and unemployment rate of each county over five years: 2011-2015. The object of research are all the counties of Alabama, because namely they have some of the highest crime rates in the United States. Coincidentally, Alabama also has one of the lowest educational attainment rates in the country; the average American has more years of formal schooling than the average Alabama resident, and the crime rates of all other U.S. states compared to Alabama reflect this important fact. The paper presents the results of an empirical analysis of how more education impacted the violent crime rate in that state, which showed that, with one exception, more years of schooling does indeed result in less violent crime. The research empirically confirms and theoretically proves that, in the majority of cases, a better educated populace is less likely to commit violent crime.The results of the research can be useful for educators, law enforcement, and criminal justice practitioners.


2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 58-69
Author(s):  
Marlene Kim

Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) in the United States face problems of discrimination, the glass ceiling, and very high long-term unemployment rates. As a diverse population, although some Asian Americans are more successful than average, others, like those from Southeast Asia and Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islanders (NHPIs), work in low-paying jobs and suffer from high poverty rates, high unemployment rates, and low earnings. Collecting more detailed and additional data from employers, oversampling AAPIs in current data sets, making administrative data available to researchers, providing more resources for research on AAPIs, and enforcing nondiscrimination laws and affirmative action mandates would assist this population.


2021 ◽  
pp. 003464462199600
Author(s):  
Diego Ayala-McCormick

It has become common to compare racial inequality in the United States with a “Latin American” pattern of racial inequality in which egalitarian racial ideologies mask stark socioeconomic inequalities along racial lines. However, relatively few comparative studies exist attempting to analyze variations in degrees of racial inequality in the Americas. To stimulate further research in this area, the following study analyzes census data on racial inequality in unemployment rates, educational attainment, homeownership rates, and income in Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States. The results suggest that while Brazil is similar to the United States in displaying large levels of racial inequality in the areas measured, Cuba and Puerto Rico display significantly lower levels of racial inequality and Colombia falls in between, undermining conceptions of a monolithic Latin American racial system.


Author(s):  
Dionissi Aliprantis ◽  
Kyle Fee ◽  
Nelson Oliver

Not only has poverty recently increased in the United States, it has also become more concentrated. This Commentary documents changes in the concentration of poverty in metropolitan areas over the last decade. The analysis shows that the concentration of poverty tends to be highest in northern cities, and that wherever overall poverty or unemployment rates went up the most over the course of the decade, the concentration of poverty tended to increase there as well.


2019 ◽  
Vol 72 (4) ◽  
pp. 944-959 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorrie Frasure-Yokley ◽  
Bryan Wilcox-Archuleta

This article examines the extent to which economic attitudes, political predispositions, neighborhood context, and socio-demographic factors influence views toward adult, undocumented immigrants living and working in the United States. We specifically examine how these factors differ for respondents living in various types of American urban, suburban, and rural areas. Arguably, in the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election, public opinion toward often racialized immigration policy proposals is incomplete without an understanding of the role of place and geographic identity. In the 2016 general election, 62 percent of rural voters cast a ballot for Trump, as compared with 50 percent of suburban voters, and 35 percent of urban voters. However, we know little about how their views toward undocumented immigration, a persistent hot-button issue, varied by geographic type. Our findings suggest that views toward undocumented immigrants currently living and working in the United States are conditioned by factors related to a respondent’s geographic type. We find that attitudes toward immigrants vary considerably across place. These findings provide support to our argument about the development of a geographic-based identity that has considerable impact on important public opinion attitudes, even after controlling for more traditional explanatory factors.


Asian Survey ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 59 (1) ◽  
pp. 170-176
Author(s):  
Aurel Croissant

In 2018, ever-incumbent Prime Minister Hun Sen scored a landslide victory in the Cambodian general elections. Three factors in particular explain this outcome. First, the elimination of the main opposition party, whose strategy of a peaceful election boycott failed. Second, favorable economic conditions and government handouts of spoils to constituencies that traditionally supported the opposition. Third, the weak leverage of the United States and the EU, and the Hun Sen regime’s strong links with China.


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