Assessing the Risk of Repeat Victimization Using Structured and Unstructured Police Information

Following the EU Victim Directive, Dutch police officers are obliged to assess a victim’s vulnerability to repeat victimization. This study explored the utility of unstructured police information for the prediction of repeat victimization, as well as its incremental value over and above structured police information. Police records over a period of 6 years were retrieved for a sample of 116,680 victims. Unstructured information was transformed into numeric features using count-vector and TF/IDF methods. Classification models were built using decision tree and random forest models. AUC values indicate that a combination of structured and unstructured police information could be used to correctly classify a majority of repeat and non-repeat victims.

Exposure to Discretionary Arrests Increases Support for Anti-Police Protests

The legitimacy of the state rests on individuals' perceptions of fairness when interacting with state institutions and state agents. The police as an institution and as individual agents have wide latitude to detain and use force against individuals. We argue that encounters with state bureaucracy and civil servants, specifically the police, can generate individual-level grievances against the state, and that these grievances make it more likely an individual participates in protest against the state. We study support for and the legitimacy of policing in the context of the anti-police protests in Baltimore, MD following the death of Freddie Gray in April, 2015. Using data from police records and social media, we show that individuals with higher exposure to discretionary arrests --- arrests that are potentially viewed as illegitimate or arbitrary --- are more likely to support protests against the police. In contrast, we demonstrate that exposure to arrests for major crimes such as murder does not follow the same pattern. Thus, support for the police as an institution varies systematically with exposure to arbitrary and capricious encounters with police agents. As these grievance generating encounters become more widespread, we expect to see increased protests against the police and further erosion in support of the police as an institution. Alternatively, shifting institutional resources to focus on major crimes and limiting the discretionary authority of police agents when interacting with the public may help to repair the legitimacy of policing institutions over the long term.

Voted In, Standing Out: Public Response to Immigrants' Political Accession

In a context of nativism and poor representation of immigrant-origin ethnic minorities, what is the reaction of the host society when immigrants succeed at integration in political institutions? Building on threat theory—which links minorities’ political power to hostility against minoritized groups—we argue that when they win political office, immigrants pose a threat to natives’ dominant position. This in turn triggers a hostile reaction from a violent-prone fringe, the mass public and the elites. We test these dynamics across the last four UK general elections, using hate crime police records, public opinion data, and text data from over 500,000 news articles from 350 national and local newspapers. We identify the public’s hostile reactions with a regression discontinuity design that leverages close election results between minority-immigrant and dominant group candidates. Our findings suggest a public backlash against ethnic minority immigrants’ integration into majority settings.

Study on the Relationship Between Literacy and Dowry Mortality in Different Indian States

Background: Dowry death is old wicked tradition. Death by burning of married women was reported to be 452 for the year 1985, 478 for the year 1986 and 300 for the first initial six months of 1987, of women belonging to age16 to 30 years. [1, 2]. 1, 319cases were also reported nationwide in 1986 [1, 3]. Police records did not match hospital records for third degree burn cases among younger married women; far more violence occurs than the crime reports indicate [1, 4]. Methodology: Pub Med and Google search engines were searched to search previously done studies. Data was taken from NCBR, India. Census of India and data was taken for the year 2019 and 2017 respectively. Data was made worth for the study, so that proper conclusions could be made. Analysis was performed after implementation of correlation coefficient, regression coefficient and t test. Results and conclusions were made thereafter. Results: The statistically significant correlation coefficient was found to be -0.329.The ANOVA table was also found indulged significantly. Study concluded enhancement in literacy may pullout dowry deaths. t test reflected a significant value 1.8 (p<0.5). Discussion: Results were showing significant values, those could be interpreted, dowry deaths may fall if literacy rates are increased.

Predictive Properties of the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) in a Northern Canadian Prairie Sample

This study examined the predictive properties of the Ontario Domestic Assault Risk Assessment (ODARA) in a large Canadian, predominantly Indigenous, sample from a geographic region with the highest rates of intimate partner violence (IPV) in the country. A random stratified sample of 300 men (92.7% Indigenous) court adjudicated for an IPV offense was drawn from six Northern Saskatchewan Royal Canadian Mounted Police detachment regions. The ODARA was rated from police records and recidivism data were obtained via official criminal records over a mean 4.7-year follow-up. ODARA scores had small to moderate predictive accuracy (AUC/C = .58–.67) for IPV and other recidivism outcomes in the aggregate sample and Indigenous subsample. E/O index analyses demonstrated that the ODARA Ontario norms overpredicted IPV recidivism at high scores but underpredicted it at lower mid-range scores. Implications for use of the ODARA to assist frontline police personnel in IPV risk assessment and management are discussed.

Deaths and Injuries from Unintentional Falls: An Analysis of Nepal Police Records

Falls are a major cause of unintentional injury-related global mortality and morbidity. The actual mortality and morbidity from falls in Nepal have been overlooked and not systematically studied. This study, therefore, aims to present the national status of fall-related deaths and injuries. The study analyzed the fall incidents recorded by Nepal Police for five fiscal years (17 July 2014 to 16 July 2019). These incident recordings were in the form of narratives, and possible variables were extracted for the analysis. In five years, 4,714 people were injured or died from falls in Nepal. The average age of the fall victim was 35.6 years (SD=19.94); the mean age of the person who died from falls was slightly lower (30.9 years) than the injured person (40.4 years). The analysis showed that the fall cases were remarkably greater for males than females. This study found that Bagmati Province, where the capital city was located has the highest death and injury rates from falls, followed by Gandaki Province and Province 1. The study identified 11 different locations of falls. These findings revealed that Nepal has a considerable burden of fall deaths and injuries. However, the actual burden of fall injuries might be higher due to the under-reporting of the incidents through the Nepal Police data recording system.

Wartime Suffering and Survival

This book explores how people survive in the face of incredible odds. When our backs are against the wall, what are our interests, identities, and practices? When are we self-centered, empathetic, altruistic, or ambivalent? How much agency do the desperate have—or want? Such was the situation in the Blockade of Leningrad, nearly 900 days from 1941 to 1944, in which over one million civilians died—but more survived due to gumption and creativity. How did they survive, and how did survival reinforce or reshape identities, practices, and relations under Stalin? Using diaries, recollections, police records, interviews, and state documents from Leningrad, this book shows average Leningraders coping with war, starvation, and extreme uncertainty. Local relations and social distance matter significantly when states and institutions falter under duress. Opportunism and desperation were balanced by empathy and relations. One key to Leningraders’ practices was relations to anchors—entities of symbolic and personal significance that anchored Leningraders to each other and a sense of community. Such anchors as food and Others shaped practices of empathy and compassion, and of opportunism and egoism. By exploring the state and shadow markets, food, families, gender, class, death, and suffering, Wartime Suffering and Survival relays Leningraders’ stories to show a little-told side of Russian and Soviet history and to explore the human condition and who we really are. This speaks not only to rethinking the nature of the Soviet Union and Stalinism, but also to the nature of social relations, practices, and people more generally.

Tracking Violent Crime with Ambulance Data: How Much Crime Goes Uncounted?

Research Question What proportion of ambulance records documenting injuries caused by criminal violence is included in police records for violent crimes occurring in the same area at the same dates and times as incidents found in ambulance records? Data We analysed subsets of three datasets during matched time periods: West Midlands Ambulance Service records of all 36,639 incidents of violent injuries from January 2012 to March 2017; 132,317 West Midlands Police records of violent crimes from January 2012 to December 2015; and 9083 records of treatment of violent injuries as recorded in hospital Emergency Department (ED) records covering September 2013 to March 2016. Methods We compared all incidents in the ambulance dataset and ED data to corresponding locations and times in incidents recorded in police datasets. Findings Approximately 90% of cases in the ambulance dataset did not have a corresponding case in the police dataset. The proportion was even lower in the Emergency Department dataset, where less than 5% of cases were successfully matched to a police record. These data suggest that adding the medical data to the police data could add 15 to 20% more violent offences to the totals recorded by the police. Conclusions Tracking identified ambulance data can add substantial numbers of serious violent crimes, over and above those reported to the police. These added cases can increase the targeting of police and public health resources to prevent harm against victims, at places, and by offenders at highest risk of serious violence.