Race, disadvantage, and violence: A spatial exploration of macrolevel covariates of police-involved homicides within and between US counties.

Efforts to explore the macrolevel determinants of police-involved homicides have expanded in recent years due in part to increased scrutiny and media attention to such events, and increased data availability of these events through crowdsourced databases. However, little empirical research has examined the spatial determinants of such events. The present study extends the extant macrolevel research on police-involved homicides by employing an underutilized spatial econometric model, the spatial Durbin model (SDM), to assess the direct and indirect county effects of racial threat, economic threat, social disorganization, and community violence on police killings within and between US counties from 2013 through 2020. Results indicate a direct inverse relationship between racial threat and police-involved homicides, no support for economic threat, and a direct positive association with two measures of social disorganization. Additionally, we find firearm availability exhibits significant direct and indirect spatial dependence on focal county police-involved homicides, reflecting spatial spillover processes. In essence, as firearm availability in neighboring counties increases, police-involved homicides within a focal county increase. The implications of these findings for racial threat, economic threat, social disorganization, and community violence are discussed.

Examining the health and wellness of solo self-employed workers through narratives of precarity: a qualitative study.

BACKGROUND: In recent decades, there has been a significant transformation in the world of work that is characterized by a shift from traditional manufacturing and managerial capitalism, which offered stable full-time employment, to new forms of entrepreneurial capitalism. This new paradigm involves various forms of insecure, contingent, and non-standard work arrangements. Within this context, there has been a noticeable rise in Self-Employed individuals, exhibiting a wide range of -working arrangements. Despite numerous investigations into the factors driving individuals towards Self-Employment and the associated uncertainties and insecurities impacting their lives and job prospects, studies have specifically delved into the connection between the precarious identity of Self-Employed workers and their overall health and well-being. This exploratory study drew on a 'precarity' lens to make contributions to knowledge about Self-Employed workers, aiming to explore how their vulnerable social position might have detrimental effects on their health and well-being. METHODS: Drawing on in-depth interviews with 24 solo Self-Employed people in Ontario (January - July 2021), narrative thematic analysis was conducted based on participants' narratives of their work experiences. The dataset was analyzed with the support of NVIVO qualitative data analysis software to elicit narratives and themes. FINDINGS: The findings showed that people opt into Self-Employment because they prefer flexibility and autonomy in their working life. However, moving forward, in the guise of flexibility, they encounter a life of precarity, in terms of job unsustainability, uncertainties, insecurities, unstable working hours and income, and exclusion from social benefits. As a result, the health and well-being of Self-Employed workers are adversely affected by anger, anomie, and anxiety, bringing forward potential risks for a growing population. CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS: Neoliberalism fabricates a 'precariat' Self-Employed class. This is a social position that is vague, volatile, and contingent, that foreshadows potential threats of the health and wellbeing of a growing population in the changing workforce. The findings in this research facilitate some policy implications and practices at the federal or provincial government level to better support the health and wellbeing of SE'd workers.

Association of the social disorganization index with time to first septic shock event in children with acute myeloid leukemia.

BACKGROUND: Pediatric acute myeloid leukemia (AML) chemotherapy increases the risk of life-threatening complications, including septic shock (SS). An area-based measure of social determinants of health, the social disorganization index (SDI), was hypothesized to be associated with SS and SS-associated death (SS-death). METHODS: Children treated for de novo AML on two Children's Oncology Group trials at institutions contributing to the Pediatric Health Information System (PHIS) database were included. The SDI was calculated via residential zip code data from the US Census Bureau. SS was identified via PHIS resource utilization codes. SS-death was defined as death within 2 weeks of an antecedent SS event. Patients were followed from 7 days after the start of chemotherapy until the first of end of front-line therapy, death, relapse, or removal from study. Multivariable-adjusted Cox regressions estimated hazard ratios (HRs) comparing time to first SS by SDI group. RESULTS: The assembled cohort included 700 patients, with 207 (29.6%) sustaining at least one SS event. There were 233 (33%) in the SDI-5 group (highest disorganization). Adjusted time to incident SS did not statistically significantly differ by SDI (reference, SDI-1; SDI-2: HR, 0.84 [95% confidence interval (CI), 0.51-1.41]; SDI-3: HR, 0.70 [95% CI, 0.42-1.16]; SDI-4: HR, 0.97 [95% CI, 0.61-1.53]; SDI-5: HR, 0.72 [95% CI, 0.45-1.14]). Nine patients (4.4%) with SS experienced SS-death; seven of these patients (78%) were in SDI-4 or SDI-5. CONCLUSIONS: In a large, nationally representative cohort of trial-enrolled pediatric patients with AML, there was no significant association between the SDI and time to SS.

The Effect of Neighborhood Disorganization on Care Engagement Among Children With Chronic Conditions Living in a Large Urban City.

Neighborhood context plays an important role in producing and reproducing current patterns of health disparity. In particular, neighborhood disorganization affects how people engage in health care. We examined the effect of living in highly disorganized neighborhoods on care engagement, using data from the Coordinated Healthcare for Complex Kids (CHECK) program, which is a care delivery model for children with chronic conditions on Medicaid in Chicago. We retrieved demographic data from the US Census Bureau and crime data from the Chicago Police Department to estimate neighborhood-level social disorganization for the CHECK enrollees. A total of 6458 children enrolled in the CHECK between 2014 and 2017 were included in the analysis. Families living in the most disorganized neighborhoods, compared with areas with lower levels of disorganization, were less likely to engage in CHECK. Black families were less likely than Hispanic families to be engaged in the CHECK program. We discuss potential mechanisms through which disorganization affects care engagement. Understanding neighborhood context, including social disorganization, is key to developing more effective comprehensive care models.

Community Characteristics and the Geographic Distribution of Intimate Partner Violence: A Partial Test of Social Disorganization Theory.

Shaw and McKay's social disorganization theory has provided a framework to examine the relationship between community-level structural variables and neighborhood crime. Although empirical support for the theory has been widely demonstrated using property and violent crime data, the body of literature examining the theory's applicability to intimate partner violence (IPV) is more limited. Further, much of the existing literature in this area applies the theory's macro-level variables to individual outcomes instead of assessing community effects. Using negative binomial regression to analyze incident data from the Austin (TX) Police Department and demographic information from the United States Census Bureau, this study assesses the relationship between concentrated disadvantage, racial/ethnic heterogeneity, residential instability, and the geographic distribution of IPV incidents in a major U.S. city with no racial or ethnic majority. The independent variables of interest were constructed using principal axis factoring, and a spatial lag variable was included in the model to control for spatial clustering. The analysis showed that concentrated disadvantage was significantly, positively associated with annual counts of IPV incidents in neighborhoods, as was the control variable total crime reports. These results demonstrate that the geographic distribution of IPV is influenced by community factors. They underscore the importance of considering community-wide prevention and intervention efforts in tandem with individual services to those impacted by IPV.

Social predictors of the transition from anomie to deviance in adolescence.

Adolescence is a complicated, full of challenges and explorations period in life on the way to adulthood. The behaviour of adolescents is considerably re-configuring under the pressure of biological, psychological, and social transformations, and the internalization of community rules and values, as well as the adoption of desirable behaviours, is not always easy or successful. During adolescence, anomie can easily become an attractive status quo, but it can also evolve, however, relatively easy, to delinquency. This exploratory study, part of the Planet Youth project, is based on an analysis of 17 items from a questionnaire applied to a sample of 2,694 young people in Bucharest, Romania, in 2018, high schoolers in grades 9-11. The main objective of this approach was to assess the impact of some socio-cultural factors regarding school, family, peer group, and neighbourhood on the adoption of deviant and delinquent behaviours among Bucharest teenagers. For data analysis, two dependent variables were built by aggregating items in the questionnaire: the level of anomie (composed of 8 items) and deviant behaviour (composed of 17 items). As independent variables, 17 predictors composed from 67 questions from the questionnaire were used. The main results reflect a high level of anomie among the adolescents of Bucharest and a low level of deviance, and a weak link between these two variables. On the other hand, adolescent anomie and deviance are favoured by anger management, perceived peer attitudes to substance use and digital leisure, together with low parental surveillance.

Economic inequality and conspiracy theories.

Can perceptions of economic inequalities trigger conspiratorial thinking? We provide evidence that high economic inequality may enhance conspiratorial thinking because, as a form of collective-level crisis, it undermines the social fabric of society and engenders anomie. We focus on the mechanism through which inequality should affect conspiratorial thinking by outlining how inequality enhances perceptions of anomie that, in turn, increase conspiratorial thinking. We end our contribution with the observation that it is by focusing on the socio-structural contexts that trigger conspiracy beliefs that we can more fully understand them. Specifically, conspiracy beliefs are not merely a product of individual irrationality, but are grounded in, and reflective of, the times that collectives live in.

Social disorganization and new HIV diagnoses, 2013-2017, Florida: Rural-urban differences.

PURPOSE: To compare the role of neighborhood social disorganization factors on human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) diagnosis rates in urban and rural areas in Florida, we conducted an ecologic study of HIV diagnosis rates during 2013-2017 and social disorganization components, including concentrated disadvantage, ethnic heterogeneity, and residential instability. METHODS: Indices of social disorganization components were obtained from principal component analyses of American Community Survey variables for 910 postal codes. Rural/urban classification was based on the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Urban Commuting Area codes. Using multivariable linear regression, the relationship between social disorganization indices and HIV diagnosis rates was assessed. FINDINGS: The only social disorganization index that was significantly higher in rural than urban areas was concentrated disadvantage. In rural areas, the concentrated disadvantage index was significantly associated with HIV diagnosis rates (P = .007) when controlling for the other social disorganization factors but was no longer significant after additionally controlling for prevalence of people with an HIV diagnosis who were not virally suppressed. In urban areas, even after controlling for prevalence of people with HIV who were not virally suppressed, lower male-to-female population ratios and higher scores of residential instability, concentrated disadvantage, and LatinX/immigrant density indices were associated with higher HIV diagnosis rates (all P < .01). CONCLUSIONS: In addition to improving community levels of viral suppression, the community contextual environment, including the rurality of the environment, needs to be considered in strategies to end the HIV epidemic in the United States.

Marketized Mentality, Street Codes and Violence.

The article examines the recent individual level extensions to Institutional Anomie Theory. It explores if a marketized mentality is important to the development of a violent street code that encourages violence as a method of self-enhancement, as well as a factor directly leading to violence. Further, it investigates if the impact of the marketized mentality on violence is moderated by risk-taking and violent peers. It controls for other important factors associated with violence including physical abuse, homelessness, violent victimization, and social bonds. The research utilizes self-report data from interviews with 400 Canadian homeless youth aged 16-24. Results from the OLS regressions indicated that a marketized mentality, along with risk-taking, violent peers, violent victimization, and social bonds predicted levels of support for the street code. The marketized mentality had a direct effect on violence, as well as an indirect effect through the street code. The effect of marketized mentality on violence was also stronger at higher levels of risk-taking and violent peer association. Physical abuse, violent victimization, risk-taking, and violent peers also had direct effects on violence. The findings suggest that a marketized mentality can be adopted even in economically marginal populations leading to the development of violent strategies to fulfill goals. Avenues for future research are offered.

TRAUMA, PREJUDICE, LARGE-GROUP IDENTITY AND PSYCHOANALYSIS.

Escaping Nazi annexation of Austria, Sigmund Freud and his family left there in 1938 to live the rest of their lives in exile in the house now known as the Freud Museum in London. This paper is based upon the author's Holocaust Day Memorial Lecture delivered virtually at this museum on January 27, 2021, which marked the 75th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest Nazi death camp. Besides remembering those who were lost during World War II, the content of this paper includes a description of different types of massive traumas, with a focus on disasters at the hand of the Other, and their impact on individuals and large groups. Sigmund Freud's ideas about relationships between communities and countries with adjoining territories, as well as large-group psychology, are updated, and individuals' and large groups' needs to grasp onto large-group identities is explained and illustrated with case reports.

Neighborhood predictors of the gendered structure of non-lethal violent interactions.

Women are playing an increasing role in violent crime, both as offenders and victims. Yet, little research has examined how neighborhood structural characteristics might explain this involvement, or who women victimize relative to men. Drawing upon theories of social disorganization, strain, and a subculture of violence, we examine macro-level variation in the type and frequency of within and across group violence between men and women. Analyses are based on aggravated assaults and robberies reported to the Los Angeles Police Department between 2001 and 2007. Neighborhood disadvantage has a greater impact on women perpetrating violence against other women relative to any other sex dyad. Family structural variables are particularly important for understanding rates of within group robberies among women, and highlight that multiple measures of family structure are important for understanding gendered differences in rates of violent crime across dyads.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder During the COVID-19 Outbreak in Iran: The Role of Social Dysfunction.

ABSTRACT: The COVID-19 epidemic has both physical and psychosocial consequences for the general population. The present study aimed to investigate the relationship between the prevalence of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) and social dysfunction during the COVID-19 epidemic in Iran. This cross-sectional web-based study was conducted on 1000 Rafsanjani citizens in southeastern Iran. Data were collected by using the Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 and the General Health Questionnaire from March 15 to March 30, 2020. The prevalence of GAD was 27.8%. The mean score of social functioning was 9.71 ± 2.66, and all participants had social dysfunction. Multivariate logistic regression test showed a significant correlation between anxiety and social functioning (confidence interval [CI], 1.16-1.30; p < 0.001), sex (CI, 1.49-3.04; p < 0.001), and concern about COVID-19 (CI, 1.38-2.73; p < 0.001). The COVID-19 epidemic had negative psychosocial consequences in the general population in Iran.

The Effects of Risky Places, Motivated Offenders, and Social Disorganization on Sexual Victimization: A Microgeographic- and Neighborhood-Level Examination.

We test microgeographic (i.e., street segment) effects reflective of routine activities/lifestyle theories (e.g., the locations of sex offenders, gang members, drug houses, bars) and neighborhood-level (i.e., block group) effects consistent with social disorganization theory (e.g., socioeconomic disadvantage, residential mobility, racial heterogeneity) on the locations of sexual offenses within one rural and one suburban city. We employ multilevel modeling to examine neighborhood (N = 41) and microgeographic (N = 1,382) effects on sex offenses. Neighborhood context was associated with the locations of sex offenses in which disadvantage, concentrated poverty, racial heterogeneity, violent crime rates, and suburban (vs. rural) areas were positively associated with sex offense rates, whereas residential mobility had a negative effect on sex offense rates. Microgeographic context also explained variation in sex offense rates in which gang members, sex offenders, drug houses, and high population housing communities had positive effects on sexual assault rates, while controlling for spatially lagged effects. Finally, the effect of high-density housing communities was moderated by the level of disadvantage and racial heterogeneity. Neighborhood context and variables linked to exposure to crime operate differently in nonurban areas. Beyond considering community-based characteristics, contextual characteristics related to potential victims' exposure to motivated offenders should focus on small spatial places.

Development and Crime Drop: A Time-Series Analysis of Crime Rates in Hong Kong in the Last Three Decades.

Although the recent crime drop in Western societies has rejuvenated crime trend studies, little is known about the crime trends and the corresponding explanations in the East. This study aims to fill the gaps by examining different types of offenses in Hong Kong between 1976 and 2017. Specifically, this study tests and evaluates major macro-level theoretical approaches explaining crime trends, including institutional anomie theory, routine activities theory, and deterrence theory. Using Error Correction Models, our analyses reveal that the strengths of different social institutions are negatively associated with crime rates, showing strong support to institutional anomie theory. The results also partially support routine activities theory by demonstrating that levels of economic development are negatively associated with both violent and property crime rates, and the number of mobile cellular subscriptions is negatively related to homicide rates. Deterrence explanations are mainly supported for property crime. These findings provide theoretical insights on the etiology of crime and also yield important policy suggestions on how to sustain the observed decline in crime rates in modern societies.

Dealing with dysnomia: Strategies for the cultivation of used concepts in social research.

This article follows recent calls to turn social theory away from its fixations on intellectual history and toward the mechanics and craft of creating social theories in the research process. The subject of this article is a dilemma common to theorizing in social science: dysnomia, or the phenomenon in which some object is poorly named. Specifically, this article focuses on how social scientists distinguish original concepts from their equivalents in everyday speech. Three tactics for dealing with dysnomia are named-academic arcana, classification and sociologism-and considered in order to ascertain the strengths and weaknesses of each.

Can We Uncouple Neighborhood Disadvantage and Delinquent Behaviors? An Experimental Test of Family Resilience Guided by the Social Disorganization Theory of Delinquent Behaviors.

Although the influence of neighborhood disadvantage on youth development of delinquent behavior is well established, findings from this research have yet to inform the development of family-centered prevention programming to protect youth from these erosive effects. The current paper examines the role of family integration in buffering the impact of social disadvantage in a sample of N = 298 families randomly assigned either to a control condition or to a family-based prevention program previously shown to enhance marriage and parenting. We first confirmed that neighborhood concentrated disadvantage predicted change in delinquent behaviors across the course of the study. Additionally, replicating prior work, parents participating in the Protecting Strong African American Families (ProSAAF) program, relative to those randomly assigned to the control group, significantly improved their use of effective communication strategies with each other and reduced ineffective conflict in front of youth. This resulted in a significant indirect effect of ProSAAF on change in youth delinquent behaviors. Furthermore, using mediated moderation analysis, the study tested the buffering effect of greater family integration, showing that experimentally produced change in interparental communication skills and the resulting reduction in youth exposure to parental conflict buffered the effect of neighborhood disadvantage on change in youth delinquent behaviors, supporting a mediated moderation model in which family environments buffer neighborhood effects.

Aunque la influencia de los barrios desfavorecidos en el desarrollo de conductas delictivas en los jóvenes está firmemente consolidada, los hallazgos de esta investigación contribuirán al desarrollo de un programa de prevención centrado en la familia para proteger a los jóvenes de estos efectos erosivos. El presente artículo analiza el papel de la integración familiar en la moderación del efecto de las desventajas sociales en una muestra de N = 298 familias asignadas aleatoriamente a una condición de control o a un programa de prevención basado en la familia que anteriormente ha demostrado mejorar el matrimonio y la crianza. Primero confirmamos que la desventaja concentrada de los barrios predijo el cambio de conductas delictivas a lo largo del transcurso del estudio. Además, replicando trabajos anteriores, los padres que participaron en el programa "Protección de Familias Afroamericanas Fuertes" (Protecting Strong African American Families, ProSAAF), en comparación con aquellos asignados aleatoriamente al grupo de control, mejoraron considerablemente su uso de estrategias de comunicación eficaz entre ellos y redujeron el conflicto ineficaz en frente de los jóvenes. Esto resultó en un efecto indirecto considerable del ProSAAF en el cambio de las conductas delictivas en los jóvenes. Además, mediante el uso del análisis de moderación mediada, el estudio evaluó el efecto moderador de una mayor integración familiar, lo cual demostró que el cambio producido experimentalmente en las habilidades de comunicación interparental y la reducción resultante de la exposición de los jóvenes al conflicto parental moderaron el efecto de la desventaja del barrio en el cambio de las conductas delictivas de los jóvenes. Todo esto respaldó un modelo de moderación mediada en el cual los entornos familiares moderan los efectos del barrio.

Employees' perceived institutional importance, organizational norms, and organizational citizenship behavior: Insights from a multilevel assessment of the institutional anomie theory.

This study contributes to the understanding of organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and extending the application of institutional anomie theory (IAT). Employing a multilevel moderation framework, this paper explored the influence of employees' perceived institutional importance to their demonstration of OCB and the moderating impacts of organizational norms on this relationship. Utilizing data of 243 employees from 34 banks in the Philippines, results of the hierarchical linear modeling (HLM) analysis revealed the positive influence of the importance of the economy, family, polity, and religion on employees' citizenship acts. Furthermore, goal emphasis and socio-emotional support have significant interacting effects on the association between perceived institutional importance and OCB.

Sites of Exception: Gender Violence, Digital Activism, and Nirbhaya's Zone of Anomie in India.

Gender violence in India exists as a state of exception for the ways in which it occupies a nonlegal, liminal space of existence as "bare life" or "life itself." The rape and murder of Jyoti Singh Pandey unprecedentedly brought this to the surface. This article aims to highlight the ways in which the movement that emerged out of this case engaged with gender violence as a state of exception while the use of new digital technologies by "digital subjects"/"digital parasites" has constituted "sites of exception," leading to new forms of organizing and creating an emerging politics of gender justice in India.

Are Competitive Materialism and Female Employment Related to International Homicide Rate?

The institutional anomie theory is a proposal that states competitive materialism, an intense cultural pressure for economic success at any costs, and increased female employment may be related to a high homicide rate. The current work tested this proposition by utilizing homicide data collected from 45 developed and developing countries. Regression results did not support the proposition. Competitive materialism and female employment were not significantly related to the cross-national variation of homicide rates.