This article examines a subset of justice-involved persons with mental illness who have repeated contacts with law enforcement officers. Previous work has alluded to this sub-population—often termed “frequent fliers”—but little research has empirically examined its size and nature. This study proposes a method of identifying frequent fliers that is based on the amount of time elapsed between multiple mental-health-related contacts with police. Using more or less stringent thresholds, the analysis defines several groups of frequent fliers, including rapid cyclers, those having very frequent contacts with police. In considering policy responses to the problem of justice-involved persons with mental illness, addressing the needs of the frequent flier population proves to be a way of targeting limited resources for the most impact.

There is substantial literature on the patterns and correlates of substance use across minority youth populations, but comparatively little attention has been directed to substance use among adults. This is particularly the case for adult American Indians, generally due to sampling challenges. This article provides multivariate analyses of the correlates of substance use across five racial/ethnic groups and highlights analyses focused on American Indian adults. In addition to marijuana use and binge drinking, our analyses consider hard drug use, which remains understudied in the literature, and include a first consideration of “bender drinking,” a form of alcohol consumption that is most likely to lead to health, social, and legal problems. Our results indicate that although American Indians report higher levels of substance use and abuse than do those from other racial/ethnic groups, these differences are attenuated when sociodemographic and individual-level/risk protective factors are taken into account.

ImportanceThe past quarter-century has seen both sharp declines and increases in firearm violence in the United States. Yet, little is known about the age of first exposure to firearm violence and how it may differ by race, sex, and cohort.ObjectiveTo examine race, sex, and cohort differences in exposure to firearm violence in a representative longitudinal study of children who grew up in periods with varying rates of firearm violence in the United States and to examine spatial proximity to firearm violence in adulthood.Design, Setting, and ParticipantsThis population-based representative cohort study included multiple cohorts of children followed-up from 1995 through 2021 in the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN). Participants included Black, Hispanic, and White respondents from 4 age cohorts of Chicago, Illinois, residents, with modal birth years of 1981, 1984, 1987, and 1996. Data analyses were conducted from May 2022 to March 2023.Main Outcomes and MeasuresFirearm violence exposure, including age when first shot, age when first saw someone shot, and past-year frequency of fatal and nonfatal shootings within 250 m of residence.ResultsThere were 2418 participants in wave 1 (in the mid-1990s), and they were evenly split by sex, with 1209 males (50.00%) and 1209 females (50.00%). There were 890 Black respondents, 1146 Hispanic respondents, and 382 White respondents. Male respondents were much more likely than female respondents to have been shot (adjusted hazard ratio [aHR], 4.23; 95% CI, 2.28-7.84), but only moderately more likely to have seen someone shot (aHR, 1.48; 95% CI, 1.27-1.72). Compared with White individuals, Black individuals experienced higher rates of all 3 forms of exposure (been shot: aHR, 3.05; 95% CI, 1.22-7.60; seen someone shot: aHR, 4.69; 95% CI, 3.41-6.46; nearby shootings: adjusted incidence rate ratio [aIRR], 12.40; 95% CI, 6.88-22.35), and Hispanic respondents experienced higher rates of 2 forms of violence exposure (seen someone shot: aHR, 2.59; 95% CI, 1.85-3.62; nearby shootings: aIRR, 3.77; 95% CI, 2.08-6.84). Respondents born in the mid-1990s who grew up amidst large declines in homicide but reached adulthood during city and national spikes in firearm violence in 2016 were less likely to have seen someone shot than those born in the early 1980s who grew up during the peak of homicide in the early 1990s (aHR, 0.49; 95% CI, 0.35-0.69). However, the likelihood of having been shot did not significantly differ between these cohorts (aHR, 0.81; 95% CI, 0.40-1.63).Conclusions and RelevanceIn this longitudinal multicohort study of exposure to firearm violence, there were stark differences by race and sex, yet the extent of exposure to violence was not simply the product of these characteristics. These findings on cohort differences suggest changing societal conditions were key factors associated with whether and at what life stage individuals from all race and sex groups were exposed to firearm violence.

An important criminological controversy concerns the proper causal relationships between disorder, informal social control, and crime. The broken windows thesis posits that neighborhood disorder increases crime directly and indirectly by undermining neighborhood informal social control. Theories of collective efficacy argue that the association between neighborhood disorder and crime is spurious because of the confounding variable informal social control. We review the recent empirical research on this question, which uses disparate methods, including field experiments and different models for observational data. To evaluate the causal claims made in these studies, we use a potential outcomes framework of causality. We conclude that, although there is some evidence for both broken windows and informal control theories, there is little consensus in the present research literature. Furthermore, at present, most studies do not establish causality in a strong way.