Applying Dickey-Fuller time series techniques in tandem with intuitive plot-displays, we examine recent trends in girls' violence and the gender gap as reported in four major sources of longitudinal data on youth violence. These sources are arrest statistics of the Uniform Crime Reports,victimization data of the National Crime Victimization Survey (where the victim identifies sex of offender) and self-reported violent behavior of Monitoring the Future and National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. We find that the rise in girls' violence over the past one to two decades as counted in police arrest data from the Uniform Crime Reports is not borne out in unofficial longitudinal sources. Several net-widening policy shifts have apparently escalated girls' arrest-proneness: first, stretching definitions of violence to include more minor incidents that girls in relative terms are more likely to commit; second, increased policing of violence between intimates and in private settings (for example, home, school) where girls' violence is more widespread; and, third, less tolerant family and societal attitudes toward juvenile females. These developments reflect both a growing intolerance
This study investigates whether individual-and area-level factors explain variation in the residence-to-crime distances (RC distance) for 10 offense types. Methods Five years of police data from Dallas, Texas, are analyzed using multilevel models (HLM/MLM). Results RC distances for Dallas offenders varied notably across offense types. Although several area characteristics such as residential instability and concentrated immigration were associated with the overall variance in RC distance, neither these nor the individual-level characteristics used in our models explained the offense-type variance in the RC distance. Conclusions Although individual-and neighborhood-level factors did not explain substantial variation in RC distance across the various offenses, neighborhood-level factors explained a significant portion of neighborhood-level variance. Other finding included a curvilinear effect of age on RC distance. The salience of these findings and their implications for future research and offender travel theory are discussed.
The authors examine 1980 to 2003 trends in female-to-male interpersonal violence reported in Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) arrest statistics and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) victimization data. Augmented Dickey-Fuller time-series techniques and intuitive plot displays show much overlap yet differences in each source's portrayal of trends in female violence levels and the gender gap. Both sources show little or no change in the gender gap for homicide and rape/sexual assault, whereas UCR police counts show a sharp rise in female-to-male arrests for criminal assault during the past one to two decades-but that rise is not borne out in NCVS counts. Net-widening policy shifts have apparently escalated the arrest proneness of females for "criminal assault" (e.g., policing physical attacks/threats of marginal seriousness that women in relative terms are more likely to commit); rather than women having become any more violent, official data increasingly mask differences in violent offending by men and women.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.