Predicting Violent Victimization Using Social Network Analysis From Police Data

Extant research suggests that membership in crime networks explains vulnerability to violent crime victimization. Consequently, identifying deviant social networks and understanding their structure and individual members' role in them could provide insight into victimization risk. Identifying social networks may help tailor crime prevention strategies to mitigate victimization risks and dismantle deviant networks. Social network analysis (SNA) offers a particular means of comprehending and measuring such group-level structures and the roles that individuals play within them. When applied to research on crime and victimization, it could provide a foundation for developing precise, effective prevention, intervention, and suppression strategies. This study uses police data to examine whether individuals most central to a deviant social network are those who are most likely to become victims of violent crime, and which crime network roles are most likely to be associated with vulnerability to violent victimization. SNA of these data indicates that network individuals who are in a position to manage the flow of information in the network (betweenness centrality), regardless of their number of connections (degree centrality), are significantly more likely to be homicide and aggravated assault victims. Implications for police practice are discussed.

Community Policing and the Work Routines of Street-Level Officers

Most of the literature on community policing suggests, either implicitly or explicitly, that the daily activities of community police officers will differ from the activities traditionally engaged in by police officers. The majority of studies examining officer work routines were conducted prior to the rapid proliferation of community policing throughout police departments in the United States. Any attempt to determine the nature and extent of community policing needs to include an examination of the daily activities of line-level personnel charged with its implementation. The current study, using systematic social observation data, provides a description and comparison of the work routines of both community-oriented and traditional police officers in a city implementing community-oriented policing. Many of the findings are similar to those of previous workload studies. However, the findings also indicate that community officers devoted significantly more time to nontraditional policing activities than beat officers. Further, 911 beat officers spent significantly more time engaged in traditional policing activities than community officers.

Social Altruism, Tax Policy, and Crime: A Cautionary Tale

This present investigation, drawing on social altruism theory, considers the feasibility of manipulating the federal tax code to reduce the level of crime across macro-social units. The OLS regression analyses of state level data reveal that the ratio of tax deductible contributions to the total number of returns is positively related to violent, and to a lesser extent property, crime rates. The implications of these findings for social theory and social policy are discussed.