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This paper uses data from 2010 to 2016 across 32 states and union territories to investigate the determinants of crime in India. Results indicate the significance of macroeconomic, demographic, socioeconomic and deterrence factors in accounting for various categories of crime.

Due to the evidence of heteroskedasticity and cross-sectional dependence, linear regression with panel-corrected standard errors is implemented.

It has been found that among the macroeconomic factors, only GSDP per capita was found relevant in explaining total crime rates. However, the unemployment rate and price level are crucial in explaining some categories of crime. The demographic factor, that is, population density, socioeconomic factors, that is, income inequality, poverty rate, literacy rate exhibit important and significant relationship with crime rates in India. Further, out of the four deterrence factors, charge-sheeting rate, conviction rate, pendency in police cases are important in explaining various categories of crime rates in India.

While implications of some socioeconomic variables are consistent with those found in previous studies, literacy rates and deterrence variables were found to have a positive association with crime. In particular, in a developing country such as India, white-collar crimes tend to increase as literacy rates increase. This calls for implementing policies that lead to greater employment opportunities for the educated masses. This paper also sheds light on the relationship between deterrence factors and crime rates in India. Deficiencies in the legal and judicial system have been detrimental to the nation's ability to curb crime rates.

Purpose – Extant studies have shown immigration does not lead to higher crime rates, yet this fallacy persists. The aim of this chapter is to explore the relationship between crime and the presence and growth of the Latino and the foreign-born populations in Washington DC's City Council Wards.

Methodology/approach – This chapter draws on Uniform Crime Reports data and Census information to compare and contrast crimes rates, the presence and growth of the Latino and foreign-born populations, and socioeconomic indicators across Washington DC.

Findings – Violent and property crimes rates have decreased consistently since the mid-1990s despite the growth of the Latino and the foreign-born populations. While there are significant differences between crimes rates at the Council Ward level, they appear to be associated with persistent structural inequality – not the presence or growth of either group.

Research limitations – This work is largely exploratory and descriptive. Results should be interpreted with caution. Future research should employ multivariate methods to systematically identify factors that most significantly and strongly explicate crime rates within and across DC Wards.

Social implications – Preliminary findings suggest policy makers should shift attention away from scapegoating immigrants for social ills and focus on improving social and economic opportunities and the life outcomes of racialized subordinate group members throughout the United States.

Originality – Little empirical research exists focusing on the relationship between immigration and crime in the nation's capital. This is a significant gap in the literature considering the recent rapid growth of the foreign-born and Latino populations in Washington DC.

Purpose – This chapter explains what is known about international homicide trends, highlights gaps in existing literature, and proposes avenues for future research that will expand understanding about international homicide.

Design/methodology/approach – We review extant literature on international homicide trends, and draw on data from the World Health Organization from 1990 to 2015 to identify patterns in contemporary international homicide trends.

Findings – We demonstrate evidence of an international homicide drop across most regions around the world. Nonetheless, the homicide decline is not a global event as several countries – particularly countries with high homicide rates – did not experience reductions in homicide during this period. The key question remains as to what the causes of changes in international homicide rates are and why many countries experience very similar reductions in homicide while a few experienced increasing violence. We propose potential explanations and suggest areas for future research.

Originality/value – This chapter documents an international homicide decline occurring between 1990 and 2015. We also demonstrate that homicide trends are likely influenced by factors beyond local phenomena and domestic policies since homicide rates largely track together for regions throughout the world. Accordingly, the chapter suggests potential avenues for future research that can help better explain this trend.

Past studies of the empirical relationship between immigration and crime during the first major wave of immigration have focused on violent crime in cities and have relied on data with serious limitations regarding nativity information. We analyze administrative data from Pennsylvania prisons, with high-quality information on nativity and demographic characteristics. The latter allow us to construct incarceration rates for detailed population groups using U.S. Census data. The raw gap in incarceration rates for the foreign and native born is large, in accord with the extremely high concern at the time about immigrant criminality. But adjusting for age and gender greatly narrows that observed gap. Particularly striking are the urban/rural differences. Immigrants were concentrated in large cities where reported crime rates were higher. However, within rural counties, the foreign born had much higher incarceration rates than the native born. The interaction of nativity with urban residence explains much of the observed aggregate differentials in incarceration rates. Finally, we find that the foreign born, especially the Irish, consistently have higher incarceration rates for violent crimes, but from 1850 to 1860 the natives largely closed the gap with the foreign born for property offenses.

W.E.B. DuBois, in his 1903 collection of writings entitled The Souls of Black Folk, describes what he calls “The Veil,” which succinctly sums up the deadly and adverse experiences of African Americans in the US. With DuBois contemplations of a Veil under which US Blacks alone live and die as context, this paper takes a look at the modern condition of African Americans in the US, whether they continue to exist within DuBois Veil in modern times (twentieth and twenty-first centuries), and if so, to what extent. As a routine examination and inspection of the condition of Blacks in the US, focus is placed on black lives lost, beginning with an appraisal of their size in the US population overtime, and in comparison with other racial and ethnic groups in the US. US census data, health data collected from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and crime data collected from the Federal Bureau of Investigation are examined to construct a composite of the condition of contemporary Blacks in the US as compared to other groups in the US, focusing attention specifically on the rates at which their lives are lost compared to others through infant mortality, low fertility rates, abortion, and high rates of homicide. This analysis concludes with a look at death from homicide before, during, and after the post-1990s drop in the crime rate.

In recent decades, the use of capital punishment has declined, but in its place, a ‘new death penalty’ has arisen: life without parole (LWOP), which is being used far more frequently and for more crimes than capital punishment ever was. Yet, LWOP has received far less scholarly attention than the death penalty. Because of its greater scale, assessing the effects of LWOP on crime has important policy implications and is a better test of extreme penalties. Existing studies of LWOP focus on humanitarian issues and ignore its potentially reciprocal relationship with crime. Therefore, we use available LWOP data to fill these gaps in the literature, using models specifically designed to control for potential reciprocal effects. The results indicate there is no reciprocal causation between LWOP and violent crime and, at best, LWOP’s impact on crime is small, temporary, and, most importantly, no greater than the impact of life with parole.

The primary purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the impact of educational attainment on crime rates across 33 Indian states over the period 2001 to 2013. This paper also examines the role of various macroeconomic, socio-economic and demographic factors in determining the variation of crimes in India.

First, this paper provides a representative theoretical model and discusses the possible relationship between crime and education. Second, the paper applies a dynamic panel data (DPD) model to extract more precise, unbiased and reliable estimates of the effect of education in abating different crime rates. The main advantage of using the dynamic panel model is to address the problem of endogeneity in some regressors and capture the time persistent effect of education on crime.

Empirical findings reveal that a 1% increase in gross enrolment ratio leads to the reduction of total crime by 8%. However, a unique finding identifies a positive association between tertiary education and economic crime. This finding further goes against the general belief that criminals tend to be less educated than non-criminals.

This paper recommends that instead of punishment and mandatory law enforcement for offenders, increase in government expenditure and different educational attainment ratios can go a long way to combat crime in India, which has posed a serious threat to the stability of society. Furthermore, utilizing the information on offenders' educational attainment in examining the crime rates can be a future research agenda for policymakers.

This study contributes to the empirical debate of ‘crime-education nexus’ by examining the role of education on crime in India. This study is the first of its kind that focuses on the aspects of crime and education more recently and investigates the relationship between crime and education due to the recent changes in educational attainment ratios and crime rate.

The specific objective of the study is to investigate the presence of natural rate of crime rates in selected emerging economies by using panel unit roots. The majority of the literature examines the issue using conventional unit root tests in a country-specific context. Meanwhile, there is no panel unit root investigation has been undertaken considering both cross-sectional dependence (CD) and structural changes.

As a result, this study is to fill the aforementioned gap and validate the natural rate of crime rates for 10 countries by using a Fourier panel unit root test. The advantage of the test is that structural shifts are modelled as gradual or smooth changes with a Fourier approximation, and it also accounts cross-sectional dependency. Thus, the Fourier panel unit root test may have better performance in capturing potential changes in the nature of data.

The result of the conventional unit roots test shows evidence of the hysteresis effect in crime, as it stands does not adequately account for smooth transitions or breaks. On contrary, the Fourier panel unit root test confirms the natural rate hypothesis in crime rates. The present results highlight the detrimental effects of crime cannot be abated by short-run deterrence policies.

Contrary to previous studies, the theoretical implications of the study imply that the empirical models consider the dynamic nature of crime rates should account for natural rate properties instead of the hysteresis assumption.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of reference data, input address quality, and crime type on completeness and positional accuracy of street geocoded crime events.

Existing data were analyzed using ArcGIS, including crime incident information, street network reference data, and address point and/or parcel reference data. Geocoding completeness was determined by the overall match rate. Positional accuracy was determined by comparing the Euclidian distance between street geocoded locations of crime events to the corresponding address point/parcel geocoded location.

Results indicate that match rates vary by reference data, input address quality, and crime type. Local street centerline files consistently produced match rates that were as good as – and in many cases superior to – other types of reference data, including commercial data. Greater variability in positional accuracy was observed across reference data when crime type and input address quality was considered, but results were consistent with positional accuracy analysis conducted using data from other disciplines.

Results provide researchers and practitioners with valuable guidance and insight into one of the most basic – albeit fundamental – procedures related to the spatio‐temporal analysis of crime, suggesting that reference data required to produce geocoded crime incidents successfully and of high quality does not necessarily mean a large financial investment on the part of law enforcement agencies or researchers interested in the geospatial analysis of crime.

Prior to this investigation, a comprehensive examination of the impact of data quality on geocoded crime events was absent from the literature.

Purpose – The study intends to determine the impact of the lockdowns during the COVID-19 on various categories of crime. It examines the issue of crime in Israel focusing on the crime patterns that evolve separately among Jews and Arabs.

Methodology/Approach – Using statistical data received from the Israeli police, the authors examined crime rates during the lockdown periods, compared to the same period three years before.

Findings – The findings in this study are in line with other studies, meaning that the impact of lockdowns on crime during the pandemic, especially on violence and domestic violence, is not conclusive. As far as severe violence is concerned, in the first lockdown the impact was more pronounced. However, the subsequent lockdowns produced less dramatic outcomes. A close examination of the data implies that during the lockdowns, the oscillations of violence rates were more noticeable among the Arab population.

Originality/Value – The effect of the lockdowns corroborated much of the findings in previous studies done in other countries. The findings follow the theory of routine activity and shaw that when life returned to normal also the crime patters returned to the old patterns. Furthermore, it seems that many subsequent lockdowns lose their effectiveness as people find ways to avoid some of the restrictions. In addition, also when some effect was noticed, it certainly is not very dramatic.