Search results

The current study examines the effects of race, agency and environment on traffic stops in rural and non-rural spaces.

Using traffic stop data collected in a Midwest US County from January 1, 2020 to December 31, 2021, the current study uses logistic regression to examine racial disparities in traffic stops.

The results indicate that police decision-making in traffic stops may be influenced by other factors besides a driver’s race or ethnicity. In other words, the police officer’s decision making in a traffic stop varies between small and large agencies as well as rural and non-rural places.

This study provides one of the few examinations of racial disparities in traffic stops in rural places.

Purpose – This chapter examines the relationship between intersections of race and gender for vulnerability for human trafficking and criminalization of exploitation in the United States that is rooted in the broader socio-historical contexts dating to colonization and chattel enslavement.

Methodology/approach – This chapter utilizes intersectional criminology and historical intersectional criminology as epistemological frameworks to contextualize the construction of race and gender that began with colonization of indigenous populations to chattel enslavement of Africans and their descendants. Overall, this chapter’s approach is a call for contextualization within the study of human trafficking and an intersectional approach to understanding the structures that enable trafficking and the ramifications it has for victims.

Findings – Through an application of intersectional criminology, the findings herein demonstrate how racial ideologies and legacies within the United States contributed to the vulnerabilities of race and gender for sex trafficking predation as well as criminalization for Black and Native American girls and women. The gendered analysis of men and women who chose to become sex traffickers reveal different gendered pathways into trafficking offending and addresses the significance of these pathways for trafficking victims and potential future traffickers. These analyses demonstrate that intersectional criminology problematizes current research on human trafficking and future directions research should incorporate.

Originality/value – Current criminological research has a scarcity of intersectional criminological applications and fewer that offer a critical analysis of structural inequalities, histories of colonization and chattel enslavement, and interrogation of identities in both vulnerabilities for trafficking victims, how they may interact with agents from the criminal justice system, and the impacts of intersecting identities for traffickers and their offending. If criminology scholars aim to use their research in anti-trafficking efforts and policy recommendations, these analyses are vital both for addressing victimization and offending pathways for exploitation victims and their exploiters.

Traffic signal control is one of the oldest application areas of fuzzy sets in transportation. In general, fuzzy control is found to be superior in complex problems with multi-objective decisions. In traffic signal control, several traffic flows compete for the same time and space, and different priorities are often set to different traffic flows or vehicle groups

The public transport priorities are a very important part of the effective traffic signal control. Normally, the public transport priorities are programmed by using special algorithms, which are tailor-made for each intersection. The experiences have proved that this kind of algorithms can be very effective if some compensation algorithms and the traffic-actuated control mode are used. We believe that using the fuzzified public transport priority algorithms, the measures of effectiveness of traffic signal control can be even better. In this paper, our fuzzy control algorithm of the public transport priorities will be presented.

An ideal victim is someone who is both weak and strong enough (Christie, 1986). To be seen as an ideal victim one should be vulnerable, weak and not to blame for the crime one has been subjected to. But, in order to be seen, heard and believed one must also be strong, resourceful and confident. This chapter discusses the conflicting perceptions between the weak and the strong victim in light of one particular group of victims, Nigerian women subjected to trafficking for prostitution. What types of expectations do these women meet when identified as victims of trafficking in Norway? Do the Nigerian women live up to the image of the ideal victim? Or do they have to adjust their behaviour in order to enter this role and be entitled to help and assistance? The answers to these questions tell us whether existing trafficking measures are based on the real needs of victims of trafficking, or an idealised image of their problems and needs.