Search results

Purpose: This study is concerned with media representation of crime in the Israeli press. It examines the pattern of offenses reported in two daily newspapers of seemingly different characteristics, the “elitist” Haaretz and the “popular” Israel Hayom. Methodology/approach: Crime reports appeared in the news pages during November 2016 were content analyzed in both newspapers by using a coding scheme, which operationalized several variables relating to type of crime, characteristics of offenders and victims, and court proceedings. Findings: Violent and sex offenses featured disproportionately in the news reports in both newspapers, while conventional property offenses were under-reported relative to their prevalence in official crime statistics. In terms of the characteristics of offenders and victims, the vast majority of offenders portrayed in crime stories were adult Jewish males. Women were more likely to appear as victims of crime rather than perpetrators, and more likely to appear as victims of sex offenses rather than other offenses. Research limitations: This study was based on an analysis of crime stories which appeared in two newspapers during one-month period of time. Future research should extend the sample size and collect data from a longer period of time and from additional media outlets. Originality/value: Media coverage of crime stories has not yet been researched in Israel. Beyond the interest in the Israeli case or the potential contribution to comparative global knowledge, the value of the study may lie in expanding the lens of scholarship of media’s construction of crime.

The purpose is to theorize and empirically estimate the impact of the gendered nature of the offender-victim dyad and crime type on time to arrest.

Predictions regarding the impact of gendered offender-victim dyads and crime type on time to arrest are constructed by extending role congruity theory and tested using data from the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System across five crime types using dyadic-based event history methods.

The authors find strong empirical support that role expectations derived from the gender composition of offender-victim dyads and the masculinity of the crime type affect time to clearance.

This research is the first to theorize and empirically test the relative impact of role congruency and the relational nature of the offender-victim dyad in the adjudication process. Furthermore, the research shows that the construction of “normal crime” can be enhanced by applying a gendered and relational approach, based on social psychological theory, which is predictive of crime clearance.

Future research is required to validate the results for crimes where law enforcement has less discretion and are feminine typed.

The results imply that by accounting for the expectations generated by gender roles when applied to offender-victim dyads a casual mechanism is established that better organizes previously inconsistent results with respect to the impact of gender on time to clearance. Thus, the authors' utilization of role congruity theory of gender provides a more consistent explanation for inequalities in time to clearance that may be fruitful for evaluating other steps in the adjudication process.

Purpose: This study examines representations of criminal victims and offenders on television’s Law and Order, which ran for 20 years. Law and Order was praised by viewers as a realistic and lifelike representation of the criminal justice system. Given its popularity and perceived realism, Law and Order was likely a major source of information about the criminal justice system, victims of crime, and criminals. Methodology/approach: Utilizing an ethnographic content analysis of 50 episodes of Law and Order, the data include demographic and contextual information on over 1,500 characters. The analyses in this study focus on the sociodemographic characteristics of victims and offenders in total and across time. Findings: Results find that Whites, women, and those from middle- and upper-classes were disproportionately presented as victims. Offenders were disproportionately White, male, older, and from the middle- or upper-classes. People of color were underrepresented in all roles, and Latinx characters were more likely to be portrayed in a negative light. Research limitations: The study lacks qualitative data, which would have contributed to a deeper understanding of victim and offender representations. Originality/value: The study represents the most robust content analysis of one of the most popular crime series of all time. Given the popularity and long running success of the show, it is likely that Law and Order is at least partially accountable for misconceptions and reinforcement of viewer’s misperceptions of what it means to be a “victim” and an “offender.”

In England and Wales, legislation pertaining to hate crime recognizes hostility based on racial identity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. Discussions abound as to whether this legislation should also recognize hostility based on gender or misogyny. Taking a socio-legal analysis, the chapter examines hate crime, gender-based victimization and misogyny alongside the impact of victim identity construction, access to justice and the international nature of gendered harm. The chapter provides a comprehensive investigation of gender-based victimization in relation to targeted hostility to assess the potential for its inclusion in hate crime legislation in England and Wales.

Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.

This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.

Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.

The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.

The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.

This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.

Factors influencing crime location choices are not only significant to rape investigations, but they are especially important for geographic profiling. The purpose of the current study is to use temporal, hunting behavior, and modus operandi factors to determine those variables that influence the victim encounter and release locations in serial sexual crime.

Due to the possible correlated nature of serial rapes, the authors use generalized estimating equations (GEE) on a sample of 361 rapes committed by 72 serial sex offenders.

Results indicate that temporal factors, offender hunting behavior, and modus operandi strategies are significant predictors of both the victim encounter and release sites, but the importance of these factors varies depending on whether the location is in a residential land use area, a private site, inside location, or a site that is familiar to the offender.

Police can learn from the current findings and apply them to subsequent rapes within a series by recognizing the timing of the offense, the type of hunting pattern and attack method used in prior sexual crimes committed by the same offender, and modus operandi strategies, to determine the type of location where the rapist is likely to offend next.

This paper is the first attempt to predict factors related to both the encounter and the victim release site in serial rapes using GEE.

Serial offenders have been described as more forensically aware, better able to control their victim, and ultimately, more adept at eluding detection. Despite these assertions, there is a lack of research examining differences in “criminal expertise” (i.e. offense-related skills and competencies) between serial and non-serial offenders. The purpose of the current study is to address this empirical research gap.

The current study uses binary logistic regression to examine a sample of 83 serial offenses and 322 offenses involving “novices” (i.e. offenders without a previous criminal history) to determine whether criminal expertise is a distinctive feature of the crime-commission process of serial offenders, compared to novices.

Binary logistic regression findings indicated that offenders who did not verbally reassure their victim, who brought a weapon to the offense and who selected a victim who was walking were more likely to be serial. Taken together, these behaviors do not suggest that serial offenders are “experts” at avoiding detection, but rather, indicate some general offense competencies and skills related to violent offending.

The current study offers the first direct application of the criminal expertise framework to serial sexual offending. The findings offer new insights for the treatment and management of offenders who possess offense-related competencies and skills, which can offer a complementary view to more deficit-based models.

This study tests assumptions implicit in many of the policy developments around hate crime reporting that concern the social context and some of the psychological processes behind decisionmaking on victim reporting. Results suggest that official concern over reporting all hate crimes for service planning requirements is not shared by the overwhelming majority of respondents and would not be feasible to deliver. If reporting is to be increased it needs to deliver a more tangible and personally experienced outcome for the individual.

These four studies are clear testimony to the ‘rediscovery’ of the victims of crime that has occurred in the last two decades, following a long period of neglect by academics, practitioners, penal reformers and governments. Although the nominal origins of this revival of interest may be traced back to the somewhat earlier development of ‘victimology’ among a handful of European and North American criminologists investigating the contribution of victims to ‘their’ crimes, the major impetus came with the rapid growth of crime victimisation surveys in the 1970s. From the outset, these surveys revealed a huge pool of hidden victimisation, and indicated some of the reasons why victims chose not to report the crimes to the police. They subsequently began to focus on other aspects of the impact of crime, such as the extent of the fear of crime amongst members of the public, and the effects of crimes upon those who had been victimised. The first national British Crime Survey (BCS) did not take place until 1982 (with a second survey in 1984 and another planned for 1988), and incorporated comparative questions on these more qualitative aspects of victimisation. Data from the British Crime Surveys have been made available by the Home Office to other researchers and was drawn upon by Maguire and Corbett and by Mawby and Gill in their important reviews of the work of victims support schemes in Britain.