"A Seasonal Crime?": A Quantitative Examination of the Relationship Between Criminal Charges in the City of Lynchburg and Seasons of the Year with Reference to Gender and Race
Date
April 2020
Description
The controversy of gender and race has resulted in the tendency by many scholars to focus on one or a few crime categories, such as theft or homicide, in order to make their findings about violent crime more specific. According to Sommers & Baskin (1992), gender may cause misinterpretation without the inclusion of race when researching violent crime. Moreover, seasonality was found to affect crime incidents (Hipp et. al., 2004). In this study, data from the City of Lynchburg Office of Corrections in Virginia was sorted into 34 crime categories and binomial logistic regression models used gender and race as predictor variables. The results suggest support for the hypothesis that there are significant gender and race disparities to both violent and property crime categories. These results illustrate the merge between general strain theory and routine activities theory in the commission of a crime. However, temperature-aggression theory could not be supported.
Presentation Type
Presentation
"A Seasonal Crime?": A Quantitative Examination of the Relationship Between Criminal Charges in the City of Lynchburg and Seasons of the Year with Reference to Gender and Race
The controversy of gender and race has resulted in the tendency by many scholars to focus on one or a few crime categories, such as theft or homicide, in order to make their findings about violent crime more specific. According to Sommers & Baskin (1992), gender may cause misinterpretation without the inclusion of race when researching violent crime. Moreover, seasonality was found to affect crime incidents (Hipp et. al., 2004). In this study, data from the City of Lynchburg Office of Corrections in Virginia was sorted into 34 crime categories and binomial logistic regression models used gender and race as predictor variables. The results suggest support for the hypothesis that there are significant gender and race disparities to both violent and property crime categories. These results illustrate the merge between general strain theory and routine activities theory in the commission of a crime. However, temperature-aggression theory could not be supported.
Comments
This oral presentation is based on an individual research project.