Article summary
Concerns about refugees and asylum seekers increasing crime rates have driven many countries to reduce refugee admissions. However, these fears are often debated due to ambiguous research on the actual impact.
Concerns about refugees and asylum seekers increasing crime rates have driven many countries to reduce refugee admissions. However, these fears are often debated due to ambiguous research on the actual impact.
Several prominent studies predict that expanding licit markets in areas with weak state capacity reduce organized crime through an opportunity-cost mechanism: booms in legitimate jobs and income draw labor away from illicit markets. This study proposes an additional channel—an influx of capital from market growth enables industry actors to finance self-defense forces that deter criminal incursions—and tests that vigilante mechanism in the Mexican avocado sector.
A groundbreaking study investigates the surprising link between rising hate crimes against refugees and fears among native men regarding competition for female partners. The research reveals that ecological patterns show a strong correlation between areas with higher rates of refugee presence experiencing increased hate crime incidents, specifically targeting individuals perceived as outsiders. Using innovative survey measures in Germany alongside detailed geographic data:
The authors ask when organized criminal groups respond to opportunities in licit commodity markets with violence. Their central contribution is to link rapid increases in a good’s share of global export value to incentives for criminal expansion, and to assemble evidence at both subnational and cross-national levels to test that mechanism. The paper uses avocado exports in Mexico as a detailed case and then combines international datasets to examine whether agricultural export booms correspond with higher homicide where organized crime exists.
This study asks how members of the US public understand rape and whether they think particular incidents deserve reporting or severe punishment. The authors offer an empirical conceptualization of "rape culture" and use experimental tools to test how incident attributes shape public judgments about punishability. Their contribution is to show, within a qualified experimental design, that features related to victims' consent and credibility matter for whether people support reporting to police or recommending severe sanctions.
How does personal crime victimization shape policy preferences for security? A new study finds citizens harmed by crime are more likely to support authoritarian measures like state repression, even if these compromise basic rights.