Intimate partner violence (IPV) and poverty plague populations as twin social crises. Just as IPV has implications in terms of gender, race, magnitude, and deleteriousness—so does poverty. IPV cuts across demography but has concentrated burden for certain groups. In addition to the many dimensions of violence survivors may face, survivors may face economic abuse, as well as difficulty working or attaining an education. Poverty, measured in relative and absolute terms, is stratified by various demographic categories (e.g., disability, ethnicity, gender), with certain groups facing an enhanced prevalence of the issue. With these demographic disparities working in the background of the IPV-poverty connection, various inequality dynamics (e.g., social control, resource scarcity, bureaucracy) constrict survivors' options. This constriction can lead to deleterious outcomes: homelessness, staying with partner-violent people, or facing failure-to-protect prosecution. Having concentrated implications for female-headed families, these possibilities have been subject to policies that attempt to moderate and disentangle the IPV-poverty relationship. Public policies targeting IPV and poverty, constructed through federalism, separation of powers, and symbolic politics, are further implemented to target various IPV categories, including firearms, housing, immigration, healthcare, employment, and compensatory strategies for victims. The current study aims to answer the following research question: What are the intricacies of the relationships among IPV, IPV-related statutes, and poverty rates among female-headed families with related children at the state-level in the United States? Using secondary data and legal sources, the current study looks at the potential moderating effect of policy in the IPV-poverty relationship across the United States's major subnational units. Discussions of findings are provided accordingly.

Guided by Nils Christie's (1986) Ideal Victim framework, the current study examines the effect that victim/offender relationship status (casual vs. serious), victim self-identity (as a "victim" or a "survivor"), and observer gender (woman vs. man) have on victim blame attributions. Data were collected from 329 adult students at a large public university in the Southwest United States using an online, experimental vignette design. Three separate one-way analysis of variances (ANOVAs) were conducted to test the study's three hypotheses. Results suggest that among the study sample, victim/offender relationship status (H1) and victim self-identity (H2) do not significantly affect victim blame attribution towards victims of IPVAW. Results do support H3 suggesting that observer gender does significantly affect victim blame attribution towards victims of IPVAW with men participants attributing more victim blame than women participants. Future research directions to better capture the nuances of (IPVAW) victim/offender relationship status (among "dating" couples) and self-identity of an (IPVAW) victim (as a "victim" or a "survivor") are identified and conceptual replication is encouraged.

Exploring social attitudes towards acceptability of intimate partner violence (IPV) is essential to understanding the nature of IPV. Attitudes justifying acceptability of wife battery may strongly predict perpetration and victimization as well as institutional responses to IPV against women. Feminist scholars emphasize that supportive attitudes towards wife beating are largely impacted by the prevalence of patriarchal values and traditional gender roles in society. Petroleum patriarchy theory suggests that oil rich countries experience greater gender inequality and have stronger patriarchal values. The current study integrates these two theories using the concept of the double curse effect. The study used mixed - effect ordered logistic regression to assess attitudes towards wife beating while utilizing individual and country level variables. The data on gendered attitudes includes attitudes about justification of wife beating that were derived from the World Values Survey, Wave 6, for the period 2010-2014. The data included 14,872 respondents from 10 former Soviet countries. Data on oil and gas revenues for post-Soviet countries were obtained from the Ross-Mahdavi Oil and Gas Dataset. The data on HDI, GDI, GII were derived from UN reports. The indicators represent dimensions of human development and gender inequality at the country level. This study showed that individuals from oil rich post-Soviet countries and individuals who support statements about gender inequality are more prone to justify wife battery. Results from this study support the double curse concept. Further, this study is unique as it analyzed an understudied region and focused on the impact of the individual and structural level data on attitudes towards wife beating.

Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, abortion continues to be an ongoing debate among pro-choice and pro-life groups, and politicians, and is one of the many barriers women may face. As rape continues in being a significant social issue, rape-related pregnancies and abortions have been understudied. By using the General Social Survey (GSS), this paper analyzes various sociodemographic variables which may influence social attitudes toward rape-related abortions. Findings indicate that Blacks, women, those living in the South, and age were not significant predictors of whether a pregnant woman should have a legal abortion as a result of rape. Other sociodemographic variables were significant; many supporting previous studies. However, this paper adds to the literature since social attitudes related to rape-related abortions have not been thoroughly studied. As this issue may arise, it is critical for professionals working with victims/survivors to understand, offer, and not judge women's decision should they decide to terminate their pregnancy. Due to various potential barriers women face, we may never obtain an accurate number of rape-related abortions or pregnancies. Because women may not report their rape, future research should focus on women in hospitals, abortion clinics, etc. to get a better understanding of the issue.

Over 40,000 arsons were reported in the 2014 Uniform Crime Report; however, this number is underestimated since there are no official arson trends reported by the FBI due to the lack of agencies reporting this offense. Arson is one of the most destructive and under researched crimes. This lack of research can be attributed to the dual definition of arson – that is, the destruction of one's own property or someone else's property – the opportunistic nature of arson, and the inability to determine a measurable rate. The current study uses data from the Chicago Police Department's Citizen Law Enforcement Analysis and Reporting (CLEAR) System and the 2010 American Community Survey 5-Year Estimates to explore arson offending among and across neighborhoods within the framework of routine activities theory and social disorganization theory. Spatially weighted negative binomial regression is used to test correlation and significance. Analyses were run in STATA and ArcGIS 10.4.1. Results are consistent with prior arson research showing that rates of occurrence are increased by structural measures such as social disorganization, physical disorder, and public transportation. However, racial heterogeneity and accessibility to public transportation are shown to both increase or decrease rates of arson occurrence depending on the subtype of arson. These results suggest that community characteristics may play a greater role in understanding arson offending than previously thought.

Pregnancy-associated Homicides (PAHs) are homicides committed while a woman is pregnant, and recent reports from Florida's Pregnancy-associated Mortality Review (PAMR) suggest that it is a leading cause of unnatural deaths for pregnant women. However, a study has not examined the motives, characteristics, and underlying factors behind these homicides. Therefore, this study explored Florida's Pregnancy-associated Intimate Partner Homicides (PAIPHs) using a sample of women that were reportedly pregnant at the time of their mortality (n=33), as well as a comparison group of not-pregnant women (n=33). To conduct the study, reported homicide data from news sources, police reports, and other public records from 2000 to 2019 were aggregated, coded, and analyzed. Findings show that there are differences between PAIPHs and Not-pregnant Intimate Partner Homicides (NPIPHs), and pregnancy is a risk factor for femicide. The primary motives were unwanted pregnancy or relationship, rejection, avoidance of prosecution, abuse exposure, doubts concerning the paternity of the child, and infidelity accusations. Although PAIPH and NPIPH victims were killed for leaving or threatening to leave the perpetrator, PAIPH victims were more likely to be killed because the perpetrator wanted to end the relationship. Most PAIPH victims were unmarried or recently married (less than a year), and Black women had the highest rate of victimization. As for PAIPH perpetrators,78.5% were Black, 30.3% were convicted felons, and some intentionally targeted the unborn child with a knife, gun or blunt force. The findings suggest a need for Maternal Intimate Partner Violence programs, policies, and interventions targeted towards pregnant women and their intimate partners, as well as strategies to combat firearm usage amongst convicted felons.

Dating violence (DV) victimization in adolescence has been shown to be predictive of both negative emotions and delinquent behavior later in life. However, research that delves into DV victimization and subsequent outcomes, such as deviant behavior, is largely atheoretical. Robert Agnew's general strain theory (GST) provides a theoretical framework to address this limitation. In focusing on negative interactions with others, the theory posits that strain produces negative affect states which leads to deviant or criminal coping. Prior research has identified victimization as a strain, a type of noxious stimuli, which is significantly related to negative emotionality, crime, and deviance. I build on this literature by examining the relationship between dating violence victimization, negative emotionality, and substance use. In addition, little research to date has examined the role that biological factors play in moderating these relationships. Using Add Health, and drawing on two separate, but related, theories, I explore whether the serotonin transporter gene (5-HTTLPR) interacts with dating violence victimization to affect depressive symptoms and self-reported substance use. The analytic strategy involved a series of logistic regressions separated by gender. Results show DV victimization is significantly related to increased odds of binge drinking in males, DV victimization is significantly related to marijuana use for both males and females, and 5-HTTLPR moderates the effect of DV victimization on marijuana use for females only. Although depression does not mediate the relationship between DV victimization and substance use, results show depressive symptoms are independently associated with increased odds of marijuana use. Utility of a GST and biosocial model, implications, and avenues for future research are discussed.

Domestic violence has been considered a serious issue for many decades. This problem manifests itself physically, sexually, and emotionally and can affect anyone. However, most of the domestic violence literature focuses specifically on physical intimate partner violence. Various theoretical frameworks have been utilized to explain the occurrence of domestic violence including social disorganization theory and gender inequality. These explanations are limited, however, with the former primarily extended to physical assault and the latter focusing on violence against women. This study is important as it extends our knowledge of how these two perspectives can be applied to domestic violence through the analysis of domestic stalking, violation of protective orders, and homicide at a structural level. Incident data for these crimes that occurred in 2016 were obtained from the Chicago data portal and demographic data were obtained from the 2016 American Community Survey's 5-year estimates. Univariate, multivariate, and spatial analyses were conducted at the census tract level to determine the associations between the two theoretical frameworks and each crime. Statistical results indicate that social disorganization theory and gender inequality can partially explain the occurrence of domestic stalking, violation of protective orders, and homicide. Concentrated disadvantage was one of the most consistent predictors of domestic violence, but the direction of the relationship varied across models. There were significant gender inequality factors, but the directions also varied. Spatial results demonstrate clustering of the crimes in areas characterized by increased social disorganization as well as areas possessive of certain indicators of gender inequality. This study is unique as it employed both social disorganization and gender inequality frameworks at a structural level, employed various spatial analysis and mapping techniques, and it analyzed understudied acts of domestic violence to set precedent and open doors for future inquiry.

IPV victimization leads many women who suffer from unstable housing into homelessness. These victims are in danger of severe negative health outcomes that are already prevalent in the homeless community, as well as seen in victims of IPV. This study seeks to explore the impact that IPV victimization has on negative health outcomes in the homeless community, compared to the negative health outcomes that homeless women face who are not homeless because of IPV victimization. This study hypothesized that women who are homeless because of IPV victimization face more severe negative health outcomes. The data for the current research is from the Florida Four-City Study of Violence in the Lives of Homeless Women project (Jasinski et. al., 2010) and includes 737 respondents. There was statistically significant findings to support the hypothesis in the health outcomes for the current episode of homelessness for being treated at a clinic for mental problems, self-reported depression, and self-reported anxiety for women who blame their current episode of homelessness on IPV victimization.

Domestic violence (DV) is a global issue that can affect anyone regardless of what role they play in a family household. It does not discriminate by education, age, religion, etc. DV includes any type of violence or abuse that occurs within a domestic setting. For the purposes of this study, this content primarily focuses on intimate partner violence (IPV) as the main form of DV and is used interchangeably throughout the text. This study examines the influence of population density on arrest rates for DV and some factors behind the likelihood of arrests in urban and rural areas. The literature between both of these societies has demonstrated a clear difference in social behaviors that shape the response to DV (Websdale and Johnson 1998). Normative social influence theory suggests that people's influence may lead someone to conform in order to be liked or accepted by a group (Izuma 2017). This theory hypothesizes that the proportion of people living in rural per county will have fewer arrests for DV than the proportion of people living in non-rural areas because of the need for positive relationships that can lead to conformity (Izuma 2017). Furthermore, it is predicted that there are less arrests in rural areas because of the effects of informal social controls in these areas. Informal social controls can take place between police and citizens that may interact more personally through socialization. An example is when citizens take matters into their own hands, therefore prolonging the reporting of crimes to police. This study uses secondary data provided by sources such as the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) website and Social Explorer. Broader implications of this research are that it could shed some light on the social dynamics that impact the outcome of crime in both densely populated and sparsely populated areas.