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As a result of developments in pharmacology, stricter standards for involuntary commitment, and changes in public expenditures, there has been a dramatic decline in the capacity of public psychiatric hospitals to maintain America's most severely mentally ill. Psychiatric deinstitutionalization has led to an increased presence of persons with mental illness in urban areas, many "falling through the cracks" of community‐based services. This is hypothesized to have contributed to homelessness, crime, and arrests. Individual‐level research has documented disproportionate and increasing numbers of mentally ill persons in jails and prisons. It has also found higher rates of violence and arrest among persons with mental illness compared to the general population. This study takes a macro‐level social control approach and examines the relationships between psychiatric hospital capacity, homelessness, and crime and arrest rates using a sample of eighty‐one U.S. cities. I find that public psychiatric hospital capacity has a statistically significant negative effect on crime and arrest rates, and that hospital capacity affects crime and arrest rates in part, through its impact on homelessness. In addition, I find no crime‐reducing effect of private and general psychiatric hospital capacity.

Drawing on attribution theory, research on police discretion, and public attitudes toward mental illness, we examine attributional processes in police decision making in response to domestic violence situations involving veterans and nonveterans with signs of mental illness. Using data from experimental vignettes varying veteran status, victim injury, and suspect compliance administered to a sample of 309 police officers, the results indicate that 1) veterans are perceived as less responsible for troublesome behavior but more dangerous than nonveterans, 2) suspects' veteran status has a significant effect on officers' preference for mental health treatment versus arrest, and 3) part of the effect of veteran status on officer response is mediated by internal and external attributions for problematic behavior and by perceptions of dangerousness. The study empirically demonstrates countervailing processes in police decision making—recognition of the causes for troublesome behavior and the need for mental health treatment on the one hand and concern for community safety and enforcing the law on the other.

In this study, we examine the relationships among social‐demographic characteristics, attitudes, and violence, drawing on cultural theories. Structural equation modeling techniques are employed to examine data from a representative sample of the general population and a sample of ex‐offenders. The findings indicate that age, gender, and SES are related to attitudes toward retribution and courage and to disputatiousness. Further, attitudes toward courage and retribution have significant effects on disputatiousness and violence, which explains a substantial portion of SES effects. The results suggest that lower‐class persons are more likely to engage in violence to a large extent because they are more punitive and place greater emphasis on showing courage in conflicts.

Drawing on modified labeling theory and the reflected appraisals process and using longitudinal data from 129 mothers and their adult children with schizophrenia, we estimate models of the effects of mothers' stigmatized identity appraisals of their mentally ill children on reflected and self-appraisals, and how appraisals affect outcomes (symptoms, self-efficacy, life satisfaction). Results indicate that initial symptoms and functioning are related to how significant others think about their ill family members, how persons with mental illness think others perceive them, and how they perceive themselves. Part of the effects of initial symptoms and functioning on reflected appraisals are due to mothers' appraisals. A small part of the effects of outcomes on self-appraisals are due to others' and reflected appraisals. Stigmatized self-appraisals are related to outcomes, but reflected appraisals do not affect outcomes directly. Implications for modified labeling theory and social psychological processes in recovery from mental illness are discussed.

In this study, we build on recent social disorganization research, estimating models of the relationships between disorder, burglary, cohesion, and fear of crime using a sample of neighborhoods from three waves of the British Crime Survey. The results indicate that disorder has an indirect effect on burglary through fear and neighborhood cohesion. Although cohesion reduces disorder, nonrecursive models show that disorder also reduces cohesion. Part of the effect of disorder on cohesion is mediated by fear. Similar results are obtained in nonrecursive burglary models. Together, the results suggest a feedback loop in which decreases in neighborhood cohesion increase crime and disorder, increasing fear, in turn, further decreasing cohesion.