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Despite important policy implications, there is scant research on the relationship between distress from victimization and perceptions of police effectiveness. This study investigates the relationship between extent of distress due to violent victimization and perceptions of local law enforcement. In addition, we examine the way that perceived neighbourhood social cohesion accounts for the relationship. We use data from a U.S. statewide victimization survey to estimate regression models that compare victims of violent crime with no/mild distress, victims with moderate/severe distress and nonvictims of violent crime on ratings of police effectiveness. Models include controls for local crime and poverty rates, demographic characteristics, property crime victimization and respondents' exposure to negative policing via media and their own contact with law enforcement. Results show that 10% of respondents are victims of violent crime, and among victims, 40% report no/mild distress and 60% report moderate/severe distress. While victims with greater distress rate police lower on the effectiveness scale, these differences can be accounted for by controls for neighbourhood context, especially the level of perceived social cohesion. Results suggest neighbourhood social environments should be incorporated into models of perceptions of police effectiveness and policing more broadly and that increasing social cohesion may improve police‐community dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nonmetropolitan-metropolitan differences in the United States are large and growing, but we know relatively little about how they interact with gender differences. Using data from the CPS, the Census PUMS, and the GSS, we find nonmetropolitan and metropolitan areas are quite similar in the gender gap in earnings and in rates of married women's labor force participation. Occupational sex segregation is higher and some gender attitudes are a few percentage point less egalitarian in nonmetropolitan areas. Each of these dimensions of gender stratification has been declining over the last two decades and the declines are roughly similar in nonmetropolitan and metropolitan areas. Variations in gender stratification have been greater over time titan across place. Thus, while both place and gender are important dimensions of stratification, there appeals to have been little interaction between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]