Social Problems 56(4)

Bend to Avoid Breaking: Job Loss, Gender Norms, and Family Stability in Rural America
Jennifer Sherman

Using ethnographic and interview data, this article explores how labor market transformations affect gender norms and family life in a rural community that has historically been tied to a single industry. It argues that the gender strategies pursued by couples heavily impact their relationships and families. Flexibility with regard to gender norms is key to creating stable relationships in a context of labor market change that threatens the existing gender order. For couples that are tied rigidly to traditional breadwinner/homemaker gender roles, men's inabilities to be the sole providers create marital and family tensions. On the other hand, couples in which men are able to refocus their conceptions of masculinity on more attainable goals such as active parenting experience less strife and more satisfaction. The research finds that rural men are more flexible with regard to masculine identity than found by previous scholars, particularly with regard to conceptions of fatherhood. The article explores in depth the processes and discourses that facilitate flexible gender identities in this conservative rural community.

The Economy, Military, and Ecologically Unequal Exchange Relationships in Comparative Perspective: A Panel Study of the Ecological Footprints of Nations, 1975–2000
Andrew K. Jorgenson and Brett Clark

The authors employ multiple theories within a political economy framework to examine the structural predictors of the per capita ecological footprints of nations. Engaged theories include ecological modernization, treadmill of production, treadmill of destruction, and ecologically unequal exchange. Results of cross-national panel regression models indicate that the treadmill of production in the context of economic development increases per capita footprints, which contradicts general claims of ecological modernization theory. Similarly, the treadmill of destruction in the mode of military expenditures per soldier positively affects per capita footprints. Those with relatively higher levels of exports sent to economically developed and militarily powerful nations experience suppressed consumption levels, and these effects are especially pronounced and increasingly so for less-developed countries, many of which consume resources well below globally sustainable thresholds. The latter sets of findings support key elements of ecologically unequal exchange theory. Ultimately, this research suggests that a political economy framework that considers domestic attributes and structural relationships in particular contexts is quite useful for understanding the consumption-based environmental harms of nations.

Alliance Building across Social Movements: Bridging Difference in a Peace and Justice Coalition
Thomas D. Beamish and Amy J. Luebbers

Alliance building across social movement groups is an important aspect of social movement dynamics, contributing to their viability and capacity to promote social change. Yet, with few exceptions, cross-movement coalitions have received little sustained theoretical or empirical attention. This article contributes to an understanding of cross-movement coalition building through the examination of a successful case of alliance: a coalition of environmental justice and peace and anti-weapons proliferation groups to stop a federally funded U.S. biodefense laboratory from being built and operated in Roxbury, Massachusetts. Cross-movement collaboration was challenged by tensions arising from differences in positionality. Positional differences reflect status distinctions such as race, class, gender, and place and the differential experiences and expectations that result. Nonetheless, this coalition was able to resolve positional tensions and, as a result, remained a viable protest vehicle. We found this was accomplished through a cross-movement bridging process that involved (1) cause affirmation, (2) strategic deployment, (3) exclusion, and (4) co-development of cross-movement commitments. We extend existent accounts of cross-movement coalition by providing both a culturally founded and fine-grained account of coalition work in the maintenance of alliance relations. The article and its conclusions also address the broader implications of understanding successful trans-positional cross-movement alliances. Keywords: social movements, coalitions, environmental justice, peace movement, microdynamics.

Racial Blind Spots: Black-White-Latino Differences in Community Knowledge
Maria Krysan and Michael D. M. Bader

This article explores racial/ethnic differences in community knowledge as a contributing mechanism through which residential segregation in U.S. cities is perpetuated. If whites, blacks, and Latinos are familiar with different communities, and that familiarity is influenced by community racial/ethnic composition, then these "blind spots" may constitute one barrier to integrative mobility. We address three questions: (1) Do blacks, whites, and Latinos have different community blind spots?; (2) Do blacks, whites, and Latinos of the same social, economic, and geographic backgrounds still have different blind spots?; and (3) Do the racial/ethnic characteristics of the community predict a racial/ethnic difference in blind spots, net of the respondent's and the community's other characteristics? Employing logistic regression and hierarchical linear models with data from the 2004–2005 Chicago Area Study, we explore how whites, blacks, and Latinos differ in their knowledge of actual communities in the Chicago metropolitan area and whether differences persist after controlling for social class characteristics. Results show strong evidence that community knowledge is shaped by race—both of the resident and of the target community. Policy implications of the results are discussed.

Religion and Spirituality: A Barrier and a Bridge in the Everyday Professional Work of Pediatric Physicians
Wendy Cadge, Elaine Howard Ecklund, and Nicholas Short

We investigate how 30 pediatricians and pediatric oncologists who practice and teach at elite medical centers determine whether religion and spirituality are relevant to what Andrew Abbot (1988) calls their professional "jurisdictions." Through in-depth interviews we focus on their everyday interactions with patients and families. We ask: (1) How do they gather information about religion and spirituality and determine when that information is relevant to their professional work? (2) Do they perceive religion and spirituality to be a barrier or a bridge to medical care as they do what Thomas Gieryn (1983) calls "boundary work"? We find that pediatric oncologists more than pediatricians see religion and spirituality as relevant to their professional work, though still largely outside their professional jurisdiction. It is most relevant when families are making medical decisions and in end of life situations. Physicians tend to view religion and spirituality functionally, describing impermeable boundaries in medical decision making situations and more permeable boundaries at the end of life. Physicians view religion and spirituality as a barrier when it impedes medical recommendations and as a bridge when it helps families answer questions medicine inherently cannot. Such findings have implications for a wide range of professionals as they negotiate their jurisdictions, particularly around religion and spirituality, in everyday practice.

"What are You?": Explaining Identity as a Goal of the Multiracial Hapa Movement
Mary Bernstein and Marcie De la Cruz

This article uses the Hapa movement as a case study in order to provide a framework for understanding identity as a goal of social movements and to expand on a theoretical understanding of multiracial social movements. In contrast to current understandings of identity-based movements, this article argues that the Hapa movement seeks simultaneously to deconstruct traditional notions of (mono)racial identities and to secure recognition for a multiracial "Hapa" identity. Movements that have identity as a goal are motivated by activists' understandings of how categories are constituted and how those categories, codes, and ways of thinking serve as axes of regulation and domination. The Hapa movement simultaneously challenges (mono)racial categories at both the institutional level through targeting the state and at the micro level through challenging the quotidian enactment of race and promulgating a Hapa identity. Activism by mixed-race individuals and organizations constitutes an important challenge to power that has significant implications for racial categorization and classification in contemporary American society.

The Structure of Material Hardship in U.S. Households: An Examination of the Coherence behind Common Measures of Well-Being
Colleen Heflin, John Sandberg, and Patrick Rafail

Motivated by the growing interest in and the usage of measures of material hardship, together with the lack of a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the how indicators of material hardship relate to one another, we develop and test five conceptual models of the structural coherence of material hardship. While many previous analyses have relied on a unidimensional model of hardship, we argue that this is not conceptually and empirically sufficient. Instead, we compare the standard unidimensional account of hardship to a model that contrasts hardship related to physical necessities and hardship in less critical areas, two models contrasting hardships due to short-term constraints and those with longer time horizons, and finally, a model that posits each nominal type of hardship is best represented by its own latent construct. Using nationally representative data from the 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) (U.S. Census Bureau 2001, 2004), we estimate confirmatory factor analyses, which suggest that a model of hardship that separates different dimensions—health, food, bill paying, and housing hardship—fits this data better than any of the other conceptual models tested. This finding suggests strongly that the four aspects of material hardship modeled here, though obviously associated, are best understood as arising from processes and structures that are not identical. We discuss implications of our findings for both the research community and policy makers in the conclusion.

Social Problems, November 2009: Volume 56, Issue 4

The British Journal of Criminology 49(6)

‘We Are Going to Rape You and Taste Tutsi Women’: Rape during the 1994 Rwandan Genocide
Christopher W. Mullins

Over the past decades, scholars have paid greater attention to sexual violence, in both theorization and empirical analysis. One area that has been largely ignored, however, is sexual violence during times of armed conflict. This paper examines the nature and dynamics of sexual violence as it occurred during the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Drawing upon testimonies given to the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR), descriptions of rapes—both singular and mass—were qualitatively analysed. In general, three broad types of assaults were identified: opportunistic assaults, which seemed to be a product of the disorder inherent within the conflict; episodes of sexual enslavement; and genocidal rapes, which were framed by the broader genocidal endeavours occurring at the time.

‘I’m a Muslim, but I'm not a Terrorist’: Victimization, Risky Identities and the Performance of Safety
Gabe Mythen, Sandra Walklate, and Fatima Khan

Since the events of 11 September 2001, Muslim minority groups have been subjected to pervasive scrutiny in the United Kingdom. The 7 July 2005 attacks have led to young Muslims’ being party to intensified modes of monitoring, surveillance and intervention by crime and security agencies. The introduction of multiple forms of counter-terrorism regulation by the state has been underpinned by discourses of (in)security, which have defined British Muslims en bloc as a risky, suspect population. Against this wider backdrop, this paper presents the findings from a study investigating the effects of these processes on young British Pakistanis in the North-West of England. Giving voice to these young people, we explore their responses to risk-victimization and articulate the impacts of legal and cultural regulation both on the management of Muslim identities and performances of safety in the public sphere.

Aggravating Racism and Elusive Motivation
David Gadd

Since the implementation of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, courts in England and Wales have seen an increase in the number of racially aggravated charges brought before them. However, the extent to which racism is central, rather than ancillary to, the offences prosecuted under this law remains contested, both in individual legal cases and in criminological writing about hate and bias-motivated crime. Using the narrative accounts of one man convicted of perpetrating a racially aggravated assault, this article outlines how important it is to engage with the complexity of motivation as it is perceived by offenders and the necessity of developing analytic approaches capable of transcending what offenders say about their attitudes to race.

Social Control in the Face Of Security and Minority Threats: The Effects of Terrorism, Minority Threat and Economic Crisis on the Law Enforcement System in Israel
Revital Sela-Shayovitz

This study focuses on a combination of security, minority and economic threats that occurred concurrently during the Second Intifada in Israel and their impact on social control. The Israeli situation provides a unique opportunity for implementing the natural experiment approach. This study was based on an interrupted time-series analysis of a restricted time period, namely 1995–2005. ARMA models were used to examine the effects of Intifada period, terrorist attacks, unemployment rates and ethnic origin on pre-trial detention rates. The findings support the minority threat hypothesis. A strong and statistically significant interaction effect was found between the Second Intifada and ethnic origin: pre-trial detentions of Arabs increased during the Intifada and were higher than those of Jews. The results partially support the economic threat hypothesis.

Community Policing or Zero Tolerance?: Preferences of Police Officers from 22 Countries in Transition
Cynthia Lum

Since the 1970s, approximately 60 countries in the world have experienced major political transition away from authoritarianism towards democracy and more liberal modes of governance. Subsequently, this era has provided opportunities for researchers to observe how major changes in the political environment affect a country's policing practices. This study is the first of a two paper series on the relationship between democratization and police attitudes, preferences and behaviours. This study reports the results of a pilot study of 315 police supervisors from 22 transitioning nations asking about their preferences towards two different styles of crime prevention—community-oriented policing and zero tolerance approaches. The results indicate that the officers from countries more democratically consolidated tend to have stronger relative preferences towards community-oriented policing over zero tolerance styles.

Governing Through Anti-social Behaviour: Regulatory Challenges to Criminal Justice
Adam Crawford

The ‘anti-social behaviour’ agenda in Britain and the introduction of diverse new powers and regulatory tools represent a major challenge to traditional conceptions of criminal justice. This article argues that the language of regulation has been appropriated and deployed to cloak and legitimize ambitious (yet ambiguous) bouts of hyper-active state interventionism. These may have more to do with quests to demonstrate government's capacity to be seen to be doing something tangible about public anxieties than with meaningful behavioural change. Rather, regulatory ideas are being used to circumvent and erode established criminal justice principles, notably those of due process, proportionality and special protections traditionally afforded to young people. Consequently, novel technologies of control have resulted in more intensive and earlier interventions.

Public Health and Fear of Crime: A Prospective Cohort Study
Jonathan Jackson and Mai Stafford

Public insecurities about crime are widely assumed to erode individual well-being and community cohesion. Yet, robust evidence on the link between worry about crime and health is surprisingly scarce. This paper draws on data from a prospective cohort study (the Whitehall II study) to show a strong statistical effect of mental health and physical functioning on worry about crime. Combining with existing evidence, we suggest a feedback model in which worry about crime harms health, which, in turn, serves to heighten worry about crime. We conclude with the idea that, while fear of crime may express a whole set of social and political anxieties, there is a core to worry about crime that is implicated in real cycles of decreased health and perceived vulnerability to victimization. The challenge for future study is to integrate core aspects of the everyday experience of fear of crime with the more layered and expressive features of this complex social phenomenon.

Embodying Uncertainty?: Understanding Heightened Risk Perception of Drink ‘Spiking’
Adam Burgess, Pamela Donovan, and Sarah E. H. Moore

There is a stark contrast between heightened perceptions of risk associated with drug-facilitated sexual assault (DFSA) and a lack of evidence that this is a widespread threat. Through surveys and interviews with university students in the United Kingdom and United States, we explore knowledge and beliefs about drink-spiking and the linked threat of sexual assault. University students in both locations are not only widely sensitized to the issue, but substantial segments claim first- or second-hand experience of particular incidents. We explore students’ understanding of the DFSA threat in relationship to their attitudes concerning alcohol, binge-drinking, and responsibility for personal safety. We suggest that the drink-spiking narrative has a functional appeal in relation to the contemporary experience of young women's public drinking.

Reconsidering the Theory on Adolescent-Limited and Life-Course Persistent Anti-Social Behaviour
Torbjørn Skardhamar

This article presents a critical review of the taxonomic theory of adolescent-limited and life-course persistent anti-social behaviour (Moffitt 1993) and its empirical evidence. This influential theory suggests that there are two qualitatively distinct types of offenders that require distinct theoretical explanations. Moreover, the empirical evidence for the typology is considered to be strong, at least by some. I discuss along three lines: first, to what extent the taxonomy should be interpreted literally; second, whether the suggested mechanisms are likely to produce the hypothesized groups; third, whether some of the most important empirical evidence really does support the theory. I conclude that the theoretical arguments are surprisingly unclear on key issues and that the empirical evidence is highly problematic.

What Works for Women?: A Comparison of Community-Based General Offending Programme Completion
Jonathan Martin, Paula Kautt, and Loraine Gelsthorpe

Women's completion rates on General Offending Programmes are significantly lower than men’s. Is this evidence of the programmes’ design and delivery being focused on men? This study uses multivariate statistical techniques on national data for 2006–07 to examine the characteristics significantly predicting completion rates for General Offending Programmes. In particular, it uses criminogenic factors from the OASys risk-assessment tool to identify the features predicting compliance, as captured by the Interim Accredited Programmes System (IAPS), and determine whether they differ between men and women. The results show significant variation between the women and men in the predictors of programme completion. The practical implications of these for research, policy and practice are discussed.

Mothers for Justice?: Gender and Campaigns against Miscarriages of Justice
Sarah Charman and Stephen P. Savage

Miscarriages of justice are often only exposed through the extra-judicial activities of parties determined to fight for a particular cause, involving those closest to victims of miscarriages of justice. This paper examines the role of women, and particularly of mothers, in such justice campaigns and the extent to which there is a gendered dimension to campaigns against injustice. Based on interviews with those closely associated with justice campaigns, the paper argues that women tend to occupy a special, powerful place in campaigns against miscarriages of justice, one interwoven with familial relationships. The paper proceeds to relate this ‘special’ place to differential processes of grieving and the dynamics of women's engagement with protest and campaigning more generally.

The British Journal of Criminology, November 2009: Volume 49, Issue 6

American Journal of Sociology 115(2)

Pathways to Meaning: A New Approach to Studying Emotions at Work
Don Grant, Alfonso Morales, and Jeff Sallaz

Research on the emotional consequences of interactive service work remains inconclusive in large part because scholars have not analyzed the mechanisms that lead frontline employees to adopt the meanings disseminated by their employers. The authors argue that the theoretical framework best suited for remedying this situation is the negotiated order perspective. It suggests that whether employees adopt a corporate-sanctioned meaning, and with what emotional effect, depends on the conjunction of several social conditions. The authors also propose a novel analytical strategy that can identify these conditional pathways and formalize the combinatorial logic of the negotiated order perspective: fuzzy-set techniques. To illustrate the utility of this approach, the article examines a university hospital that has tried to create a more meaningful and emotionally rewarding work environment for its nursing staff. Consistent with expectations, findings show that employees can embrace the same corporate-sanctioned meaning under different sets of conditions and with different emotional consequences.

The Puzzle of Korean Christianity: Geopolitical Networks and Religious Conversion in Early Twentieth-Century East Asia
Danielle Kane and Jung Mee Park

This article uses the puzzle of Christian success in Korea to develop a model for understanding religious diffusion beyond national borders. The authors argue that the microlevel network explanations that dominate the research on conversion cannot by themselves account for the unusual success of Protestantism in Korea. Instead, events in East Asia in macrolevel, geopolitical networks provoked nationalist rituals that altered the stakes of conversion to either promote or retard conversion network growth. At the turn of the 20th century, unequal treaties both opened this region to missionaries and provoked nationalist rituals. In China and Japan, these rituals generated patriotic identities by attacking Christianity, and network growth slowed or reversed. In Korea, Christianity became compatible with these rituals, and conversion networks grew. This example highlights the greater explanatory power of nested networks for understanding international religious diffusion, relative to microlevel accounts alone.

Origins of Homophily in an Evolving Social Network
Gueorgi Kossinets and Duncan J. Watts

The authors investigate the origins of homophily in a large university community, using network data in which interactions, attributes, and affiliations are all recorded over time. The analysis indicates that highly similar pairs do show greater than average propensity to form new ties; however, it also finds that tie formation is heavily biased by triadic closure and focal closure, which effectively constrain the opportunities among which individuals may select. In the case of triadic closure, moreover, selection to “friend of a friend” status is determined by an analogous combination of individual preference and structural proximity. The authors conclude that the dynamic interplay of choice homophily and induced homophily, compounded over many “generations” of biased selection of similar individuals to structurally proximate positions, can amplify even a modest preference for similar others, via a cumulative advantage–like process, to produce striking patterns of observed homophily.

The False Enforcement of Unpopular Norms
Robb Willer, Ko Kuwabara, and Michael W. Macy

Prevailing theory assumes that people enforce norms in order to pressure others to act in ways that they approve. Yet there are numerous examples of “unpopular norms” in which people compel each other to do things that they privately disapprove. While peer sanctioning suggests a ready explanation for why people conform to unpopular norms, it is harder to understand why they would enforce a norm they privately oppose. The authors argue that people enforce unpopular norms to show that they have complied out of genuine conviction and not because of social pressure. They use laboratory experiments to demonstrate this “false enforcement” in the context of a wine tasting and an academic text evaluation. Both studies find that participants who conformed to a norm due to social pressure then falsely enforced the norm by publicly criticizing a lone deviant. A third study shows that enforcement of a norm effectively signals the enforcer’s genuine support for the norm. These results demonstrate the potential for a vicious cycle in which perceived pressures to conform to and falsely enforce an unpopular norm reinforce one another.

Repression and Solidary Cultures of Resistance: Irish Political Prisoners on Protest
Denis O’Hearn

Social activists and especially insurgents have created solidary cultures of resistance in conditions of high risk and repression. One such instance is an episode of contention by Irish political prisoners in the late 1970s. The “blanketmen” appropriated and then built a solidary culture within spaces that had been under official control. Their ability to maintain such a collective response was enhanced by an intensifying cycle of protest and violent reprisal, including extreme stripping of their material environment, in which the prisoners gained considerable initiative. This study uses interviews and contemporary writings by prisoners, prison authorities, visitors, and movement activists to examine how the dynamic of protest and repression transformed insurgent prison culture—through material, emotional, and perceptive changes—and the importance of leadership in the transformation. Special attention is given to prisoner activities in appropriated spaces that reinforced the culture of resistance: promoting the Irish language, cultural production, and the production of propaganda.

Does Race Matter in Neighborhood Preferences? Results from a Video Experiment
Maria Krysan, Mick P. Couper, Reynolds Farley, and Tyrone A. Forman

Persistent racial residential segregation is often seen as the result of preferences: whites prefer to live with whites while blacks wish to live near many other blacks. Are these neighborhood preferences color-blind or race conscious? Does neighborhood racial composition have a net influence upon preferences, or is race a proxy for social class? This article tests the racial proxy hypothesis using an innovative experiment that isolates the net effects of race and social class, followed by an analysis of the social psychological factors associated with residential preferences. The authors find that net of social class, the race of a neighborhood’s residents significantly influenced how it was rated. Whites said the all-white neighborhoods were most desirable. The independent effect of racial composition was smaller among blacks, who identified the racially mixed neighborhood as most desirable. Further, whites who held negative stereotypes about African-Americans and the neighborhoods where they live were significantly influenced by neighborhood racial composition. None of the proposed social psychological factors conditioned African-Americans' sensitivity to neighborhood racial composition.

American Journal of Sociology, September 2009: Volume 115, Issue 2

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 46(4)

Controlling Violent Offenders Released to the Community: An Evaluation of the Boston Reentry Initiative
Anthony A. Braga, Anne M. Piehl, and David Hureau

Despite the high level of funding and policy interest in prisoner reentry, there is still little rigorous scientific evidence to guide jurisdictions in developing reentry programs to enhance public safety, particularly for managing those who pose the greatest safety risks. The Boston Reentry Initiative (BRI) is an interagency initiative to help transition violent adult offenders released from the local jail back to their Boston neighborhoods through mentoring, social service assistance, and vocational development.This study uses a quasi-experimental design and survival analyses to evaluate the effects of the BRI on the subsequent recidivism of program participants relative to an equivalent control group. The authors find that the BRI was associated with significant reductions—on the order of 30 percent—in the overall and violent arrest failure rates.

   
Individual and Environmental Effects on Assaults and Nonviolent Rule Breaking by Women in Prison
Benjamin Steiner and John Wooldredge

Drawing from micro- and macro-level theories of social control, the authors examined inmate and facility effects on the prevalence of assaults and nonviolent rule infractions committed by female inmates housed in state correctional facilities during 1991 and 1997. Analyses of national samples of more than 2,200 women confined in roughly 40 facilities produced results favoring a control perspective. Characteristics of both inmates (e.g., family status, history of physical or sexual abuse, drug use immediately prior to incarceration, and mental ill health) and facilities (e.g., crowding and security level) were relevant for understanding differences among female inmates in the odds of both assault and nonviolent misconduct.

   
Predicting Trajectories of Offending over the Life Course: Findings from a Dutch Conviction Cohort
Bianca E. Bersani, Paul Nieuwbeerta, and John H. Laub

Distinguishing trajectories of criminal offending over the life course, especially the prediction of high-rate offenders, has received considerable attention over the past two decades. Motivated by a recent study by Sampson and Laub (2003), this study uses longitudinal data on conviction histories from the Dutch Criminal Career and Life-Course Study (CCLS) to examine whether adolescent risk factors predict offending trajectories across the life span. The CCLS is particularly well suited to study developmental offending trajectories as it contains detailed information on individual criminal offending careers for a representative sample of all individuals convicted in the Netherlands in 1977 (n = 4,615) beginning at 12 years of age and continuing into late adulthood. To assess predictive ability, the authors employ two different analytical approaches. First, the authors examine whether offending trajectories can be prospectively differentiated by risk factors identified in adolescence. Second, the authors use group-based trajectory analysis to retrospectively identify distinct developmental offending trajectories and employ a cross-validation technique to examine the ability to predict the probability of an individual’s membership in a particular trajectory group. Overall, the results support the notion that it is difficult to predict long-term patterns of criminal offending using risk factors identified early in the life course.

   
Household Structure, Coupling Constraints, and the Nonpartner Victimization Risks of Adults
Carolyn Yule and Elizabeth Griffiths

Victimization studies consistently find that household structure influences the risk of personal and property victimization among adult household members, with those in "traditional" homes enjoying the most protection from victimization and lone parents experiencing the greatest vulnerability. Drawing on the concept of coupling constraints , which represents space-time limitations on adults’ routine activities, this study builds upon and extends research on the household structure— victimization relationship by considering how the presence and age of children shapes adult victimization risk. Data from 11,952 urban respondents in the Canadian General Social Survey (1999) confirm that adults’ life course stage, captured in age-graded responsibilities to children, has an independent and direct influence on nonpartner victimization. The heightened victimization risk experienced by lone parents relative to other types of households is largely explained by their parental coupling constraints.

   
Whites’ Concern about Crime: The Effects of Interracial Contact
Daniel P. Mears, Christina Mancini, and Eric A. Stewart

In recent decades, crime has emerged as a prominent policy focus nationally. Accordingly, a large literature on public views about crime has developed, one strand of which highlights the racialization of crime as a factor central to public opinion and policy discourse. Drawing on this work and studies on the effects of interracial contact, the authors seek to advance theory and research on public opinion about crime.To this end, they draw on data from an ABC News and  Washington Post poll to test competing hypotheses about the effects of interracial friendship among Whites on concern about local and national crime. The results suggest that interracial contact increases concern about crime among urban Whites.The authors discuss the implications of these findings for theory, research, and policy.

   
Assessing the Relationship between Violent and Nonviolent Criminal Activity among Serious Adolescent Offenders
John M. MacDonald, Amelia Haviland, and Andrew R. Morral

Understanding the progression of violent and nonviolent criminal activity remains a matter of theoretical debate. In the present study, the authors build on criminological theory and assess the extent to which the progression of violent and nonviolent criminal behaviors follows different trajectories. The authors rely on semiparametric mixture models to examine these comorbidities of offending in a longitudinal sample of delinquent adolescents. The results suggest that the trajectories of violent and nonviolent criminal offending follow similar paths over time and that membership in the chronic violent and nonviolent offender groups are associated with overlapping sets of risk factors. However, the results also indicate that at the individual level, membership in a particular nonviolent offending group does not share high concordance with membership in a particular violent offender group. These findings raise questions about the adequacy of general theories of crime progression and suggest the need to continue investigating behavioral theories that discriminate between different forms of offending.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, November 2009: Volume 46, Issue 4

Law & Society Review 43(3)

International Human Rights Law, Global Economic Reforms, and Child Survival and Development Rights Outcomes
Elizabeth Heger Boyle, Minzee Kim

Are recent trends in international law supporting child rights and promoting neoliberal economic reforms complementary or contradictory? To answer this question, we identify the component parts of child rights mobilization, recent global economic reforms, and child rights outcomes to theorize the particular relationships among them. Focusing on child survival and development rights in 99 poor and middle-income countries from 1983 to 2001, we find that countries' acquiescence to established international law concerning economic rights influences the successful implementation of most of these rights, while the ratification of child rights treaties does not show an effect during the period studied. National links to child rights nongovernmental organizations are also associated with improved child rights outcomes, as is being selected to receive a loan from the World Bank (for reducing child labor and increasing immunizations). We find weak support for the hypothesis that the implementation of loan conditionalities is more deleterious for rights that are costlier to implement. We also find that achieving the goal of neoliberal economic reforms—trade openness—results in less successful implementation of most child rights outcomes considered. Finally, in a related analysis, we find that the ratification of child rights treaties, as well as the adoption and implementation of structural adjustment agreements, enhances the presence of child-related organizations within countries.

Law, Finance, and Politics: The Case of India
John Armour, Priya Lele

The liberalization of India's economy since 1991 has brought with it considerable development of its financial markets and supporting legal institutions. An influential body of economic scholarship asserts that a country's "legal origin"—as a civilian or common law jurisdiction—plays an important part in determining the development of its investor protection regulations, and consequently its financial development. An alternative theory claims that the determinants of investor protection are political, rather than legal. We use the case of India to test these theories. We find little support for the idea that India's legal heritage as a common law country has been influential in speeding the path of regulatory reforms and financial development. Rather, we suggest there are complementarities between (1) India's relative success in services and software; (2) the relative strength of its financial markets for outside equity, as opposed to outside debt; and (3) the relative success of stock market regulation, as opposed to reforms of creditor rights. We conclude that political economy explanations have more traction in explaining the case of India than do theories based on "legal origins."

The Privatization of Public Legal Rights: How Manufacturers Construct the Meaning of Consumer Law
Shauhin A. Talesh

This article demonstrates how the content and meaning of California's consumer protection laws were shaped by automobile manufacturers, the very group these laws were designed to regulate. My analysis draws on and links two literatures that examine the relationship between law and organizations but often overlook one another: political science studies of how businesses influence public legal institutions, and neo-institutional sociology studies of how organizations shape law within their organizational field. By integrating these literatures, I develop an "institutional-political" theory that demonstrates how organizations' construction of law and compliance within an organizational field shapes the meaning of law among legislators and judges. This study examines case law and more than 35 years of California legislative history concerning its consumer warranty laws. Using institutional and political analysis, I show how auto manufacturers, who were initially subject to powerful consumer protection laws, weakened the impact of these laws by creating dispute resolution venues. The legislature and courts subsequently incorporated private dispute resolution venues into statutes and court decisions and made consumer rights and remedies largely contingent on consumers first using manufacturer-sponsored venues. Organizational venue creation resulted in public legal rights being redefined and controlled by private organizations.

Confronting Government After Welfare Reform: Moralists, Reformers, and Narratives of (Ir)responsibility at Administrative Fair Hearings
Vicki Lens

Almost 40 years ago, the Supreme Court, in the landmark case Goldberg v. Kelly (1970), provided welfare participants with a potentially potent tool for challenging the government welfare bureaucracy by requiring pre-termination hearings before welfare benefits were discontinued or reduced. In 1996, with the passage of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), the rights talk of Kelly was officially replaced with the discourse of individual responsibility. Using observational data of administrative hearings and interviews with administrative law judges and appellants, this study explores how fair hearings have been affected by this official reconceptualization of rights. I find that hearings are not a panacea for challenging the more punitive aspects of welfare reform, but nor are they devoid of the possibility of justice. While hearings can replicate in style and substance the inequities, rigid adherence to rules, and moral judgments that characterize welfare relationships under the PRWORA, they can also be used as a mechanism for creating counternarratives to the dominant discourse about welfare. This study identifies two types of judges—moralist judges and reformer judges—and examines how their differing approaches determine which narrative emerges in the hearing room.

The Dynamic of Corporate Self-Regulation: ISO 14001, Environmental Commitment, and Organizational Citizenship Behavior
Oren Perez, Yair Amichai-Hamburger, Tammy Shterental

This article examines the institutional impact of environmental management systems (EMSs), focusing on ISO 14001. It develops a pluralistic framework for thinking about the dynamic of corporate self-regulation that we term the polyphonic model. It argues that the adoption of ISO 14001 can move the firm into a new equilibrium trajectory, which enmeshes together environmental and economic goals and reflects greater sensitivity to ecological concerns. There is a positive reciprocal cycle between the pro-environmental structural changes induced by ISO 14001 and the employees' attitudes toward the firm and the environment. In order to examine ISO 14001 institutional impact, we conducted a series of interviews with managers and administered questionnaires to employees in 24 Israeli firms with and without certification. The findings indicate that the perceived environmental commitment of certified firms was higher than that of noncertified firms and was higher among employees that perceived the EMS as more highly integrated in the firm. Perceptions of the standard's integration were also found to be positively correlated with personal environmental commitment. The results also indicate that the increase in the firm's environmental commitment was positively associated with employees' organizational citizenship behavior within certified firms. Further indications of the pro-environmental dynamic induced by ISO 14001 were found in the in-depth interviews.

Legal Consciousness and Responses to Sexual Harassment
Amy Blackstone, Christopher Uggen, Heather McLaughlin

Studies of legal mobilization often focus on people who have perceived some wrong, but these studies rarely consider the process that selects them into the pool of potential "mobilizers." Similarly, studies of victimization or targeting rarely go on to consider what people do about the wrong, or why some targets come forward and others remain silent. We here integrate sociolegal, feminist, and criminological theories in a conceptual model that treats experiencing sexual harassment and mobilizing in response as interrelated processes. We then link these two processes by modeling them as jointly determined outcomes and examine their connections using interviews with a subset of our survey respondents. Our results suggest that targets of harassment are selected, in part, because they are least likely to tell others about the experience. We also discuss strategies that workers employ to cope with and confront harassment. We find that traditional formal/informal dichotomies of mobilization responses may not fully account for the range of ways that individuals respond to harassment, and we propose a preliminary typology of responses.

From Rights to Claims: The Role of Civil Society in Making Rights Real for Vulnerable Workers
Shannon Gleeson

This article examines the contextual factors driving legal mobilization of workers in the United States through an analysis of national origin discrimination charges under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act (2000–2005). Consistent with previous studies, this analysis confirms that high unemployment levels and weak labor protections promote legal mobilization. The findings also highlight the positive role that civil society may play in promoting claims-making. I argue that nongovernmental organizations fill the gap in places where organized labor is weak, and may help support claims-making particularly in places with a larger vulnerable workforce. The article concludes by offering suggestions for a renewed sociolegal research agenda that examines the role of 501c(3) civil society organizations for the legal mobilization of an increasingly non-unionized and immigrant workforce.

Law & Society Review, September 2009: Volume 43, Issue 3

Theory and Society 38(6)

How people experience and change institutions: a field guide to creative syncretism
Gerald Berk and Dennis Galvan

An “amorphous mist”? The problem of measurement in the study of culture
Amin Ghaziani

The power of the intelligentsia: The Rywin Affair and the challenge of applying the concept of cultural capital to analyze Poland’s elites
Tomasz Zarycki

Theory and Society, November 2009: Volume 38, Issue 6

Justice Quarterly 26(4)

Using Propensity Score Matching to Understand the Relationship between Gang Membership and Violent Victimization: A Research Note
Chris L. Gibson;  J. Mitchell Miller;  Wesley G. Jennings;  Marc Swatt; Angela Gover

Due to methodological limitations, such as unmatched gang samples and a lack of longitudinal investigations, it remains unresolved whether joining a gang leads to future violent victimization or both share a set of common causes. Guided by selection, facilitation, and enhancement perspectives, the current study applied Propensity Score Matching on data from the Gang Resistance Education and Training longitudinal study to investigate the nature of the gang-violent victimization relationship. Results indicated antecedent differences between those who did and did not join gangs, particularly violent victimization and delinquency. When gang and non-gang members with similar propensities for joining were matched, the relationship between gang membership and violent victimization dissipated. Findings suggest policy attention to early delinquency and victimization risk factors generally.

Gang Membership, Drug Selling, and Violence in Neighborhood Context
Paul E. Bellair; Thomas L. McNulty

A prominent perspective in the gang literature suggests that gang member involvement in drug selling does not necessarily increase violent behavior. In addition it is unclear from previous research whether neighborhood disadvantage strengthens that relationship. We address these issues by testing hypotheses regarding the confluence of neighborhood disadvantage, gang membership, drug selling, and violent behavior. A three-level hierarchical model is estimated from the first five waves of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, matched with block-group characteristics from the 2000 U.S. Census. Results indicate that (1) gang members who sell drugs are significantly more violent than gang members that don't sell drugs and drug sellers that don't belong to gangs; (2) drug sellers that don't belong to gangs and gang members who don't sell drugs engage in comparable levels of violence; and (3) an increase in neighborhood disadvantaged intensifies the effect of gang membership on violence, especially among gang members that sell drugs.

Where Size Matters: Agglomeration Economies of Illegal Drug Markets in Philadelphia
Travis A. Taniguchi;  George F. Rengert; Eric S. McCord

There is a debate over whether police attention focused on an illegal drug market causes dealers to spatially displace their activities “around the corner” therefore having no positive impact on the aggregate level of illegal drug sales in the city. The alternative perspective is that focused police attention lowers the rate of illegal drug sales in the city. Recent research in Jersey City, New Jersey has demonstrated that focused police attention does not simply move illegal drug dealing around the corner. The present analysis explains why this finding is likely to be common in other cities using the economic theory of “agglomeration economies.” Agglomeration economies illustrate that taking the largest and most profitable site from illegal drug dealers will make dealing in the surrounding neighborhoods less rather than more profitable and lead to a smaller marketplace overall. The empirical analysis focuses on Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Low Self-Control and Contact with the Criminal Justice System in a Nationally Representative Sample of Males
Kevin M. Beaver;  Matt DeLisi;  Daniel P. Mears; Eric Stewart

Prior research on law enforcement and court system actions suggests that offender demeanor influences practitioner decision making. However, few studies have examined a key implication of this body of work—namely, criminogenic factors associated not only with offending but also with demeanor may result in a greater likelihood of contact with and formal processing by law enforcement and the courts. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we test the hypothesis that low self-control, which is associated with a range of characteristics that might influence practitioner perceptions of individual offenders' demeanors, will predict greater contact and formal processing. Briefly, we found that low self-control was consistently related to criminal justice system involvement as measured by police contacts, arrests, age at first police contact, and arrest onset. The implications of the findings for theory and research are discussed.

Public Area CCTV and Crime Prevention: An Updated Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Brandon C. Welsh; David P. Farrington

In recent years, there has been a marked and sustained growth in the use of closed circuit television (CCTV) surveillance cameras to prevent crime in public places in the USA and other Western nations. Amidst this expansion and the associated public expenditure, as well as concerns about their efficacy and social costs, there is an increasing need for an evidence-based approach to inform CCTV policy and practice. This paper reports on an updated systematic review and meta-analysis of the effects of CCTV on crime in public places. Evaluations were included if CCTV was the main intervention and the design was of high methodological quality. Forty-four evaluations met the inclusion criteria. The results suggest that CCTV caused a modest (16%) but significant decrease in crime in experimental areas compared with control areas. This overall result was largely driven by the effectiveness of CCTV schemes in car parks, which caused a 51% decrease in crime. Schemes in most other public settings had small and nonsignificant effects on crime: a 7% decrease in city and town centers and in public housing communities. Public transport schemes had greater effects (a 23% decrease overall), but these were still nonsignificant. Schemes evaluated in the UK were more effective than schemes evaluated in the USA and other countries, but this was largely driven by the studies in the car parks. Implications for policy and research are discussed.

The Crime Reduction Effects of Public CCTV Cameras: A Multi-Method Spatial Approach
Jerry H. Ratcliffe;  Travis Taniguchi; Ralph B. Taylor

Public Closed Circuit TeleVision (CCTV) initiatives have been utilized as methods of monitoring public space for over two decades. Evaluations of these efforts to reduce crime have been mixed. Furthermore, there has been a paucity of rigorous evaluations of cameras located in the USA. In this analysis, crime in the viewshed of publicly funded CCTV cameras in Philadelphia, PA, is examined using two evaluation techniques: hierarchical linear modeling and weighted displacement quotients. An analysis that incorporates controls for long-term trends and seasonality finds that the introduction of cameras is associated with a 13% reduction in crime. The evaluation suggests that while there appears to be a general benefit to the cameras, there were as many sites that showed no benefit of camera presence as there were locations with a positive outcome on crime. The policy implications of these findings are discussed.

On the Origins of the Violent Neighborhood: A Study of the Nature and Predictors of Crime-Type Differentiation across Chicago Neighborhoods
Christopher J. Schreck;  Jean Marie McGloin; David S. Kirk

Little of the literature on crime at the neighborhood level examines whether and why some crime types predominate in a given neighborhood over other types. Many macro-level theories do make predictions about the sort of crimes that occur in some neighborhoods, although they remain largely untested. This study focuses on one of these theories, differential opportunity, and its predictions about the making of violent neighborhoods. Drawing on various data sources, this inquiry determines whether crime profiles differ across Chicago neighborhoods—that is, whether there is significant variation across neighborhoods on ratio of violent crimes to other crime types. Next, it also investigates whether the structural factors implicated in the differential opportunity perspective distinguish these neighborhoods or only predict the incidence of crime. The results reveal significant differences in the distribution of crimes across neighborhoods, as well as show that certain factors identify neighborhoods that favor violence over other crimes.

Comparing Methods for Examining Relationships Between Prison Crowding and Inmate Violence
John Wooldredge; Benjamin Steiner

Studies of empirical relationships between indicators of prison crowding and inmate violence have uncovered null, negative, and positive relationships. These mixed findings may be due, in part, to cross-study differences in definitions of crowding, levels of analysis, and sample designs. We compared findings across some of the more popular approaches to study the relationship between facility crowding and the prevalence of inmate assaults in order to determine the implications of different methods for variation in estimates. Multi-level data from a national sample of 10,022 men confined in 203 state correctional facilities during 1997 were examined. Findings revealed differences across methods in the direction and significance of the crowding/assault relationship. These differences were then considered in order to derive a strategy for more uniform research on the topic. This strategy consists of including both total inmate population and design capacity as separate predictors in the same model, examination of tri-level data (inmates, facilities, and states) in order to control compositional differences in inmate populations across facilities and to remove confounding state-level differences in crowding levels and assault rates, and more careful consideration of secondary analyses of complex samples with sample weights.

Rediscovering Quetelet, Again: The “Aging” Offender and the Prediction of Reoffending in a Sample of Adult Sex Offenders
Patrick Lussier; Jay Healey

This study explored the role of age at release on the risk of reoffending using a sample of sex offenders. It examined whether the risk of reoffending, assessed using actuarial tools, should be adjusted according to the offender's age at the time of release. The sample comprised 553 offenders, all of whom were consecutive admissions to a Canadian federal penitentiary. Scores on the Static-99 as well as age at release were included in successive nested prediction models using Cox-regression. Receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves and Allison's R2 were computed to assess the predictive accuracy of the models and the strength of the association between the covariate measures of general and violent/sexual reoffending. Results showed that overall predictive accuracy observed across models was fair at best. Generally, age of onset and age at release improved the prediction accuracy over and above the scores on the Static-99. In fact, by itself, age at release showed a predictive accuracy comparable to that of the actuarial tool. The results suggest that risk assessors should adjust the risk of reoffending based on the offender's age at release. The implications of this study are discussed in light of the age-crime curve literature and the risk management of sex offenders in the community.

Justice Quarterly, December 2009: Volume 26, Issue 4

American Sociological Review 75(5)

Social Class, School and Non-School Environments, and Black/White Inequalities in Children's Learning
Condron, Dennis J.

As social and economic stratification between black and white Americans persists at the dawn of the twenty-first century, disparities in educational outcomes remain an especially formidable barrier. Recent research on the black/white achievement gap points to a perplexing pattern in this regard. Schools appear to exacerbate black/white disparities in learning while simultaneously slowing the growth of social class gaps. How might this occur? Using 1st grade data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Cohort (ECLS-K), I test—and find support for—the proposition that school factors play an elevated role in generating the black/white achievement gap while non-school factors primarily drive social class inequalities. These findings help explain why black/white achievement disparities grow mostly during the school year (when schools are in session and have their greatest impact on students' learning) while class gaps widen mostly during the summer (when school is out of session and non-school influences dominate). I conclude by discussing the implications for future research, especially as they pertain to what appears to be the most important contributor to the black/white achievement gap: school racial segregation.

Low-Income Students and the Socioeconomic Composition of Public High Schools
Crosnoe, Robert

Increasing constraints placed on race-based school diversification have shifted attention to socioeconomic desegregation. Although past research suggests that socioeconomic desegregation can produce heightened achievement, the “frog pond” perspective points to potential problems with socioeconomic desegregation in nonachievement domains. Such problems are important in their own right, and they may also chip away at the magnitude of potential achievement benefits. In this article, I report conducted propensity score analyses and robustness calculations on a sample of public high schools in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health. As the proportion of the student body with middle- or high-income parents increased, low-income students progressed less far in math and science. Moreover, as the proportion of the student body with middle- or high-income or college-educated parents increased, low-income students experienced more psychosocial problems. Such patterns were often more pronounced among African American and Latino students. These findings suggest curricular and social psychological mechanisms of oft-noted frog pond effects in schools and extend the frog pond framework beyond achievement itself to demographic statuses (e.g., race/ethnicity and SES) perceptually linked to achievement. In terms of policy, these findings indicate that socioeconomic desegregation plans should also attend to equity in course enrollments and the social integration of students more generally.

The Evolution of Class Inequality in Higher Education: Competition, Exclusion, and Adaptation
Alon, Sigal

This study develops a comprehensive theoretical framework regarding the evolution of the class divide in postsecondary education. I conceptualize three prototypes of class inequality—effectively maintained, declining, and expanding—and associate their emergence with the level of competition in college admissions. I also unearth the twin mechanisms, exclusion and adaptation, that link class hierarchy to a highly stratified postsecondary system in an allegedly meritocratic environment. Intra- and inter-cohort comparisons reveal that while the class divide regarding enrollment and access to selective postsecondary schooling is ubiquitous, it declines when competition for slots in higher education is low and expands during periods of high competition. In such a regime of effectively expanding inequality (EEI), a greater emphasis on a certain selection criterion (like test scores) in admission decisions—required to sort the influx of applicants—is bolstered by class-based polarization vis-à-vis this particular criterion. This vicious cycle of exclusion and adaptation intensifies and expedites the escalation of class inequality. The results show that adaptation is more effective than exclusion in expanding class inequality in U.S. higher education.

Immigrant Bureaucratic Incorporation: The Dual Roles of Professional Missions and Government Policies
Marrow, Helen B.

Drawing on original qualitative research, this article investigates how natives and institutions in rural America's “new immigrant destinations” are adapting, if at all, to Hispanic newcomers and whether corresponding interaction should be viewed as substantively responsive. In contrast to predictions made by traditional political incorporation theories, results based on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork suggest that Hispanic newcomers are undergoing a process of bureaucratic incorporation whereby public service bureaucrats, rather than elected politicians, are initiating substantive responsiveness. Yet I also identify a continuing interaction between immigrant bureaucratic and political incorporation in rural America. I conclude by connecting my findings to more general sociological perspectives regarding population needs, electoral bodies, and public bureaucracies in democratic societies.

Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment
Pager, Devah; Bonikowski, Bart; Western, Bruce

Decades of racial progress have led some researchers and policymakers to doubt that discrimination remains an important cause of economic inequality. To study contemporary discrimination, we conducted a field experiment in the low-wage labor market of New York City, recruiting white, black, and Latino job applicants who were matched on demographic characteristics and interpersonal skills. These applicants were given equivalent résumés and sent to apply in tandem for hundreds of entry-level jobs. Our results show that black applicants were half as likely as equally qualified whites to receive a callback or job offer. In fact, black and Latino applicants with clean backgrounds fared no better than white applicants just released from prison. Additional qualitative evidence from our applicants' experiences further illustrates the multiple points at which employment trajectories can be deflected by various forms of racial bias. These results point to the subtle yet systematic forms of discrimination that continue to shape employment opportunities for low-wage workers.

Intersections of Power and Privilege: Long-Term Trends in Managerial Representation
Stainback, Kevin; Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald

This article examines post-Civil Rights Act trends in private sector managerial representation for white men, white women, black men, and black women. We examine how three factors affect changing access to managerial positions: (1) industrial restructuring, (2) the process of bottom-up ascription, and (3) organizational characteristics. Accounting for compositional shifts in the labor supply, we find that white male managerial overrepresentation remains virtually unchanged since 1966, even while other status groups make gains. A significant portion of the observed equal opportunity advance for women and blacks takes place in the expanding service sectors of the economy. We also find that female and minority gains are enhanced in larger and more managerially intensive workplaces. For all groups, managerial representation is increasingly tied to the presence of similar others in nonmanagerial jobs. Further examination reveals a new status hierarchy of managers and subordinates—a hierarchy wherein white men are likely to manage men of all races. White women, in comparison, are realizing a growing racial privilege in managing women of color.

Why Targets Matter: Toward a More Inclusive Model of Collective Violence
Martin, Andrew W.; McPhail, Clark; McCarthy, John D.

Efforts to develop a unified model of collective violence have been limited by the diverse array of events analyzed, from terrorist attacks to riots. This article seeks to develop a more inclusive theoretical and analytic framework by exploring the targets of violence, something that has received little disaggregated attention. We argue that consideration of who or what is targeted during the course of an event, together with collectivity size and the conditional role it may play, offers new theoretical insight into collective violence dynamics. Our analysis draws from newspaper records on a diverse range of collectivities, from parties to rallies to riots. We find that in many contexts, collectivity size increases the likelihood of violence against some targets, notably state actors, while reducing attacks on others. These findings provide the basis for a broader discussion of why unpacking targets is so critical to understanding the dynamics of collective violence.

The Politics of Union Decline: The Contingent Determinants of Union Recognition Elections and Victories
Tope, Daniel; Jacobs, David

Despite the close political regulation of union recognition disputes, sociologists have paid little attention to recent political determinants of success in these contests. A state-centered political-opportunity approach suggests that if conservative political officials can reduce the number of union recognition elections, union organization will be blocked. Partly because many labor scholars claim there was a postwar departure in labor movement fortunes, we attempt to detect and model a contingent break in the relationship between Republican control of the presidency and these elections using interactive specifications. Our findings show that shortly after the conservative, antiunion Reagan administration took office, recognition elections, and union victories in these elections, fell sharply. With macroeconomic and other determinants held constant, other political conditions with explanatory power include congressional oversight committee ideology and conservative appointments to the key regulatory agency. Our findings support political accounts and also suggest that unions' failures to organize new workplaces were sustained by subsequent conservative administrations.

American Sociological Review, October 2009: Volume 75, Issue 5

Crime and Delinquency 55(4)

The Victim-Offender Overlap and Fear of In-School Victimization: A Longitudinal Examination of Risk Assessment Models
Chris Melde and Finn-Aage Esbensen

Reports of serious violence in schools have raised general awareness and concern about safety in America’s schools. In this article, the authors examine the extent to which in-school victimization is associated with students’ perceived risk and fear of victimization. By expanding on Ferraro’s risk assessment framework, the current study explores the etiology of fear of in-school victimization using longitudinal data from 1,450 youth between the ages of 10 and 16. Along with prior literature, current findings suggest that victimization and fear are empirically distinct. By focusing educational material on the social determinates of victimization, school administrators may be able to simultaneously reduce fear among youth least likely to be victimized and instill a realistic level of fear among students most at-risk of future victimization.

Social Capital, Social Control, and Changes in Victimization Rates
James Hawdon and John Ryan

A neighborhood-level model of crime that connects the central dimensions of social capital with specific forms of social control is developed. The proposed model is tested using a structural equation model that predicts changes in empirical Bayes log odds of neighborhood victimization rates between 2000 and 2001 in 41 neighborhoods in South Carolina. Results support the integrated model and illustrate the importance of including direct measures of social control in neighborhood models of crime. Although the dimensions of social capital are related to private, parochial, and public controls, the relationships among these concepts are not consistent. Instead, the relationships vary in strength and direction.

The Predictive Validity of a Gender-Responsive Needs Assessment: An Exploratory Study
Emily J. Salisbury, Patricia Van Voorhis, and Georgia V. Spiropoulos

Risk assessment and classification systems for women have been largely derived from male-based systems. As a result, many of the needs unique to women are not formally assessed or treated. Emerging research advocating a gender-responsive approach to the supervision and treatment of women offenders suggests that needs such as abuse, mental health, substance abuse, relationship difficulties, self-esteem, self-efficacy, and parenting issues are important treatment targets. Although these needs may be highly prevalent among women offenders, they have not been adequately tested to determine their relationships with future offending. In response, the present study sought to understand whether gender-responsive needs contributed as risk factors to poor prison adjustment and community recidivism. Additionally, several types of risk assessment models were explored to determine whether gender-responsive needs enhanced the validities of currently established risk classification systems (i.e., a state’s institutional custody scale and the Level of Service Inventory-Revised). Patterns of results differed across prison and community outcomes, with some gender-responsive needs contributing to more valid risk assessment systems. As a pilot study, the results, although mixed, appear to support continued research on this topic.

The Role of Empathy and Parenting Style in the Development of Antisocial Behaviors
Megan Schaffer, Stephanie Clark, and Elizabeth L. Jeglic

This study examined the relationship among parenting, empathy, and antisocial behavior. Two hundred forty-four undergraduate students attending an urban university completed self-report questionnaires assessing their antisocial behavior, empathy, and mothers’ and fathers’ parenting styles. Support was found for a model in which maternal permissive parenting contributed directly and indirectly to antisocial behavior, through its effects on cognitive and emotional empathy development. Findings are discussed in relation to the current literature on empathy, parenting, and adult antisocial behavior.

Evidence for Connections Between Prosecutor-Reported Marijuana Case Dispositions and Community Youth Marijuana-Related Attitudes and Behaviors
Yvonne M. Terry-McElrath, Duane C. McBride, Jamie F. Chriqui, Patrick M. O'Malley, Curtis J. VanderWaal, Frank J. Chaloupka, and Lloyd D. Johnston

This article examines relationships between local drug policy (as represented by prosecutor-reported case outcomes for first-offender juvenile marijuana possession cases) and youth self-reported marijuana use, perceived risk, and disapproval. Interviews with prosecutors and surveys of 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-grade students in the United States were conducted in 2000. Analyses include data from 97 prosecutors and students from 127 schools in 40 states. Results indicate significant relationships between local drug policy and youth marijuana use and attitudes. In general, more-severe dispositions are associated with less marijuana use, higher disapproval rates, and increased perceptions of great risk. Associations primarily appear to be specific to marijuana-related outcomes. Results are discussed within the framework of both deterrence and broader social norms regarding substance use.

Combating Methamphetamine Use in the Community: The Efficacy of the Drug Court Model
Shelley Johnson Listwan, Deborah Koetzle Shaffer, and Jennifer L. Hartman

Methamphetamine use was historically a problem facing Western states; however, in recent years it has methodically spread throughout the nation. Methamphetamine use impacts communities, families, and the criminal justice system in a variety of ways. As such, many jurisdictions are developing policies to reduce the sale and consumption of this drug as well as increase penalties for its use. The question of whether methamphetamine users can be safely and effectively treated in the community is unresolved. This study explores whether community-based drug courts are a reasonable option for treating this population. Results of the study indicate that drug of choice does not influence outcome in a drug court setting. Policy implications are discussed.

Crime and Delinquency, October 2009: Volume 55, Issue 4