Criminology Happens: January 2011

Unemployment, Inequality, Poverty and Crime: Spatial Distribution Patterns of Criminal Acts in Belgium, 2001–06
Marc Hooghe, Bram Vanhoutte, Wim Hardyns, and Tuba Bircan

Previous research has indicated that various deprivation indicators have a positive impact on crime rates at the community level. In this article, we investigate the impact of deprivation indicators on crime in Belgian municipalities (n = 589) for the period 2001–06. A spatial regression analysis demonstrates that unemployment figures have a strong and significant impact on crime rates, and this effect is stronger than the effect of income levels. Income inequality has a significant positive impact on property crime rates but a negative impact on violent crime. Crime is heavily concentrated in the urban centres of Belgium, but we also observe some important regional variations. Demographic structure was not related to crime levels, while spatial analysis shows there is a spill-over effect to neighbouring communities for property crime, but not for violent crime. We close with some theoretical and policy considerations on the relation between unemployment and crime.

Youth Justice And Neuroscience: A Dual-Use Dilemma
Charlotte Walsh

Neuroscience is rapidly increasing comprehension of the human brain. This paper considers its prospective relevance to youth justice policy. In the United States, neuroscientific findings have been co-opted as a liberalizing tool. The parallel lure of these studies in the United Kingdom is foreseeable, given how they plausibly mesh with arguments in support of raising the age of criminal responsibility, along with bolstering policies of de-carceration and diversion. However, caution should be exercised: neuroscience can be used in ways that both contribute to human flourishing, along with potentially diminishing it. In science, this is a well recognized quandary, referred to as the dual-use dilemma. More problematically, neuroscience could be utilized to ‘prove’ poor parenting, to ‘predict’ future criminality.

Illusions Of Difference: Comparative Youth Justice in the Devolved United Kingdom
John Muncie

Surprisingly, there has been little or no systematic research to date that has explored the significance of UK devolution for youth justice policy and practice. This article explores the extent of differential justice in the United Kingdom, particularly as it is expressed in the myriad action plans, criminal justice reviews, frameworks for action, delivery plans and offending strategies that have surfaced since 1998. In particular, the article considers how far policy convergence and divergence are reflected through the discourses of risk, welfare, restoration and children's rights in the four administrations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For comparative criminology, the United Kingdom offers a unique opportunity to explore how international and national pressures towards convergence and/or divergence can be challenged, rebranded, versioned, adapted or resisted at sub-national and local levels.

‘Doing Gender’ in Fear of Crime: The Impact of Gender Identity on Reported Levels of Fear of Crime in Adolescents and Young Adults
Diederik Cops and Stefaan Pleysier

Gender is seen as the most important factor related to different levels of fear of crime, with women consistently reporting higher levels of fear than men. Several explanations have been elaborated, which largely focus either on the irrationally high level of female fear or (from a feminist perspective) on the impact of differential socialization processes, with women being socialized as fearful subjects compared to ‘fearless’ men. However, both explanations imply a rather static interpretation of the gender–fear relation. In this paper, the ‘doing gender’ thesis (West and Zimmerman 1987) is adopted to develop a gender identity scale, using a broad range of attitudes and activities dominantly seen as masculine or feminine in a sample of Belgian adolescents and young adults. The extent to which this gender identity scale is able to explain differences in the level of fear of crime, and may therefore account for the gender gap, is discussed.

Feelings and Functions in the Fear of Crime: Applying a New Approach to Victimisation Insecurity
Emily Gray, Jonathan Jackson, and Stephen Farrall

This paper presents a new definition of fear of crime that integrates two conceptual developments in this enduring field of criminological enquiry. Our measurement strategy differentiates first between specific worries and diffuse anxieties in emotional responses to crime, and second between productive and counterproductive effects on subjective well-being and precautionary activities. Drawing on data from a representative survey of seven London neighbourhoods, these distinctions are combined into an ordinal scale that moves from the ‘unworried’, to low-level motivating emotions, to frequent and dysfunctional worry about crime. We demonstrate that different categories of ‘fear’ have different correlates and explain different levels of variation in public confidence in policing. We conclude with a call for more longitudinal research to uncover the dynamic nature of fear of crime over the life course.

Emotions and Interaction Ritual: A Micro Analysis of Restorative Justice
Meredith Rossner

Restorative justice has long been touted as an effective and popular alternative to mainstream justice. While most research on the subject measures outcomes and satisfaction after the event, this study uses a video recording of a restorative justice conference to analyse at the micro level the emotional and interactional dynamics at work in transforming an initial situation of anger and anxiety into one marked by displays of solidarity between victim and offender. It develops Collins’ theory of interaction ritual chains to code the gradual emergence of a successful interaction by analysis of facial expressions, verbal cues, gestures and interactional dynamics.

The Construction and Interpretation of Risk Management Technologies in Contemporary Probation Practice
Karen Bullock

This paper examines the governance of risk in probation practice in England and Wales. It is concerned with the construction of risk assessments and the subsequent management of those offenders determined to be ‘risky’. It is concerned especially with how notions of rehabilitation, regulation and punishment interact in contemporary risk management practice. The paper comprises, first, an examination of evidence regarding the nature and operation of risk management in probation practice. Second, it describes the findings of an empirical examination of the operation of contemporary practices. Lastly, it discusses implications for how risk management practice is understood.

Why do the Crime-reducing Effects of Marriage Vary with Age?
Delphine Theobald and David P. Farrington

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 South London males from age 8 to age 48. In this survey, it was previously found that men who marry relatively early reduce their offending behaviour after marriage, unlike those who marry relatively late. Further analyses confirmed that the original findings were not caused by regression to the mean. Comparisons between those who married at age 25 or older and those who married at age 18–24 on risk factors at age 8–32 suggest that the later-married men tended to be more nervous, more likely to have experienced a broken home, to be drug users and binge-drinkers, to maintain aggressive attitudes from age 18 to 32, and to continue to go out with their male friends after marriage. The later-married men tended to marry older women who had less influence than younger women on their offending behaviour. They were more likely to be long-term low-rate offenders than those who married early.

Workplace Assaults in Britain: Understanding the Influence of Individual and Workplace Characteristics
Trevor Jones, Amanda Robinson, Ralph Fevre, and Duncan Lewis

Studies based on British Crime Survey (BCS) data suggest that the overall incidence of workplace assault is relatively low. However, these data have a number of limitations. They include only assaults carried out by clients or the public, provide limited information about the individuals involved and their workplaces, and tell us little about perceived causes of violence at work. The 2008 Workplace Behaviour Survey (WBS) presents a more detailed picture than has hitherto been available about the extent and nature of interpersonal assaults at work. This paper discusses in detail the WBS findings regarding the prevalence, frequency and patterns of workplace assaults in Britain.

Convergence, Not Divergence?: Trends and Trajectories in Public Contact and Confidence in the Police
Ben Bradford

Public trust and confidence are vital to the police function. There has been much comment and debate about the apparent decline in confidence in the British police since the 1950s, most frequently evidenced by data from the British Crime Survey (BCS). Yet, there has been relatively little in-depth interrogation of the data at the heart of the discussion. Pooling data from 11 sweeps of the BCS (1984 to 2005/06), this paper shows a homogenization over time in trends in trust and confidence and experiences of encounters with the police. This pattern is found across both age and ethnicity, and can also be identified in other variables. The story that emerges therefore differs from analyses that emphasize the increasingly diffuse and variable nature of public experiences of the police.

‘Like Some Rough Beast Slouching Towards Bethlehem to be Born’: A Historical Perspective on the Institution of the Prison in South Africa, 1976–2004
Gail Super

This paper looks at official discourse on imprisonment under the apartheid and post-apartheid governments, comparing the ways that both regimes have justified the existence of the prison in South Africa. The period covered is from 1976 to 2004. The author shows how the ANC government has attempted to reinvent the prison as a means of establishing order in post-apartheid South Africa and that the demise of apartheid and advent of democracy have been accompanied by an exponential increase in long-term imprisonment. The paper tracks how the process of reform embarked on by the Nationalist Party Government from the late 1970s impacted upon prison practices. In the ‘new’ South Africa, a neo-liberal penality coexists with older disciplinary and sovereign strategies of penal governance in an unstable, contingent and erratic way. The old is very much part of the new.

British Journal of Criminology, January 2011: Volume 51, Issue 1

Minisymposium on Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers

If Momma Ain't Happy: Explaining Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers
Jeffrey Dew and W. Bradford Wilcox

Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers: Broad Strokes Versus Fine Details
Mari L. Clements, Sarah E. Martin, Amanda K. Cassil and Niveen N. Soliman

Social and Cultural Resources for and Constraints on New Mothers' Marriages
Melissa A. Milkie

The Transition to Parenthood and the Reasons “Momma Ain't Happy”
Maureen Perry-Jenkins and Amy Claxton

Motherhood and Marriage: A Response
W. Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew

Low-Income Families

Do Children's Behavior Problems Limit Poor Women's Labor Market Success?
Rebekah Levine Coley, David Ribar and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal

Cohabitation and Children's Externalizing Behavior in Low-Income Latino Families
Paula Fomby and Angela Estacion

Associations of Low-Income Working Mothers' Daily Interactions With Supervisors and Mother-Child Interactions
Anna Gassman-Pines

Middle and Later Life Families

Help to Family and Friends: Are There Gender Differences at Older Ages?
Joan R. Kahn, Brittany S. McGill and Suzanne M. Bianchi

Intergenerational Exchange Between Parents and Migrant and Nonmigrant Sons in Rural China
Zhen Cong and Merril Silverstein

Short-Term Reciprocity in Late Parent-Child Relationships
Thomas Leopold and Marcel Raab

Coresidence With Elderly Parents: A Comparative Study of Southeast China and Taiwan
C. Y. Cyrus Chu, Yu Xie and Ruoh Rong Yu

Intergenerational Coresidence and Family Transitions in the United States, 1850–1880
Steven Ruggles

Children's Health and Well-Being

Chronic and Proximate Depression Among Mothers: Implications for Child Well-Being
Kristin Turney

Parental Depression and Child Outcomes: The Mediating Effects of Abuse and Neglect
Sarah A. Mustillo, Shannon Dorsey, Kate Conover and Barbara J. Burns

The Child Health Disadvantage of Parental Cohabitation
Kammi K. Schmeer

The Consequences of Parental Underestimation and Overestimation of Youth Exposure to Violence
Gregory M. Zimmerman and Greg Pogarsky

Mothers, Fathers, Peers, and Mexican-Origin Adolescents' Sexual Intentions
Sarah E. Killoren, Kimberly A. Updegraff, F. Scott Christopher and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor

Observed Infant Reactions During Live Interparental Conflict
Tina D. Du Rocher Schudlich, Clare R. White, Emily A. Fleischhauer and Kelly A. Fitzgerald

Time Does Not Heal All Wounds: Mortality Following the Death of a Parent
Mikael Rostila and Jan M. Saarela

Of General Interest

Wives' Relative Wages, Husbands' Paid Work Hours, and Wives' Labor-Force Exit
Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer

Mothers but Not Wives: The Increasing Lag Between Nonmarital Births and Marriage
Christina Gibson-Davis

Life-Course Pathways and the Psychosocial Adjustment of Young Adult Women
Paul R. Amato and Jennifer B. Kane

Coparenting and Father Involvement in Married and Unmarried Coresident Couples
Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott

Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2011: Volume 73, Issue 1

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Monday, January 31, 2011

Theory and Society 40(1)

Criminology & Public Policy 10(1)

Thursday, January 13, 2011

British Journal of Criminology 51(1)

Journal of Marriage and Family 73(1)