British Journal of Criminology 51(2)

Articles

When Two Worlds Collide: Aboriginal Risk Management in Canadian Corrections
Joane Martel, Renée Brassard, and Mylène Jaccoud

In the last two decades, Indigenous lobbies have pointed a harsh finger at the endemic overrepresentation of Indigenous individuals in prisons in Canada and abroad. In reaction to such a condemnatory critique, correctional authorities in Canada have sought to ‘aboriginalize’ prisons. This paper addresses some of the prison's adaptation schemes to shed light on three contradictory logics of risk-based management: (1) high-risk aboriginal offenders have little access to risk-reducing programmes; (2) aboriginality undergoes an ontological mutation that occurs during the process of risk assessment; and (3) aboriginal correctional staff play a contradictory role in the (re)production of ‘aboriginal risk’. To what extent, then, does the aboriginalization of prisons constitute a valuable transformation?

Indigeneity And The Judicial Decision To Imprison: A Study of Western Australia's Higher Courts
Christine E. W. Bond and Samantha Jeffries

Internationally, sentencing research has largely neglected the impact of Indigeneity on sentencing outcomes. Using data from Western Australia's higher courts for the years 2003–05, we investigate the direct and interactive effects of Indigenous status on the judicial decision to imprison. Unlike prior research on race/ethnicity in which minority offenders are often found to be more harshly treated by sentencing courts, we find that Indigenous status has no direct effect on the decision to imprison, after adjusting for other sentencing factors (especially past and current criminality). However, there are sub-group differences: Indigenous males are more likely to receive a prison sentence compared to non-Indigenous females. We draw on the focal concerns perspective of judicial decision making in interpreting our findings.

Value Judgments and Criminalization
Andrew Millie

Fuelled by contemporary concerns of risk and majoritarian calls to adhere to ‘the values the majority hold dear’ there can be said to be a ‘crisis of criminalization’ in liberal democracies. Whilst criminalization is clearly an important theme in criminology there has been little attention on the value judgments behind processes of criminalization. By drawing on elements of moral philosophy and by applying these ideas to everyday criminalization in Toronto, this article takes a first step towards addressing this omission. The article adopts a pluralist and social constructivist perspective where differential interpretations lead to the same behaviour being celebrated, tolerated or censured, depending on context and power. A model of value judgment and criminalization is offered that includes consideration of moral, prudential, economic and aesthetic judgments. Value consensus is questioned and the political capital required to dictate values is considered.

Income Disparities of Burglary Risk: Security Availability during the Crime Drop
Nick Tilley, Andromachi Tseloni, and Graham Farrell

In the past 15 years, volume crimes dropped substantially in most countries with reliable crime-trend estimates. In England and Wales, domestic burglary fell by 58 per cent between 1995 and 2008/09, the trend levelling off after 2005/06. Wider use of more and better security arguably contributed to these drops. The availability of enhanced and especially basic security increased between 1997 and 2005/06, while burglary risk fell for all population income groups. Considering, however, the financial cost of burglary-protection devices, it is not surprising that enhanced security continues to be more accessible to better-off households. In 2005/06, the most affluent households were 60 per cent more likely to have such devices compared to the poorest. This is consistent with the finding that nationally burglary drops have occurred least amongst the poorest segments of the population. The better-off continue to benefit most in terms of crime protection: burglary-risk differentials between the lowest and all other income groups widened during the decade up to 2005/06. Security Impact Assessment Tool analysis, however, shows that enhanced security confers greatest burglary protection for those who can least afford it. These results suggest that making enhanced security available to the poorest would further reduce national burglary rates.

Sequential Foraging, Itinerant Fences and Parrot Poaching in Bolivia
Stephen F. Pires and Ronald V. Clarke

Despite legal prohibitions, poaching of wild parrots is widespread in the neo-tropics, with the result that many species are now endangered. Guided by optimal foraging theory, secondary data are used to investigate why some species of Bolivian parrots, but not others, are found in an illegal pet market in Santa Cruz, Bolivia. Species commonly found in the market make more enjoyable pets, are more abundant in the wild and more accessible to humans. They are also mostly found within 50 miles of the city, but some found at greater distances are probably brought to the market by wildlife traders, ‘itinerant fences’ who travel around buying parrots poached by villagers. It is concluded that opportunistic villagers are responsible for most parrot poaching in Bolivia and that this should guide solutions to the problem.

Policing Young People As Citizens-In-Waiting: Legitimacy, Spatiality and Governance
Jacqueline Kennelly

This paper draws upon data from two research projects following two distinct groups of young people: youth activists and homeless or street-involved youth. Although these two groups differ in many ways—the former largely white and middle-class, the latter more ethnically diverse and entirely working-class—each describes encounters with the police that are strikingly similar. The paper explores two such similarities: (1) the role played by cultural discourses of the ‘good and legitimate citizen’ and (2) the role of spatiality, or, more specifically, the importance of being an appropriate body in the appropriate space. The paper explores how the above two dimensions nuance and complicate the relationship between youth and police, in the context of governmentality studies.

Crime Script Analysis of Drug Manufacturing In Clandestine Laboratories: Implications for Prevention
Yi-Ning Chiu, Benoit Leclerc, and Michael Townsley

Despite the growing problem of clandestine drug laboratories, there is currently little evidence of systematic knowledge regarding the crime-commission process involved in this criminal enterprise. In addition, as mentioned by Levi and Maguire, strategic measures utilized in law enforcement interventions that extend beyond immediate operational goals towards a lasting reduction in organized forms of crime are also lacking. The purpose of this study is to better understand the crime-commission process of clandestine drug laboratories and identify significant points for intervention by using crime scripts. This objective is achieved through a qualitative content analysis of 25 court cases in which a crime script comprising seven stages is identified. Potential prevention measures are also underpinned and summarized according to the problem analysis triangle. It is concluded that a focus on location, chemicals and equipment might have the most detrimental effect on the overall manufacturing script process.

Five Kilos: Penalties and Practice in the International Cocaine Trade
Jennifer Fleetwood

Current and proposed sentence guidelines for drug-trafficking offences in the United Kingdom are underpinned by the neo-liberal ‘commonsense’ assumption that greater quantities will yield a greater profit, which deserves greater punishment. At present, this is achieved through the use of weight to determine the maximum sentence available (five kilos for Class A drugs). Drawing on ethnographic research with drug traffickers imprisoned in Ecuador, this paper problematizes the use of weight as a measure of seriousness. This research finds that mules often carry greater quantities than professional traffickers and that therefore sentence guidelines premised on weight will punish mules disproportionately.

Undercover Policing: Assumptions and Empirical Evidence
Edwin W. Kruisbergen, Deborah de Jong, and Edward R. Kleemans

This article describes and analyses the implementation and results of undercover operations in one country (the Netherlands). First, we examine and analyse the main assumptions underlying academic and legislative discourses relating both to the regulation and control of undercover operations and to the kind of results the operations may produce. Second, we analyse documentation and interviews relating to all 89 Dutch criminal investigations in 2004 in which undercover teams were consulted.

The Relationship Between Parental Imprisonment and Offspring Offending in England and The Netherlands
Sytske Besemer, Victor van der Geest, Joseph Murray, Catrien C. J. H. Bijleveld, and David P. Farrington

This article examines whether prisoners’ children have more adult convictions than children whose parents were convicted but not imprisoned. This is investigated in England and the Netherlands from 1946 to 1981 using two prospective longitudinal datasets: the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and the NSCR Transfive Study. In the Netherlands, no significant relationship was found between parental imprisonment and offspring offending. In England, a relationship was found for sons only. This association can be partly explained by parental criminality. However, after controlling for number of parental convictions and other childhood risk factors, a significant relationship remained between number of parental imprisonments and sons’ offending. When parental imprisonment at different ages is examined, parental imprisonment only significantly predicted sons’ offending when it happened after the sons’ seventh birthday.

Review Articles

From ‘Public Criminology’ To The Reflexive Sociology of Criminological Production and Consumption: A Review of Public Criminology? by Ian Loader and Richard Sparks (London: Routledge, 2010)
Loïc Wacquant

Where is Policing Studies?: A Review of Democratic Policing in a Changing World. By Peter K. Manning (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2010, xvii + 306pp. $95.00 hb, $28.95 pb), The Policing Web. By Jean-Paul Brodeur (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010, xiii + 404pp. $45 hb), Lengthening the Arms of the Law: Enhancing Police Resources in the Twenty-First Century. By Julie Ayling, Peter Grabosky and Clifford Shearing
Ian Loader

British Journal of Criminology, March 2011: Volume 51, Issue 2

Law & Society Review 45(1)

Do Victims of War Need International Law? Human Rights Education Programs in Authoritarian Sudan
Mark Fathi Massoud

Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in Sudan, this article illuminates the consequences of human rights educational workshops as a form of humanitarian assistance in war-ravaged areas. These projects are built on flawed assumptions about Sudanese politics and about the likelihood that human rights education empowers the war-ravaged poor. The beneficial impacts of human rights discourse stem from its side effects, which fulfill urgent and symbolic needs, and not from the core content of human rights. The case of an authoritarian regime exposes an alternative site of rights promotion, outside the established or struggling democracies where most literature on rights resides. Bridging the literature on rights in Western, democratic contexts and on human rights in Africa, this article argues that law is not enough—and is potentially dangerous—in the insecure and impoverished areas where the international aid community has been encouraging it to flourish.

Rehabilitation in the Punitive Era: The Gap Between Rhetoric and Reality in U.S. Prison Programs
Michelle S. Phelps

Scholars of mass incarceration point to the 1970s as a pivotal turning point in U.S. penal history, marked by a shift toward more punitive policies and a consensus that “nothing works” in rehabilitating inmates. However, while there has been extensive research on changes in policy makers' rhetoric, sentencing policy, and incarceration rates, scholars know very little about changes in the actual practices of punishment and prisoner rehabilitation. Using nationally representative data for U.S. state prisons, this article demonstrates that there were no major changes in investments in specialized facilities, funding for inmate services–related staff, or program participation rates throughout the late 1970s and the 1980s. Not until the 1990s, more than a decade after the start of the punitive era, did patterns of inmate services change, as investments in programming switched from academic to reentry-related programs. These findings suggest that there is a large gap between rhetoric and reality in the case of inmate services and that since the 1990s, inmate “rehabilitation” has increasingly become equated with reentry-related life skills programs.

Mapping the Racial Bias of the White Male Capital Juror: Jury Composition and the “Empathic Divide”
Mona Lynch and Craig Haney

This article examines the nature of racial bias in the death sentencing process. After reviewing the various general explanations for the continued significance of race in capital cases, we report the results of an empirical study in which some aspects of racially biased death sentencing are examined in depth. Specifically, in a simulated capital penalty-phase trial setting where participants were assigned to small group “juries” and given an opportunity to deliberate, white male jurors were significantly more likely to sentence black defendants to death than were women and nonwhite jurors. This racialized pattern was explained in part by the differential evaluation of the case facts and the perceptions of the defendant that were made by the white male jurors. We discuss these findings in light of social psychological theories of contemporary racism, and we conclude that the demonstrated bias in capital jury settings should be understood as an interaction of several factors, including individual juror characteristics, group-level demographic composition, and group deliberation processes.

“How Do I Bring Diversity?” Race and Class in the College Admissions Essay
Anna Kirkland and Ben B. Hansen

In the first systematic study of what college applicants invoke when required to submit a diversity essay, we revisit many settled assumptions on both the left and the right about how such an essay would operate after Grutter and Gratz as well as after the passage of anti–affirmative action ballot initiatives. Our data are a sample of 176 diversity essays submitted to the University of Michigan in the immediate aftermath of the University's Supreme Court win, analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively with special attention to the differences that the essay writer's race and class position make. We find that in many respects the essays are similar when written by applicants from similar backgrounds but different races, and that conservative critics were wrong to assume the essay would function simply as a way of announcing oneself as an under-the-table affirmative action candidate. Rather than suggesting a straightforward lineup of advantage and disadvantage, we suggest rather that the essay is a vehicle for the youngest generation of citizens to both receive and send back a new conception of difference that has some essentializing elements but overall is turning in a postracial, cosmopolitan direction.

The Transmission of Legal Precedent Across the Australian State Supreme Courts Over the Twentieth Century
Russell Smyth and Vinod Mishra

This article considers several possible determinants of the transmission of legal precedent across Australian state supreme courts over the course of the twentieth century. The study finds that that the transmission of legal precedent is higher between State supreme courts that are more physically proximate and between state supreme courts in which a majority of judges in both courts are appointed by conservative governments. The study further finds that having an intermediate trial court and providing appointments to the High Court of Australia are correlated with whether a state is a source of interstate citations or a cue sender.

Comparing Circuits: Are Some U.S. Courts of Appeals More Liberal or Conservative Than Others?
Andreas Broscheid

This article investigates possible ideological differences between circuits of the U.S. Courts of Appeals. It looks at the distribution of three-judge panel ideologies on the circuits and at differences in decisionmaking patterns, testing several theoretical approaches to circuit differences: the attitudinalist approach, arguing that different judicial ideologies account for intercircuit differences; historical-institutionalist approaches that argue that circuit norms lead to differences in the proportion of conservative decisions and in the effects of judicial ideologies; and the rational-choice institutionalist argument that overall circuit preferences constrain three-judge panel decisions through the en banc process. Using a multilevel logit model, the study finds some support for the attitudinalist and historical-institutionalist accounts of circuit differences. It also finds that intercircuit ideological differences contribute comparatively little to the prediction of appeals court outcomes.

Has Legal Realism Damaged the Legitimacy of the U.S. Supreme Court?
James L. Gibson and Gregory A. Caldeira

Does understanding how U.S. Supreme Court justices actually decide cases undermine the institutional legitimacy of the nation's highest court? To the extent that ordinary people recognize that the justices are deciding legal disputes on the basis of their own ideological biases and preferences (legal realism and the attitudinal model), the belief that the justices merely “apply” the law (mechanical jurisprudence and the myth of legality) is difficult to sustain. Although it is easy to see how the legitimacy of the Supreme Court, the most unaccountable of all American political institutions, is nurtured by the view that judicial decisionmaking is discretionless and mechanical, the sources of institutional legitimacy under legal realism are less obvious. Here, we demonstrate, using a nationally representative sample, that the American people understand judicial decisionmaking in realistic terms, that they extend legitimacy to the Supreme Court, and they do so under the belief that judges exercise their discretion in a principled and sincere fashion. Belief in mechanical jurisprudence is therefore not a necessary underpinning of judicial legitimacy; belief in legal realism is not incompatible with legitimacy.

Law & Society Review, March 2011: Volume 45, Issue 1

Social Forces 89(2)

Education

Educational Expansion and Social Mobility in the 20th Century
Richard Breen

What Can You Do with That Degree?: College Major and Occupational Status of College Graduates over Time
Josipa Roksa, Tania Levey

Civic Returns to Higher Education: A Note on Heterogeneous Effects
Jennie E. Brand

Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment
Claudia Buchmann, Dennis J. Condron, Vincent J. Roscigno

Commentaries

Racial Differences in Test Preparation Strategies: A commentary on Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment
Sigal Alon

Learning in the Shadows and in the Light of Day: A commentary on Shadow Education, American Style: Test Preparation, the SAT and College Enrollment
Eric Grodsky

Rejoinder

Shadow Education: Theory, Analysis and Future Directions: A Rejoinder
Claudia Buchmann, Dennis J. Condron, Vincent J. Roscigno

Immigration

Legal Status and Wage Disparities for Mexican Immigrants
Matthew Hall, Emily Greenman, George Farkas

Determinants of Second Language Proficiency among Refugees in the Netherlands
Frank van Tubergen

Health

Why is Cancer More Depressing for Men than Women among Older White Adults?
Tetyana Pudrovska

Religion and Psychological Distress in Japan
Michael K. Roemer

Networks

Best Friends Forever?: Race and the Stability of Adolescent Friendships
Jesse Rude, Daniel Herda

Delinquency, Social Skills and the Structure of Peer Relations: Assessing Criminological Theories by Social Network Theory
Mattias Smångs


Careers and Mobility

The Social Attachment to Place
Michael S. Dahl, Olav Sorenson

Uncertainty in Early Occupational Aspirations: Role Exploration or Aimlessness?
Jeremy Staff, Angel Harris, Ricardo Sabates, Laine Briddell


Culture

Gender and Cultural Consecration in Popular Music
Vaughn Schmutz, Alison Faupel


Social Forces, December 2010: Volume 89, Issue 2

Social Forces 89(1)

A General Panel Model with Random and Fixed Effects: A Structural Equations Approach
Kenneth A. Bollen, Jennie E. Brand

"You might be a redneck if..." Boundary Work among Rural, Southern Whites
Carla D. Shirley

The Experience of Daily Hassles, Cardiovascular Reactivity and Adolescent Risk Taking and Self-Esteem
Hans Vermeersch, Guy T'Sjoen, Jean-Marc Kaufman, John Vincke, Piet Bracke

A Life Course Perspective on Child Health, Cognition and Occupational Skill Qualifications in Adulthood: Evidence from a British Cohort
Margot I. Jackson

Foreign-born Concentration and Acculturation to Volunteering among Immigrant Youth
Yuying Tong

Whither the Turn?: The Ambiguous Nature of Nonprofits' Commercial Revenue
Curtis Child

Organizational Liminality and Interstitial Creativity: The Fellowship of Power
D. Michael Lindsay

Living Room vs. Concert Hall: Patterns of Music Consumption in Flanders
Henk Roose, Alexander Vander Stichele

The Intergenerational Reproduction of Cultural Capital: A Threefold Perspective
Gerbert Kraaykamp, Koen van Eijck

Marital Patterns and Use of Mother Tongue at Home among Native-Born Asian Americans
Chigon Kim, Pyong Gap Min

English Gain vs. Spanish Loss?: Language Assimilation among Second-Generation Latinos in Young Adulthood
Van C. Tran

Paternal Incarceration and Children's Physically Aggressive Behaviors: Evidence from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study
Christopher Wildeman

Marriage and Suicide among Chinese Rural Young Women
Jie Zhang


Social Forces, September 2010: Volume 89, Issue 1
(Yes, it takes ridiculously long for Social Forces to make issues available online...)

Theoretical Criminology 15(1)

Questions of security: A framework for research
Mariana Valverde

Scholars have noted that we are increasingly being governed in the name of security, in literature that usually treats security as an entity in need of a theory. This article begins by noting that ‘security’ does not need theories, but rather questions that can generate concrete analyses. Three sets of questions are elaborated here. The first concerns the logics of security projects. The second set raises questions of scale and jurisdiction. Finally, governance projects are distinguished by the techniques used. This set of questions about security—which, this article argues, always need to be posed in relation to specific security projects—is a theoretically significant revision of the governmentality literature’s distinction between rationalities and technologies of governance.

‘Trial by media’: Policing, the 24-7 news mediasphere and the ‘politics of outrage’
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin

This article analyses the changing nature of news media—police chief relations. Building on previous research (Greer and McLaughlin, 2010), we use the concepts of ‘inferential structure’ (Lang and Lang, 1955) and ‘hierarchy of credibility’ (Becker, 1967) to examine former Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) Commissioner Sir Ian Blair’s ‘trial by media’. We focus on the collective and overwhelmingly hostile journalistic reaction to Blair’s declaration in 2005 that: (a) the news media are guilty of ‘institutional racism’ in their coverage of murders; and (b) the murders of two 10-year-olds in Soham, 2001, received undue levels of media attention. A sustained period of symbolic media annihilation in the British mainstream press established a dominant ‘inferential structure’ that defined Blair as the ‘gaffe-prone Commissioner’: his position in the ‘hierarchy of credibility’ was shredded, and his Commissionership de-legitimized. The unprecedented resignation of an MPS Commissioner is situated within the wider context of ‘attack journalism’ and the rising news media ‘politics of outrage’.

Politics in Foucault’s later work: A philosophy of truth; or reformism in question
Veronique Voruz

Drawing on Foucault’s late seminars this article contrasts political reformism, favoured in the English-speaking tradition of ‘Foucauldian’ criminology, with Foucault’s own ‘return’ to philosophy. Of late, given the relative failure of ‘histories of the present’ to produce effects of resistance, the very usefulness of a Foucauldian framework for criminologists has been called into question. But in his final work Foucault envisaged a different instrumentality for philosophy as ‘the critical work that thought brings to bear on itself ’. In this perspective, the genealogical method appears more clearly as a mode of resistance to political power, and above all as a modality of the relation of self to self among others explored by Foucault in his last work.

Rape, love and war-personal or political?
Kjersti Ericsson

This article discusses how war rapes and consensual sexual relationships with enemy soldiers are framed and understood, with special emphasis on the consequences for the women involved. It war rapes in Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Balkan war and Danish and Norwegian women’s sexual relationships with German occupant soldiers during the Second World War. I argue that the conception of women’s sexuality as national property is central to understanding the attitudes towards both categories of women. To preserve their dignity, war rape victims may profit from a collective, political discourse. Women having had consensual relationships to enemy soldiers, however, have to extricate themselves from the collective and political discourse and interpret what happened to them as strictly personal.

Old theories and new approaches: Evaluating Freda Adler’s theory of low crime and its implications for criminology
Amy E. Nivette

Many years ago, Freda Adler (1983) sought to explain the full variation of crime rates through the notion of synnomie. Although Adler’s research was incomplete and somewhat flawed, it drew attention to low crime societies as the subject of criminological research. In this article I critically revisit Adler’s ideas in order to encourage a more methodologically rigorous approach to researching low crime societies. The main issues this article addresses are the assumption of ‘low’ crime and the meaning this label entails, the implications of ‘norm cohesion’ and the need for an alternative approach when studying ‘low’ crime. I conclude with implications for criminological research in the hope that this will invite future inquiry into matters that lie outside the traditional criminological gaze.

Theoretical Criminology, February 2011: Volume 15, Issue 1

Crime & Delinquency 57(2)

A Randomized Trial of Probation Case Management for Drug-Involved Women Offenders
Joseph Guydish, Monica Chan, Alan Bostrom, Martha A. Jessup, Thomas B. Davis, and Cheryl Marsh

This article reports findings from a clinical trial of a probation case management (PCM) intervention for drug-involved women offenders. Participants were randomly assigned to PCM (n = 92) or standard probation (n = 91) and followed for 12 months using measures of substance abuse, psychiatric symptoms, social support, and service utilization. Arrest data were collected from administrative data sets. The sample included mostly African American and White women (age M = 34.7, education M = 11.6 years). Cocaine and heroin were the most frequently reported drugs of abuse, 86% reported history of incarceration, and 74% had children. Women assigned to both PCM and standard probation showed clinical improvement change over time on 7 of 10 measured outcomes. However, PCM group changes were no different than those observed for the standard probation group. Higher levels of case management, drug abuse treatment, and probationary supervision may be required to achieve improved outcomes in this population.

Smells Like Teen Spirit: Evaluating a Midwestern Teen Court
Michael Norris, Sarah Twill, and Chigon Kim

Teen courts have grown rapidly in the United States despite little evidence of their effectiveness. A survival analysis of 635 teen court and 186 regular diversion participants showed no significant differences in recidivism, although program completers were half as likely to reoffend as noncompleters. Older offenders survived significantly better than younger ones, and girls better than boys. For the full sample, increasing the number of sanctions resulted in earlier reoffending. This effect disappeared when noncompleters were removed from the analysis, suggesting that increasing sanctions may lead certain teens to drop out and/or reoffend. Implications for policy include screening younger juveniles out of teen courts and reconsidering their panacea status.

Understanding Parole Officers’ Responses to Sanctioning Reform
Benjamin Steiner, Lawrence F. Travis III, and Matthew D. Makarios

There are constant calls for reform in the criminal justice system, but observers have often reported that criminal justice reform is an exceptionally challenging task. As with any organizational change, resistance to new policies, procedures, and practices comes from a variety of sources. The relatively broad discretionary authority vested in line-level personnel often contributes to the difficulty associated with implementing change in criminal justice agencies. There is ample evidence that line staff resistance to organizational reform can undermine the implementation of organizational change. In this study, the authors examine the effects of the state of Ohio’s transition to graduated sanctioning guidelines on parole officers—in particular, how these reforms were perceived by the key actors in the sanctioning process: parole officers. Findings from a statewide survey revealed that officers were generally dissatisfied with the restrictions on their discretion resulting from the reform. Analyses revealed that organizational factors such as officers’ perceptions concerning how the sanctioning policy was implemented and its intended purposes were more influential than individual characteristics in shaping officers’ views concerning the efficacy of the reform.

Juvenile Transfer and Deterrence: Reexamining the Effectiveness of a “Get-Tough” Policy
Kareem L. Jordan and David L. Myers

Although research has examined the effectiveness of juvenile transfer on recidivism, there has been a lack of research done in assessing how well juvenile waiver to adult court meets the criteria necessary for deterrence to occur (i.e., certainty, severity, and swiftness of punishment). The purpose of this study is to assess how well juvenile transfer meets these criteria, using data on 345 youths legislatively waived to adult court in Pennsylvania. The findings indicate that there is greater punishment severity in adult court, but there is no difference in punishment certainty between the two court systems. In addition, court processing occurred more quickly in juvenile court. In other words, only one element of deterrence theory is achieved with juvenile transfer. Implications for subsequent research and policy are discussed.

The Jailing of America’s Homeless: Evaluating the Rabble Management Thesis
Kevin M. Fitzpatrick and Brad Myrstol

The authors of this article test hypotheses derived from Irwin’s rabble management thesis. The analysis uses data from 47,592 interviews conducted with jailed adults in 30 U.S. cities as part of the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program. Clearly, homeless persons are overrepresented among those arrested and booked into local jails. Bivariate analysis support a fundamental assertion of the rabble management thesis: Homeless are jailed not because of their dangerousness but rather their offensiveness. Homeless arrestees are distinct from their domiciled counterparts in terms of sociodemographic characteristics, previous experiences with alcohol and drug treatment, mental health, criminal justice systems, and alcohol and drug use histories. In addition, homeless are less likely than domiciled arrestees to be jailed for felonies and violent crimes but more likely to be charged with maintenance and property crimes. Logistic regression models confirm these differences, even after other factors are controlled. A discussion of the policy implications of these findings follows.

The Effects of Victim-Related Contextual Factors on the Criminal Justice System
Stacy Hoskins Haynes

Despite numerous reforms designed to integrate the needs and concerns of crime victims into the criminal justice system, which include expanding programs for compensation and restitution, providing counseling and other services to victims, and increasing victims’ involvement in the criminal justice process, critics have argued that these reforms have failed to produce any meaningful change. To investigate this claim, the current study examined how community contextual factors (i.e., characteristics of the economic, political, and social contexts) and victim-related contextual factors (i.e., the availability of victim resources, county-level indicators of justice, and victim participation in the criminal justice system) affected sentencing outcomes across the state of Pennsylvania. Analyses using sentencing information from the Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing for the years 1996 to 2006 and contextual information from the U.S. Census, the Uniform Crime Reports, and the Pennsylvania Office of Victims’ Services indicated that the availability of victim resources and county-level indicators of justice increased victim participation and were associated with longer incarcerative sentences.

Crime & Delinquency, March 2011: Volume 57, Issue 2

The Annals of the AAPSS 634

Race, Racial Attitudes, and Stratification Beliefs: Evolving Directions for Research and Policy

Introduction
Matthew O. Hunt and George Wilson

Thinking about Crime: Race and Lay Accounts of Lawbreaking Behavior
Victor R. Thompson and Lawrence D. Bobo

Racial Discrimination, Interpretation, and Legitimation at Work
Ryan Light, Vincent J. Roscigno, and Alexandra Kalev

Race, Religion, and Beliefs about Racial Inequality
Marylee C. Taylor and Stephen M. Merino

Including Oneself and Including Others: Who Belongs in My Country?
Jennifer L. Hochschild and Charles Lang

On the Meaning, Measurement, and Implications of Racial Resentment
Edward G. Carmines, Paul M. Sniderman, and Beth C. Easter

Reexamining Racial Resentment: Conceptualization and Content
David C. Wilson and Darren W. Davis

Whites’ Racial Policy Attitudes in the Twenty-First Century: The Continuing Significance of Racial Resentment
Steven A. Tuch and Michael Hughes

Racial Attitudes in City, Neighborhood, and Situational Contexts
Monica McDermott

“Color Coding” and Support for Social Policy Spending: Assessing the Parameters among Whites
George Wilson and Amie L. Nielsen

The Sweet Enchantment of Color-Blind Racism in Obamerica
Eduardo Bonilla-Silva and David Dietrich

The “Obama Effect” and White Racial Attitudes
Susan Welch and Lee Sigelman


The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, March 2011: Volume 634

Journal of Marriage and Family 73(2)

Families With Young Children

Couples as Partners and Parents Over Children's Early Years
Marcia J. Carlson, Natasha V. Pilkauskas, Sara S. McLanahan and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn

Fathers' Early Emotion Talk: Associations With Income, Ethnicity, and Family Factors
Patricia Garrett-Peters, Roger Mills-Koonce, Stephanie Zerwas, Martha Cox and Lynne Vernon-Feagans, The Family Life Project Key Investigators

Doing the Scut Work of Infant Care: Does Religiousness Encourage Father Involvement?
Alfred DeMaris, Annette Mahoney and Kenneth I. Pargament

Parents and Children in the Adult Years

Long-Term Influences of Intergenerational Ambivalence on Midlife Parents' Psychological Well-being
K. Jill Kiecolt, Rosemary Blieszner and Jyoti Savla

Why Do Families Differ? Children's Care for an Unmarried Mother
John C. Henretta, Beth J. Soldo and Matthew F. Van Voorhis

Patterns of Stepchild–Stepparent Relationship Development
Lawrence H. Ganong, Marilyn Coleman and Tyler Jamison

Family Support

Safety Nets and Scaffolds: Parental Support in the Transition to Adulthood
Teresa Toguchi Swartz, Minzee Kim, Mayumi Uno, Jeylan Mortimer and Kirsten Bengtson O'Brien

Relationship Status and Activated Kin Support: The Role of Need and Norms
Joan Maya Mazelis and Laryssa Mykyta

Social Support, Unfulfilled Expectations, and Affective Well-being on Return to Employment
Christine P. Seiger and Bettina S. Wiese

Of General Interest

Opting Out and Buying Out: Wives' Earnings and Housework Time
Alexandra Killewald

Adolescent Sexuality and the Risk of Marital Dissolution
Anthony Paik

Risk Factors for Clinically Significant Intimate Partner Violence Among Active-Duty Members
Amy M. Smith Slep, Heather M. Foran, Richard E. Heyman and Jeffery D. Snarr, U.S. Air Force Family Advocacy Program

Lesbian, Gay, and Heterosexual Couples in Open Adoption Arrangements: A Qualitative Study
Abbie E. Goldberg, Lori A. Kinkler, Hannah B. Richardson and Jordan B. Downing

Journal of Marriage and Family, April 2011: Volume 73, Issue 2

Social Psychology Quarterly 71(1)

Cooley-Mead Award 2010

Introduction of Peggy A. Thoits: 2010 Recipient of the Cooley-Mead Award
Kathryn J. Lively and Ellen M. Granberg

Resisting the Stigma of Mental Illness
Peggy A. Thoits

The Weight of Stigma

"Now my ‘old self’ is thin": Stigma Exits after Weight Loss
Ellen M. Granberg

Coming Out as Fat: Rethinking Stigma
Abigail C. Saguy and Anna Ward

The Stigma of Obesity: Does Perceived Weight Discrimination Affect Identity and Physical Health?
Markus H. Schafer and Kenneth F. Ferraro

Article

The Norm-Activating Power of Celebrity: The Dynamics of Success and Influence
Siegwart Lindenberg, Janneke F. Joly, and Diederik A. Stapel

Social Psychology Quarterly, March 2011: Volume 71, Issue 1

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48(1)

From the Editor: Special Issue on Crime and Place
Mike Maxfield, George Rengert, Elizabeth Groff, and John Eck

The Relevance of Micro Places to Citywide Robbery Trends: A Longitudinal Analysis of Robbery Incidents at Street Corners and Block Faces in Boston
Anthony A. Braga, David M. Hureau, and Andrew V. Papachristos

Robbery, and the fear it inspires, has a profound effect on the quality of life in certain urban neighborhoods. Recent advances in criminological research suggest that there is significant clustering of crime in micro places, or ‘‘hot spots,’’ that generate a disproportionate amount of criminal events in a city. In this article, the authors use growth curve regression models to uncover distinctive developmental trends in robbery incidents at street segments and intersections in Boston over a 29-year period. The authors find that robberies are highly concentrated at a small number of street segments and intersections rather than spread evenly across the urban landscape over the study time period. Roughly 1 percent and 8 percent of street segments and intersections in Boston are responsible for nearly 50 percent of all commercial robberies and 66 percent of all street robberies, respectively, between 1980 and 2008. Our findings suggest that citywide robbery trends may be best understood by examining micro-level trends at a relatively small number of places in urban environments.

Robberies in Chicago: A Block-Level Analysis of the Influence of Crime Generators, Crime Attractors, and Offender Anchor Points
Wim Bernasco and Richard Block

The effects of crime generators, crime attractors, and offender anchor points on the distribution of street robberies across the nearly 25,000 census blocks of Chicago are examined. The analysis includes a wide array of activities and facilities that are expected to attract criminals and generate crime. These include a variety of legal and illegal businesses and infrastructural accessibility facilitators. In addition to these crime attractors and generators, the role of the presence of motivated offenders’ anchor points, as measured by offenders’ residence and gang activity, is assessed. The analysis also includes crime attractors, crime generators, and offender anchor points in adjacent census blocks. The findings demonstrate the strength of the effects of crime generators and attractors and offender anchor points on the frequency of street robbery at the census block level.

Testing the Stability of Crime Patterns: Implications for Theory and Policy
Martin A. Andresen and Nicolas Malleson

Recent research in the ‘‘crime at places’’ literature is concerned with smaller units of analysis than conventional spatial criminology. An important issue is whether the spatial patterns observed in conventional spatial criminology focused on neighborhoods remain when the analysis shifts to street segments. In this article, the authors use a new spatial point pattern test that identifies the similarity in spatial point patterns. This test is local in nature such that the output can be mapped showing where differences are present. Using this test, the authors investigate the stability of crime patterns moving from census tracts to dissemination areas to street segments. The authors find that general crime patterns are somewhat similar at all spatial scales, but finer scales of analysis reveal significant variations within larger units. This result demonstrates the importance of analyzing crime patterns at small scales and has important implications for further theoretical development and policy implementation.

Exploring Theories of Victimization Using a Mathematical Model of Burglary
Ashley B. Pitcher and Shane D. Johnson

Research concerned with burglary indicates that it is clustered not only at places but also in time. Some homes are victimized repeatedly, and the risk to neighbors of victimized homes is temporarily elevated. The latter type of burglary is referred to as a near repeat. Two theories have been proposed to explain observed patterns. The boost hypothesis states that risk is elevated following an event reflecting offender foraging activity. The flag hypothesis, on the other hand, suggests that time-stable variation in risk provides an explanation where data for populations with different risks are analyzed in the aggregate. To examine this, the authors specify a series of discrete mathematical models of urban residential burglary and examine their outcomes using stochastic agent-based simulations. Results suggest that variation in risk alone cannot explain patterns of exact and near repeats, but that models which also include a boost component show good qualitative agreement with published findings.

Factors Associated with the Guardianship of Places: Assessing the Relative Importance of the Spatio-Physical and Sociodemographic Contexts in Generating Opportunities for Capable Guardianship
Danielle M. Reynald

Routine activity theory can be applied to places in which a motivated offender encounters a suitable target that is not effectively guarded. The focus of this article was on the third aspect of this theory as the explanatory power of guardianship was examined and compared to other related contextual factors in explaining criminal victimization at micro-places. This empirical study used an observational measure of guardianship in action in residential places by observing household occupancy, monitoring by residents, and direct intervention during the daytime and nighttime. The results demonstrated the significant role of active guardianship compared to other spatio-physical and sociodemographic factors in explaining the amount of property crime recorded at the street segment level. This article is concluded by highlighting the ways in which these contextual factors help generate opportunities for capable guardianship, while simultaneously blocking opportunities for property crime.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, February 2011: Volume 48, Issue 1

Justice Quarterly 28(2)

Becoming an Informant
J. Mitchell Miller

Though widely acknowledged as vital to law enforcement, social scientists have largely ignored the practice of confidential informing. The extant literature on the topic is primarily comprised of experientially based practical guides to informant management and a handful of field studies drawing information from informants in the study of other undercover practices. This study features data obtained from in-depth interviews with eighty-four former informants drawn from five southern states identified through a purposive-snowball sampling strategy. Informant accounts suggest that the practice of confidential informing is an institutionalized component of a general narcotics enforcement pattern characterized by duplicity and social control irony. Confidential informant work is observed as a moral career entailing deviant identity maintenance through neutralizations and insider perspective. Narratives confirmed a motivational typology accounting for role assumption and informant-agent dynamics and orient discussion around practice and research implications.

The Geospatial Structure of Terrorist Cells
D. Kim Rossmo; Keith Harries

Counterterrorism investigations commonly suffer from information overload problems that make the identification of relevant patterns difficult. Geographic prioritization models can be useful tools in such situations. We applied the general theories and principles of the environmental criminology perspective, and the specific ideas and concepts developed in geographic profiling, as a basis for understanding the geospatial patterns of terrorist cell behavior in Ankara and Istanbul, Turkey. From a unique access to police investigation files, we collected spatial data on terrorism incidents and terrorist cell sites, mapped these locations, and measured the distances from cell sites to incident sites and the distances between cell sites. The resulting probability distributions provide the basis for the development of a geospatial model for intelligence management.

The Effects of School Crime Prevention on Students' Violent Victimization, Risk Perception, and Fear of Crime: A Multilevel Opportunity Perspective
Marie Skubak Tillyer; Bonnie S. Fisher; Pamela Wilcox

This study examined the effects of school-based crime prevention strategies aimed at reducing criminal opportunity. Results are mixed as to the effectiveness of such efforts in reducing violent victimization among students. Further, few studies have examined the effects net of student-level risk factors. Finally, it is unclear as to whether such measures agitate or placate students' risk perception and fear. Guided by a multilevel opportunity perspective, this study used self-report data from 2,644 seventh-grade students nested within 58 schools to test whether such efforts reduce students' victimization, risk perception, and fear of violence at school. Hierarchical logistic models were estimated to control for individual-level opportunity for victimization. Net of compositional differences, the prevention practices did not significantly reduce the likelihood of experiencing violent victimization or perceptions of risk, and only one measure, metal detectors, significantly reduced fear. Implications for school crime prevention are discussed in light of the findings.

Establishing Connections: Gender, Motor Vehicle Theft, and Disposal Networks
Christopher W. Mullins; Michael G. Cherbonneau

Motor vehicle theft is an offense typically dominated by male offenders. As with all other major forms of criminal activity that are male dominated, women do participate in the theft of vehicles; yet, few studies have endeavored to examine their involvement in auto theft and even fewer have directly compared women's experiences alongside that of men's. This paper examines the gendered nature of motor vehicle theft through direct comparison of in-depth interviews with 35 men and women actively involved in auto theft in St. Louis, Missouri. By tracing similarities and differences between men's and women's initiation into auto theft, enactment methods, and access to networks for vehicle and parts' disposal, we provide a contextual analysis of offender's perceptions and behavior. The findings indicate that while initiation into auto theft and property disposal networks are both governed by male gatekeepers, women experience greater barriers in gaining access to disposal networks than they do entry into auto theft offending which, in turn, leads to some key similarities in techniques between men and women.

Utilizing Criminal History Information to Explore the Effect of Community Notification on Sex Offender Recidivism
Sean Maddan; J. Mitchell Miller; Jeffery T. Walker; Ineke Haen Marshall

While sex offender registration laws with notification provisions are now over a decade old, little is known about how these policies influence the prevention of sex offending. Very few studies have considered the impact of notification on sex offender recidivism or the effect of these laws on sex crimes, generally. This study considers the effectiveness of offender tracking and declaration at the state level through evaluation of current sex offender laws in Arkansas. Using a quasi-experimental regression-discontinuity design, this research evaluated the recidivism of the first three waves of sex offenders registered in the state (1997-1999) vs. a comparison group of sex offenders from a decade earlier (1987-1989). Findings indicate there is no statistically significant difference between the two groups in terms of recidivism. Policy implications are discussed.

Prevalence and Characteristics of Co-Offending Recruiters
Sarah B. van Mastrigt; David P. Farrington

Previous examinations of co-offending have identified a subset of high-rate offenders who commit crimes with a large number of co-offenders, most of whom are younger and less criminally experienced. These so-called “recruiters” are of particular interest to researchers and practitioners, because of their potential role in facilitating offending onset and recidivism among their co-offenders. In this paper, data on 61,646 individuals detected by a large UK police force are used to identify offenders who fitted the recruiter profile, and to compare their individual and offending characteristics with those of non-recruiters. In total, 86 recruiters were identified. In multivariate analyses, recruiters were found to be older than non-recruiters and were typically involved in property crimes. In addition, they tended to offend in criminal groups that were more heterogeneous and stable than non-recruiters. These findings suggest that a small but identifiable group of recruiters can be detected using official data and that these individuals may be important targets for police attention and court treatment.

Risk Terrain Modeling: Brokering Criminological Theory and GIS Methods for Crime Forecasting
Joel M. Caplan; Leslie W. Kennedy; Joel Miller

The research presented here has two key objectives. The first is to apply risk terrain modeling (RTM) to forecast the crime of shootings. The risk terrain maps that were produced from RTM use a range of contextual information relevant to the opportunity structure of shootings to estimate risks of future shootings as they are distributed throughout a geography. The second objective was to test the predictive power of the risk terrain maps over two six-month time periods, and to compare them against the predictive ability of retrospective hot spot maps. Results suggest that risk terrains provide a statistically significant forecast of future shootings across a range of cut points and are substantially more accurate than retrospective hot spot mapping. In addition, risk terrain maps produce information that can be operationalized by police administrators easily and efficiently, such as for directing police patrols to coalesced high-risk areas.

Reentry and the Ties that Bind: An Examination of Social Ties, Employment, and Recidivism
Mark T. Berg; Beth M. Huebner

Scholars consistently find that reentering offenders who obtain steady work and maintain social ties to family are less likely to recidivate. Some theorize that familial ties may operate through employment to influence recidivism and that such ties may also serve a moderating role. The current study employs an integrated conceptual framework in order to test hypotheses about the link between familial ties, post-release employment, and recidivism. The findings suggest that family ties have implications for both recidivism and job attainment. In fact, the results suggest that good quality social ties may be particularly important for men with histories of frequent unemployment. The implications of these findings are discussed with regard to theory and future research on prisoner reentry and recidivism.

Justice Quarterly, April 2011: Volume 28, Issue 2

Theory and Society 40(2)

The re-accomplishment of place in twentieth century Vermont and New Hampshire: history repeats itself, until it doesn’t
Jason Kaufman, Matthew E. Kaliner

Much recent literature plumbs the question of the origins and trajectories of “place,” or the cultural development of space-specific repertoires of action and meaning. This article examines divergence in two “places” that were once quite similar but are now quite far apart, culturally and politically speaking. Vermont, once considered the “most Republican” state in the United States, is now generally considered one of its most politically and culturally liberal. New Hampshire, by contrast, has remained politically and socially quite conservative. Contrasting legacies of tourist promotion, political mobilization, and public policy help explain the divergence between states. We hypothesize that emerging stereotypes about a “place” serve to draw sympathetic residents and visitors to that place, thus reinforcing the salience of those stereotypes and contributing to their reality over time. We term this latter process idio-cultural migration and argue its centrality to ongoing debates about the accomplishment of place. We also elaborate on several means by which such place “reputations” are created, transmitted, and maintained.

Granite and green: thinking beyond surface in place studies
Harvey Molotch

Through their dense range of empirical sortings, Kaufman and Kaliner, in this issue of Theory and Society, are effective in showing mechanisms through which places replicate themselves over time, but also in how their cultural and economic profiles can shift. Their work points to the utility of matched comparisons of historical interaction, both symbolic and material, as tool for understanding trajectories of stability and change.

Reconstructing the authenticity of place
Sharon Zukin

Sociologists tend to over-conceptualize the divergent cultures of adjacent places, both neglecting necessary structural and institutional factors and focusing on symbols more than interests. In the post-industrial era, sense of place reflects geographical mobility, the social construction of landscape, and marketing strategies. Like gentrified neighborhoods and hipster districts in cities, rural regions like Vermont are reborn through the social, cultural, and economic efforts of local entrepreneurs to create a distinctive and authentic sense of place.

Everyday morality in families and a critique of social capital: an investigation into moral judgements, responsibilities, and sentiments in Kyrgyzstani households
Balihar Sanghera, Mehrigiul Ablezova, Aisalkyn Botoeva

This article examines individuals’ lay understandings of moral responsibilities between adult kin members. Moral sentiments and practical judgments are important in shaping kinship responsibilities. The article discusses how judgments on requests of support can be reflexive and critical, taking into account many factors, including merit, social proximity, a history of personal encounters, overlapping commitments, and moral identity in the family. In so doing, we argue that moral responsibilities are contextual and relational. We also analyze how class, gender, and capabilities affect how individuals imagine, expect and discuss care responsibilities. We also offer a critique of social capital theory of families, suggesting that their versions of morality are instrumental, alienated, and restrictive. Although Bourdieu’s concept of habitus overlaps with our proposed moral sentiments approach, the former does not adequately address moral concerns, commitments, and evaluations. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of everyday morality by drawing upon different literatures in sociology, moral philosophy, postcommunism, and development studies.

Does acclamation equal agreement? Rethinking collective effervescence through the case of the presidential “tour de France” during the twentieth century
Nicolas Mariot

This article discusses the integrative function frequently assigned to festive events by scholars. This function can be summed up in a proposition: experiencing similar emotions during collective gatherings is a powerful element of socialization. The article rejects this oft-developed idea according to which popular fervor could be an efficient tool to measure civic engagement. It raises the following question: what makes enthusiasm “civic”, “patriotic”, “republican” or simply “political”? Based on a study of French presidential tours in France from 1888 to 2007, this article casts a different light on the topic. The enthusiasm of the crowds interacting with the successive French presidents is not civic because an inquiry may find “patriotism” into participants’ minds. It can be called civic simply because the forms and meaning of the festive jubilation, which may be summarized into the formula: “if spectators applaud, it means they support,” necessarily preexist its multiple manifestations.

Theory and Society, March 2011: Volume 40, Issue 2

Critical Criminology 19(1)

Qualitative Research and Intersectionality
Adam Trahan

Much of the extant criminological literature on the relationships between race, class, gender, and crime has treated these demographic characteristics as isolated, independent variables. More recent theorizing has called our attention to fact that these constructs are not autonomous. Instead, people’s identity lies at the intersection of race, class, and gender and it is the combination of these constructs that often shapes people’s experiences with the criminal justice system and other social structures. It is well-documented, however, that purely quantitative methodologies are not well suited to studying intersecionality. The findings of qualitative research have lent a greater understanding to the intersection of race, class, gender, and crime. The appropriateness of certain methodological frameworks and the thematic contributions of qualitative research to intersectionality are discussed.

Vandalizing Meaning, Stealing Memory: Artistic, Cultural, and Theoretical Implications of Crime in Galleries and Museums
Avi Brisman

This paper discusses two different types of crime that occur in art museums: the theft of art objects and the vandalism of works of art. This paper explores the extent to which theft may affect our memory of a given work of art (regardless of whether the object is ultimately recovered), as well as our experience of the museum (especially if efforts are subsequently undertaken to improve security, such as with the Munch Museum following the theft of the Scream). With respect to vandalism, this paper considers whether and how such acts subsequently affect the value we place on the assaulted items as cultural icons and the meaning of the paintings as art objects. This paper argues that how we regard such events should be determined not by their criminality, but by the individual’s or individuals’ intent and the effect of the acts on the meaning and memory of the works.

Deciphering the Ambiguous Menace of Sexuality for the Innocence of Childhood
J. C. W. Gooren

This article examines how late modern Western society/culture deals with the utterly despised phenomenon of paedophilia. It will be argued there are ambiguous factors and forces, which are an inherent part of mainstream culture and the wider social fabric, that make an unequivocal stand against sexuality interfering with children somewhat hypocritical. The zealous efforts in battling sexual child molesters as the primordial danger for the innocence of childhood are seen as a strategy for overt redemption. A hidden agenda is detected by recovering complicit support from a diverse range of adjacent sources that defies the genuineness of guarding the sexual innocence of children.

Above the Law? A Comparative Study of National Prosecutions of Heads of State
Napoleon C. Reyes & Jurg Gerber

Official polices on the appropriate government response to crimes committed by a head of state are seldom dictated by strict principles of justice. Deciding whether to bring an errant leader to justice is often influenced by political expediency. Given the number of documented cases of official abuse, there is a need to understand why some governments choose to prosecute a former or sitting head of state while others do not. Yet, few studies have been done on this subject. This study reviews 52 cases of heads of state accused of crimes and explores how their own national governments responded to such accusations. Using data culled from various documentary sources, it employs a grounded theory approach to focus on the process that drives the decision to prosecute. Analysis indicates that political legitimacy, perception of threat, political stability, and degree of politicization of the military influence the decision to prosecute. The article concludes with a discussion of the significance and implications of these findings and suggestions for future research.

Embracing Emotionality: Clothing My “Naked Truths”
Felice Yuen

There is increasing awareness and recognition that researchers’ emotions will contribute to a richer and deeper understanding of what they are studying. Researchers’ emotions as analytic tools are particularly relevant when working with marginalized or oppressed groups because of the emotional aspect generally associated with human suffering. This paper discusses how adopting a reflexive practice can help researchers embrace and use their emotions as a part of the research process, enabling a more humanistic approach to studying crime and those whose marginalization and oppression are intricately tied to their crime. More specifically, this paper examines my own experiences of doing research with Aboriginal female offenders in a federal prison. I problematize the process of embracing emotionality by reflecting on the paralysis that evolved in my research with these women as I experienced an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness. I contend that social science in the academic arena, not unlike many other institutions in society, has adopted a method of surveillance thereby instilling a sense of fear and judgment upon those working in academic arenas. After describing my reflexive process throughout this emotional paralysis, I describe my discovery of safe spaces as a way of dealing with my emotions and how engaging in creative analytic practice enabled me to clothe my nakedness and vulnerability as I represented, and ultimately re-created my self in the research process. As part of that evolution, embracing emotionality ultimately enabled me to engage in knowledge building as well as advocacy with and for Aboriginal women in prison.

Critical Criminology, March 2011: Volume 19, Issue 1