Journal of Criminal Justice 39(3)

Addiction and the Criminal Justice System 

Addiction and criminal justice: Empirical findings and theory for advancing public safety and health  
Michael Vaughn

Multivariate comparison of male and female adolescent substance abusers with accompanying legal problems
Ralph E. Tarter, Levent Kirisci, Ada Mezzich, David Patton

Adolescent girls who have substance abuse and legal problems have more pervasive disturbances than boys. Peer relationships in boys but not girls mediate the association between family disturbance and substance abuse. Derived table of standardized scores reveal that overall severity of problems in substance abusing girls with or without legal problems is about 10% more severe than boys.

Characteristics of abstainers from substance use and antisocial behavior in the United States
Michael G. Vaughn, Qiang Fu, Stephen J. Wernet, Matt DeLisi, Kevin M. Beaver, Brian E. Perron, Matthew O. Howard

The prevalence of abstaining in the U.S. was 11 percent.  Abstainers were significantly more likely to be female, Asian, African-American, and employed.  Abstainers were also significantly less likely to evidence lifetime mood, anxiety, or personality disorder compared to non-abstainers.  Abstainers were also less likely to be diagnosed with a mental health disorder than non-abstainers.

Marijuana but not alcohol use during adolescence mediates the association between transmissible risk for substance use disorder and number of lifetime violent offenses
Maureen D. Reynolds, Ralph E. Tarter, Levent Kirisci, Duncan B. Clark

A measure of SUD risk at age 10–12 predicted violence committed by early adulthood. > The TLI is a significant predictor of violent offending in both genders. Increase in marijuana use over the teen years contributes to violent acts by age 22. Alcohol use in teen years does not contribute to violent acts by age 22.

An empirical portrait of youthful offenders who sell drugs
Jeffrey J. Shook, Michael Vaughn, Sara Goodkind, Heath Johnson

Approximately 70% of youthful offenders in the sample sold drugs or were involved in drug selling.  Sixty-four percent who reported selling drugs did so daily and 54% sold drugs for more than one year.  Nearly 69% of the youthful offenders who sold drugs kept more than half of what they purchased.  Youthful offenders who sold drugs were more likely to use substances than those who did not.  Youthful offenders who reported selling prescription drugs reported the highest rate of substance use.

Examining the relationship among substance abuse, negative emotionality and impulsivity across subtypes of antisocial and psychopathic substance abusers
Melissa S. Magyar, John F. Edens, Scott O. Lilienfeld, Kevin S. Douglas, Norman G. Poythress Jr.

Secondary psychopathy is more strongly related to substance problems than primary psychopathy.  The relationship between substance use and negative emotions is stronger among non-psychopaths.  The etiology of substance abuse may differ for psychopathic versus nonpsychopathic offenders.

Predictors of suicidal ideation, suicide attempts, and self-harm without lethal intent in a community corrections sample
Tracy D. Gunter, John T. Chibnall, Sandra K. Antoniak, Robert A. Philibert, Nancy Hollenbeck

Community offenders have high frequencies of suicidal ideas and self-harm.  Traumatic experience and fractures predicted suicidal ideas and self-harm.  Drug dependence predicted suicidal ideation.  Panic predicted self-harm without lethal intent.  Total PCL:SV score predicted self-harm, Factor 2 score predicted suicidal ideation.

Substance abuse treatment for juvenile offenders: A review of quasi-experimental and experimental research
Stephen J. Tripodi, Kimberly Bender

Quantitative analysis to review literature on alcohol and marijuana reduction interventions for adolescents.  Analyzed five studies with alcohol use outcomes and five studies with marijuana use outcomes.  Found that substance abuse interventions appear to have a small to moderate effect on alcohol and marijuana reduction for substance abusing juvenile offenders.

Targeting dispositions for drug-involved offenders: A field trial of the Risk and Needs Triage (RANT)™
Douglas B. Marlowe, David S. Festinger, Karen L. Dugosh, Anne Caron, Marcy R. Podkopacz, Nicolle T. Clements

The RANT™ predicted recidivism for felony drug and property offenders.  Criminogenic risk and need constituted independent and coherent factors.  Trends favored better outcomes for offenders who received suitable dispositions.

Decide your time: Testing deterrence theory's certainty and celerity effects on substance-using probationers
Daniel O'Connell, Christy A. Visher, Steven Martin, Laurin Parker, John Brent

Describes Delaware's Decide Your Time (DYT) program.  Theoretically built program based on certainty of punishment and graduated sanctions.  Identifies complications initiating and implementing such a program like DYT.  Need for programs to consider execution logistics and local legal structures.

Pathways through drugs and crime: Desistance, trauma and resilience
Richard Hammersley

There are pathways through drugs and crime other than experimentation or drug dependence.  Neglected pathways include intense substance use and offending which remits untreated.  As adolescents age into adulthood they tend to reduce offending and increase substance use.  Intense use is widely confused with dependence, which perpetuates ineffective and inappropriate interventions.  Psychological trauma may trigger intense use and persistent or repeated trauma may cause drug dependence.

Civil asset forfeiture, equitable sharing, and policing for profit in the United States
Jefferson E. Holcomb, Tomislav V. Kovandzic, Marian R. Williams

Crime-minimizing drug policy
Mark A.R. Kleiman, Lowry Heussler

Smarter drug policies could reduce non-drug crime.

Journal of Criminal Justice, May 2011: Volume 39, Issue 3

Crime & Delinquency 57(4)

Public Opinion Regarding Juvenile Life Without Parole in Consecutive Statewide Surveys
Sheryl Pimlott Kubiak and Terrence Allen

Abolition of the death penalty results in life without parole (LWOP) as the most severe sanction for convicted juveniles. Although internationally the use of LWOP for juveniles is rare, 2,225 youth have been sentenced to LWOP within the United States. To address the dearth of public opinion on the issue, the authors proposed questions to the survey administrators who then selected them for inclusion in two annual statewide surveys. They found that support for LWOP diminishes considerably when respondents are given a more complex array of sentencing options rather than a dichotomous choice to agree or disagree with the current policy. Those supporting LWOP are more likely to be younger, male, and White. These findings support the need for more nuanced and complex discussions and polling language, as well as policy alternatives.

“Deterrability” Among Gang and Nongang Juvenile Offenders: Are Gang Members More (or Less) Deterrable Than Other Juvenile Offenders?
Cheryl L. Maxson, Kristy N. Matsuda, and Karen Hennigan

This study investigates the effect of the threat of legal sanctions on intentions to commit three types of offenses with a representative sample of 744 officially adjudicated youth with varying histories of offenses and gang involvement. In a departure from previous research, the authors find small severity effects for property crimes that are not negated by past offending experience, morality, or anticipated loss of respect from adults or peers. Gang members appear to be vulnerable to the effects of certainty of punishment for vehicle theft. These results challenge the current crime policy of increased reliance on punishment to deter gang crime but suggest that increasing gang members’ certainty of apprehension might hold some promise for reduction of some gang crime.

Exploring Sources of Punitiveness Among German Citizens
Joshua C. Cochran and Alex R. Piquero

Prior research examining punitive attitudes has typically focused on the United States and citizens’ support for the death penalty or American “get tough” criminal policies. Yet, little is known as to how punitive attitudes and their sources vary internationally. Using Germany as a case study, this article expands the scope of punitiveness research by examining how factors typically examined in American studies, such as cynicism, institutional trust, law and order culture, and antiminority attitudes, relate to citizen beliefs about punishment in a different cultural context. Findings suggest that distrust of the judicial system, political prioritization of law and order, and antiminority attitudes predict citizens’ support for severe punishment as an effective crime-reduction technique. Implications and directions for future research are highlighted.

The Impact of Information on Death Penalty Support, Revisited
Eric G. Lambert, Scott D. Camp, Alan Clarke, and Shanhe Jiang

In 1972, former Supreme Court Justice Marshall postulated that the public was uninformed about the death penalty and information would change their support for it. There is some indication that information about the death penalty may change people’s level of support. This study re-examines data used by Lambert and Clarke (2001). Using multivariate analyses, the impact that information has on death penalty support is tested, along with level of prior knowledge about the death penalty, personal characteristics (gender, age, political affiliation, race, being a criminal justice major, academic level), and religious factors. The results suggest that information on both deterrence and innocence leads to a reduction in death penalty support and views on the death penalty. Furthermore, the results suggest that the information presented may have varying effects among different subgroups of people.

Criminality Among Rural Stimulant Users in the United States
Carrie Oser, Carl Leukefeld, Michele Staton-Tindall, Jamieson Duvall, Thomas Garrity, William Stoops, Russel Falck, Jichuan Wang, Robert Carlson, Rocky Sexton, Patricia Wright, and Brenda Booth

Despite the increase in media attention on “meth cooking” in rural areas of the United States, little is known about rural stimulant use—particularly, the criminality associated with stimulant use. Data were collected from community stimulant users in rural Ohio, Arkansas, and Kentucky (N = 709). Findings from three logistic regression models indicate that younger stimulant users (M = 32.55, SD = 10.35), those with more convictions, and those who used crack frequently were significantly more likely to have been arrested for committing a substance-related crime, a property crime, or another crime in the 6 months before entering the study. Implications include the need for longitudinal studies to further understand rural stimulant use, as well as increased community and corrections-based drug abuse prevention and treatment interventions for stimulant users who live in rural areas.

The Impact of School Environment and Grade Level on Student Delinquency: A Multilevel Modeling Approach
Celia C. Lo, Young S. Kim, Thomas M. Allen, Andrea N. Allen, P. Allison Minugh, and Nicoletta Lomuto

Effects on delinquency made by grade level, school type (based on grade levels accommodated), and prosocial school climate were assessed, controlling for individual-level risk and protective factors. Data were obtained from the Substance Abuse Services Division of Alabama’s state mental health agency and analyzed via hierarchical linear modeling, yielding three major findings. First, grade level’s effects on delinquency varied strongly by school type, although in the multivariate context the interaction effects of grade level and school type were not significant. Second, prosocial school climate significantly explained differential delinquency rates. Third, the requirement that students change schools upon reaching a certain grade level does, as the literature notes, appear to lead to a poor environmental fit for students’ developmental needs.

Crime & Delinquency, July 2011: Volume 57, Issue 4

American Sociological Review 76(3)

Laws of Attraction: Regulatory Arbitrage in the Face of Activism in Right-to-Work States
Hayagreeva Rao, Lori Qingyuan Yue, and Paul Ingram

Past research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators. We extend this account by including a firm’s non-market rivals and suggest that firms view regulatory differences as part of a corporate political opportunity structure and exploit regulatory variations to disadvantage their rivals. Empirically, we focus on variations in right-to-work (RTW) laws that signal the pro-business climate in a state; these laws exist in 22 U.S. states. Using a spatial-regression discontinuity design, we analyze how Walmart locates new stores in the face of anti-Walmart activists and exploits regulatory discontinuities on the borders between RTW and non-RTW states. We find that Walmart is more likely to propose new stores, and to open those stores even if they are protested, at the borders of RTW states, compared with the borders of neighboring non-RTW states. We conclude with a discussion of implications for the study of regulation, social movements, and organizations.

You Can’t Always Get What You Need: Organizational Determinants of Diversity Programs
Frank Dobbin, Soohan Kim, and Alexandra Kalev

While some U.S. corporations have adopted a host of diversity management programs, many have done little or nothing. We explore the forces promoting six diversity programs in a national sample of 816 firms over 23 years. Institutional theory suggests that external pressure for innovation reinforces internal advocacy. We argue that external pressure and internal advocacy serve as alternatives, such that when external pressure is already high, increases in internal advocacy will not alter the likelihood of program adoption. Moreover, institutional theory points to functional need as a driver of innovation. We argue that in the case of innovations designed to achieve new societal goals, functional need, as defined in this case by the absence of workforce diversity or the presence of regulatory oversight, is less important than corporate culture. Our findings help explain the spotty coverage of diversity programs. Firms that lack workforce diversity are no more likely than others to adopt programs, but firms with large contingents of women managers are more likely to do so. Pro-diversity industry and corporate cultures promote diversity programs. The findings carry implications for public policy.

Targeting Lynch Victims: Social Marginality or Status Transgressions?
Amy Kate Bailey, Stewart E. Tolnay, E. M. Beck, and Jennifer D. Laird

This article presents the first evidence based on a newly-compiled database of known lynch victims. Using information from the original census enumerators’ manuscripts, we identify individual- and household-level characteristics of more than 900 black males lynched in 10 southern states between 1882 and 1929. First, we use the information for successfully linked cases to present a profile of individual- and household-level characteristics of a large sample of lynch victims. Second, we compare these characteristics with a randomly-generated sample of black men living in the counties where lynchings occurred. We use our findings from this comparative analysis to assess the empirical support for alternative theoretical perspectives on the selection of individuals as victims of southern mob violence. Third, we consider whether the individual-level risk factors for being targeted as a lynch victim varied substantially over time or across space. Our results demonstrate that victims were generally less embedded within the social and economic fabric of their communities than were other black men. This suggests that social marginality increased the likelihood of being targeted for lynching. These findings are generally consistent across decades and within different sociodemographic contexts.

Money, Moral Authority, and the Politics of Creditworthiness
Simone Polillo

This article moves beyond current controversies on the nature of money by suggesting that a general social process allows different kinds of organizations and networks—from states to banks to local communities—to produce currencies: that is, the articulation of criteria of creditworthiness, or what I call the exercise of moral authority. Bankers specialize in moral authority, but when that authority is contested, challenging groups must articulate alternative criteria of creditworthiness for their currencies to become stable and acceptable. I illustrate these processes with historical material from the postbellum United States, which I use to discuss why the federal government failed to create a stable financial system, and why local bankers engaged in a process of financial innovation that further destabilized money. I conclude with reflections on the shifting structural sources of moral authority, which have made the local level a springboard for destabilizing financial innovations.

Nonmarital Childbearing, Union History, and Women’s Health at Midlife
Kristi Williams, Sharon Sassler, Adrianne Frech, Fenaba Addo, and Elizabeth Cooksey

Despite high rates of nonmarital childbearing in the United States, little is known about the health of women who have nonmarital births. We use data from the NLSY79 to examine differences in age 40 self-assessed health between women who had a premarital birth and those whose first birth occurred within marriage. We then differentiate women with a premarital first birth according to their subsequent union histories and estimate the effect of marrying or cohabiting versus remaining never-married on midlife self-assessed health. We pay particular attention to the paternity status of a mother’s partner and the stability of marital unions. To partially address selection bias, we employ multivariate propensity score techniques. Results suggest that premarital childbearing is negatively associated with midlife health for white and black women, but not for Hispanic women. We find no evidence that the negative health consequences of nonmarital childbearing are mitigated by either marriage or cohabitation for black women. For other women, only enduring marriage to the child’s biological father is associated with better health than remaining unpartnered.

Consequences of Parental Divorce for Child Development
Hyun Sik Kim

In this article, I propose a three-stage estimation model to examine the effect of parental divorce on the development of children’s cognitive skills and noncognitive traits. Using a framework that includes pre-, in-, and post-divorce time periods, I disentangle the complex factors affecting children of divorce. I use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class 1998 to 1999 (ECLS-K), a multiwave longitudinal dataset, to assess the three-stage model. To evaluate the parameters of interest more rigorously, I employ a stage-specific ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a counterfactual matching estimator, and a piece-wise growth curve model. Within some combinations of developmental domains and stages, in particular from the in-divorce stage onward, I find negative effects of divorce even after accounting for selection factors that influence children’s skills and traits at or before the beginning of the dissolution process. These negative outcomes do not appear to intensify or abate in the ensuing study period.

American Sociological Review, June 2011: Volume 76, Issue 3

Criminology 49(2)

Beyond Adolescence-Limited Criminology: Choosing Our Future—The American Society Of Criminology 2010 Sutherland Address
Francis T. Cullen

For over a half century, criminology has been dominated by a paradigm—adolescence-limited criminology (ALC)—that has privileged the use of self-report surveys of adolescents to test sociological theories of criminal behavior and has embraced the view that “nothing works” to control crime. Although ALC has created knowledge, opposed injustice, and advanced scholars’ careers, it has outlived its utility. The time has come for criminologists to choose a different future. Thus, a new paradigm is needed that is rooted in life-course criminology, brings criminologists closer to offenders and to the crime event, prioritizes the organization of knowledge, and produces scientific knowledge that is capable of improving offenders’ lives and reducing crime.

Do Neighborhoods Generate Fear Of Crime? An Empirical Test Using The British Crime Survey
Ian Brunton-Smith And Patrick Sturgis

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual-level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between-group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.

Supervision Regimes, Risk, And Official Reactions To Parolee Deviance
Ryken Grattet, Jeffrey Lin And Joan Petersilia

Parolee deviance has emerged as a central issue in policy debates about crime and punishment in American society as well as in scholarship on “mass incarceration.” Although the prevailing approach to studying parolees conceives of parole violations as outcomes of individual propensities toward criminal behavior (i.e., criminogenic risk), we consider how indicators of individual risk and characteristics of formal social control systems combine to account for reported parole violations. Using data on California parolees, we examine the effects of parolees’ personal characteristics, their criminal histories, and the social organization of supervision on parole violations. We advance the notion of a “supervision regime”—a legal and organizational structure that shapes the detection and reporting of parolee deviance. Three components of a supervision regime are explored: 1) the intensity of supervision, 2) the capacity of the regime to detect parolee deviance, and 3) the tolerance of parole officials for parolee deviance. We find that personal characteristics and offense histories are predictive of parole violations. However, we also find that introducing supervision factors reduces the effects of offense history variables on violation risk, suggesting that the violation risks of serious, violent, and sexual offenders are partially explainable through the heightened supervision to which they are subject. In addition, we find that supervision intensity and tolerance are generally predictive of violation risk. Capacity effects are present but weak. We conclude with a discussion of how the supervision regimes concept illuminates the gap between macro- and micro-analyses of social control.

Ethnic Threat And Social Control: Examining Public Support For Judicial Use Of Ethnicity In Punishment
Brian D. Johnson, Eric A. Stewart, Justin Pickett And Marc Gertz

Research on social inequality in punishment has focused for a long time on the complex relationship among race, ethnicity, and criminal sentencing, with a particular interest in the theoretical importance that group threat plays in the exercise of social control in society. Prior research typically relies on aggregate measures of group threat and focuses on racial rather than on ethnic group composition. The current study uses data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents to investigate the influence of more proximate and diverse measures of ethnic group threat, examining public support for the judicial use of ethnic considerations in sentencing. Findings indicate that both aggregate and perceptual measures of threat influence popular support for ethnic disparity in punishment and that individual perceptions of criminal and economic threat are particularly important. Moreover, we find that perceived threat is conditioned by aggregate group threat contexts. Findings are discussed in relation to the growing Hispanic population in the rapidly changing demographic structure of U.S. society.

Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, And The Ecology Of Arrest
David S. Kirk And Mauri Matsuda

Ethnographic evidence reveals that many crimes in poor minority neighborhoods evade criminal justice sanctioning, thus leading to a negative association between the proportion of minority residents in a neighborhood and the arrest rate. To explain this finding, we extend recent theoretical explications of the concept of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural orientation in which the law and the agents of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. Crime might flourish in neighborhoods characterized by legal cynicism because individuals who view the law as illegitimate are less likely to comply with it; yet because of legal cynicism, these crimes might go unreported and therefore unsanctioned. This study draws on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to test the importance of legal cynicism for understanding geographic variation in the probability of arrest. We find that, in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of legal cynicism, crimes are much less likely to lead to an arrest than in neighborhoods where citizens view the police more favorably. Findings also reveal that residents of highly cynical neighborhoods are less likely to engage in collective efficacy and that collective efficacy mediates the association between legal cynicism and the probability of arrest.

Effect Of Suspect Race On Officers’ Arrest Decisions
Tammy Rinehart Kochel, David B. Wilson And Stephen D. Mastrofski

Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social-science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta-analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential sources, we analyze the results based on 27 independent data sets that generated 40 research reports (both published and unpublished) that permitted an estimate of the effect size of the suspect's race on the probability of arrest. The meta-analysis shows with strong consistency that minority suspects are more likely to be arrested than White suspects. Depending on the method of estimation, the effect size of race varied between 1.32 and 1.52. Converting the race effect size to probabilities shows that compared with the average probability in these studies of a White being arrested (.20), the average probability for a non-White was calculated at .26. The significant race effect persists when taking into account the studies’ variations in research methods and the nature of explanatory models used in the studies. Implications for future research are presented.

Gang Membership As A Turning Point In The Life Course
Chris Melde And Finn-Aage Esbensen

Gang-involved youth are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior, especially violence. The processes accounting for this enhanced illegal activity, however, remain speculative. Employing a life-course perspective, we propose that gang membership can be conceptualized as a turning point in the lives of youth and is thus associated with changes in emotions, attitudes, and routine activities, which, in turn, increase illegal activity. Using prospective data from a multisite sample of more than 1,400 youth, the findings suggest that the onset of gang membership is associated with a substantial change in emotions, attitudes, and social controls conducive to delinquency and partially mediate the impact of gang membership on delinquent activity. Desistance from gangs, however, was not associated with similar systematic changes in these constructs, including delinquent involvement.

Learning To Be Bad: Adverse Social Conditions, Social Schemas, And Crime
Ronald L. Simons And Callie Harbin Burt

In this article, we develop and test a new approach to explain the link between social factors and individual offending. We argue that seemingly disparate family, peer, and community conditions lead to crime because the lessons communicated by these events are similar and promote social schemas involving a hostile view of people and relationships, a preference for immediate rewards, and a cynical view of conventional norms. Furthermore, we posit that these three schemas are interconnected and combine to form a criminogenic knowledge structure that results in situational interpretations legitimating criminal behavior. Structural equation modeling with a sample of roughly 700 African American teens provided strong support for the model. The findings indicated that persistent exposure to adverse conditions such as community crime, discrimination, harsh parenting, deviant peers, and low neighborhood collective efficacy increased commitment to the three social schemas. The three schemas were highly intercorrelated and combined to form a latent construct that strongly predicted increases in crime. Furthermore, in large measure, the effect of the various adverse conditions on increases in crime was indirect through their impact on this latent construct. We discuss the extent to which the social-schematic model presented in this article might be used to integrate concepts and findings from several major theories of criminal behavior.

Assessing And Explaining Misperceptions Of Peer Delinquency
Jacob T. N. Young, J. C. Barnes, Ryan C. Meldrum And Frank M. Weerman

Peer delinquency is a robust correlate of delinquent and criminal behavior. However, debate continues to surround the proper measurement of peer delinquency. Recent research suggests that some respondents are likely to misrepresent their peers’ involvement in delinquency when asked in survey questionnaires, drawing into question the traditional (i.e., perceptual) measurement of peer delinquency. Research also has shown that direct measures of peer delinquency (e.g., measures obtained via networking methods such as Add Health), as compared with perceptual measures, differentially correlate with key theoretical variables (e.g., respondent delinquency and respondent self-control), raising the question of whether misperception of peer delinquency is systematic and can be predicted. Almost no research, however, has focused on this issue. This study, therefore, provides detailed information on respondents’ misperceptions of peer behavior and investigates whether individual characteristics, the amount of time spent with peers, and peer network properties predict these misperceptions. Findings indicated that 1) some individuals—to varying degrees—misperceived the delinquent behavior of their peers; 2) self-control and self-reported delinquency predicted misperception; 3) respondents occupying densely populated peer networks were less likely to misperceive their peers’ delinquent involvement; and 4) peers who occupy networks in which individuals spend a lot of time together were more likely to misperceive peer delinquency. Implications are discussed.

Criminology, May 2011: Volume 49, Issue 2

Critical Criminology 19(2)

Restorative Justice and “Empowerment”: Producing and Governing Active Subjects through “Empowering” Practices
Kelly Richards

During the last quarter-century, restorative justice has emerged as a widely-utilised response to crime in Western nations. This article, which stems from a Foucauldian genealogy of restorative justice, argues that its embeddedness within the discourse of “empowerment” renders restorative justice a politically acceptable response to crime. “Empowerment”, it is argued, is one of many conditions of emergence of restorative justice. The discourse of “empowerment” underpins restorative justice in tangible ways, and has informed legislation and policy in Western jurisdictions. This article seeks to problematise the taken-for-granted nature of this discourse. It argues that the discourse of “empowerment” produces restorative justice subjects who are increasingly governed and governable. As “empowering” restorative practices are targeted towards “disempowered” individuals and communities, concerns are raised about the potential of restorative justice to disproportionately impact upon socially marginalised populations and to increase social exclusion.

The Death Penalty: An Unusual Punishment America is Inflicting Upon Itself
Stephanie Boys

The United States is the only Western, industrialized nation still executing criminal offenders. The Constitutional provision that is most often used to call the appropriateness of capital punishment in the United States into question is the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Opponents of capital punishment have often argued various reasons why the death penalty is a cruel punishment, but the Supreme Court of the United States has not agreed. A new approach to abolition advocacy is needed. Since the death penalty has not been determined cruel, I submit a new legal argument based on the unusual nature of capital punishment. Utilizing systems theory, I posit the death penalty is an unusual criminal punishment due to the extraordinary range of persons beyond merely the defendant who are negatively impacted by executions.

Demythelogizing Personal Loyalty to Superiors
Sam S. Souryal

This article examines the practice of personal loyalty to superiors, in general, and in criminal justice agencies, in particular. While practitioners are taught that their primarily loyalty is to the United States Constitution, State laws, departmental rules and regulations, they are organizationally taught that personal loyalty to superiors is paramount if they wanted their career to continue and prosper. As a result many practitioners are rightfully confused (even exhibiting paranoia) over who or what to be primarily loyal to, and at what price or risk. This unwarranted fear has been behind numerous acts of malfeasance and misfeasance; it can lower the workers’ morale, confuses the practitioners, and destabilizes the agency’s equilibrium. This article examines three types of workplace loyalties, and suggests, as an attempt toward reform, the use of a more sensible duty-based paradigm. Such a paradigm can be based on four practical propositions: (1) seriously examining why personal loyalty to superiors is deemed essential, if at all, especially since it is never mentioned in the agency’s rules and regulations; (2) taking the fear out of the language of “loyalty-disloyalty” by perhaps replacing the term with more benign and rather measurable terms such as “performance and collaboration;” (3) strengthening dutiful supervision; and (4) maximizing professional accountability.

Family Leave and Law Enforcement: A Survey of Parents in U.S. Police Departments
Corina Schulze

The women of United States police departments challenge traditional gender role expectations by exhibiting equal competence in a job with a masculine identity. Women also modify police culture in a myriad of ways, one of which is through the special work-related needs that accompany motherhood. Results from a survey of police officers suggest that gendered perceptions regarding work and family persist indicating that a value shift within police departments has occurred. Findings derived from qualitative responses suggest that women’s entry in policing, along with shifting societal attitudes about work and family, could transform the institution’s “hegemonic masculinity,” an enduring characteristic of many police departments.

High Policing Theory and the Question of ‘What is to be Done?’
Warwick Tie

Within the field of high policing theory it has become increasingly difficult to pose the question of ‘What is to be done?’ in ways that do not result in a pragmatic accommodation of existing political arrangements. This essay proposes a way of reanimating the normative impulse of earlier high policing theory such that this outcome is exceeded. It does so by drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s distinction between representation and representation in motion, such that the emergent state of normativity takes the form of normativity as a representation of itself in motion. This form of normativity draws upon the performative character of the power that is particular to the practices associated with high policing. The proposition is illustrated with normative responses made to instances of political policing within the New Zealand context.

Critical Criminology, May 2011: Volume 19, Issue 2

Law & Society Review 45(2)

Exploring the Limits of the Judicialization of Urban Land Disputes in Vietnam
John Gillespie

Economic and legal reforms have triggered waves of conflict over property rights and access to urban land in Vietnam. In this article I develop four epistemic case studies to explore the main precepts and practices that courts must negotiate to extend their authority over land disputes. Courts face a dilemma: Do they apply state laws that disregard community regulatory practices and risk losing social relevance, or apply community notions of situational justice that undermine rule formalism? I conclude that reforms designed to increase rule formalism in the courts may have the unintended consequence of reducing the capacity for judges to find lasting solutions to land disputes.

Seeing Like a City: The Dialectic of Modern and Premodern Ways of Seeing in Urban Governance
Mariana Valverde

Studies of urban governance, as well as the overlapping literature on law and space, have been heavily influenced by critical analyses of how spatial techniques helped constitute modern disciplinary powers and knowledges. The rise of land-use control and land-use planning seem at first sight to be perfect examples of the disciplining of populations through space by the kind of governmental gaze dubbed by Scott (1998) as “seeing like a state.” But a detailed genealogical study that puts the emergence of the notion of “land use” in the broader context of urban governance technologies reveals that modernist techniques of land use planning, such as North American zoning, are more flexible, contradictory, and fragile than critical urbanists assume. Legal tools of premodern origin that target nonquantifiable offensiveness and thus construct an embodied and relational form of urban subjectivity keep reappearing in the present day. When cities attempt to govern conflicts about the use of space through objective rules, these rules often undermine themselves in a dialectical process that results in the return to older notions of offensiveness. This article argues that the dialectical process by which modernist “seeing like a state” techniques give way to older ways of seeing (e.g., the logic of nuisance) plays a central role in the epistemologically hybrid approach to governing space that is here called “seeing like a city.”

Socially Responsible Private Regulation: World-Culture or World-Capitalism?
Ronen Shamir

This article analyzes the phenomenon of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR; specifically: social private regulation) in light of two sociological paradigms of globalization: “world-culture” and “world-capitalism.” The study treats three analytically distinct features of CSR: the political contestation over its meaning, the role of business studies in transforming it into a managerial model, and its consolidation as a market of authorities. The study finds that (1) while CSR may be theorized as a emergent “world cultural” model, the culture paradigm does not take sufficient account of the role of corporations in shaping it, and (2) while both paradigms recognize the transition from political contestations over the character of CSR to its deployment by means of private regulation, the world-capitalism paradigm offers stronger tools for theorizing the mechanisms of change that mediate between political agency and institutionalized regulatory outcomes.

Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants
Leisy J. Abrego

This article examines the legal consciousness and incorporation experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Although this population may be disaggregated along several axes, one central distinction among them is their age at migration. Those who migrated as adults live out their daily lives in different social contexts than those who migrated as children. Therefore, although all undocumented immigrants are legally banned, their identities, sense of belonging, and interpretation of their status vary. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of Latino undocumented immigrants from 2001 to 2010, I examine how illegality is experienced differently by social position. The findings suggest that the role of life-stage at migration and work-versus-school contexts importantly inform immigrants' legal consciousness. Fear predominates in the legal consciousness of first-generation undocumented immigrants, while the legal consciousness of the 1.5 generation is more heavily infused with stigma. Fear and stigma are both barriers to claims-making, but they may affect undocumented immigrants' potential for collective mobilization in different ways.

Short-Term Effects of Sanctioning Reform on Parole Officers' Revocation Decisions
Benjamin Steiner, Lawrence F. Travis III, Matthew D. Makarios and Benjamin Meade

Parole officials have traditionally been afforded considerable discretion when making sanctioning decisions to be able to tailor sanctions according to substantively rational concerns such as individuals' unique needs and situations. However, the application of substantive rationality in sanctioning can also generate unwanted disparities because sanctioning decisions may be based on extralegal factors that parole officials consider relevant. Concerns regarding disparate treatment of offender groups have prompted a number of states to consider adopting administrative violation response policies that emphasize formal rationality and uniformity by restricting parole officers' discretion and structuring sanctioning decisions according to legally relevant criteria. By emphasizing formal rationality in sanctioning, structured sanction policies present a dilemma for parole officers—uniformity versus individualized treatment. In 2005, the state of Ohio implemented an administrative violation response policy designed to reduce parole officers' reliance on revocation hearings and promote uniformity in sanctioning decisions. This study involved an examination of whether Ohio's shift to structured sanctioning coincided with differences in legal and extralegal effects on parole officers' decisions to pursue revocation hearings. Analyses of data collected before and after the implementation of the policy revealed a reduction in the number of revocation hearings officers pursued. Only modest increases in uniformity were observed, however, because there was little disparity resulting from officers' hearing decisions before the policy was put in place. These findings are discussed within perspectives on justice system actors' decision making.

Does the Controversy Matter? Comparing the Causal Determinants of the Adoption of Controversial and Noncontroversial Rape Law Reforms
Jennifer McMahon-Howard

Do the causal determinants of legal change differ for controversial and noncontroversial laws? Using rape law reforms as an example of legal change, I answer this question via a longitudinal examination of the intrastate characteristics and interstate processes that affect the adoption of both controversial and noncontroversial rape law reforms. The results show that the adoption of partial reforms significantly decreases a state's likelihood of passing a stronger version of the reform only for controversial rape law reforms. Other factors, such as women's economic power and the interstate process of diffusion similarly affect both controversial and noncontroversial reforms. Thus, contrary to the idea that the process of diffusion operates differently for controversial reforms, the results indicate that spatial proximity negatively affects the adoption of both controversial and noncontroversial rape law reforms. These findings have important implications for theoretical explanations of legal change, research on rape law reforms, and social movement research and activism.

Toward a Theory of Compliance in State-Regulated Livelihoods: A Comparative Study of Compliance Motivations in Developed and Developing World Fisheries
Stig S. Gezelius and Maria Hauck

This article addresses the question of how states can best promote citizens' compliance with laws that regulate livelihoods. Based on ethnographic data from fishing communities in three countries—Norway, Canada, and South Africa—the article compares compliance motivations that exist under different socioeconomic and political conditions. The comparisons give rise to a typology of three compliance motivations: deterrence, moral support for the law's content, and the legislator's authority. This article then identifies three governable preconditions—enforcement, empowerment of citizens, and civic identity—that respectively explain these motivations. The article argues that the compliance discourse in a given type of state must be framed such that it includes at least the governable preconditions for compliance that have not been met in that state. Consequently, a functional compliance strategy would vary between different state types. The article thus questions the transferability of the developed world's compliance discourses to the developing world.

Tactical Balancing: High Court Decision Making on Politically Crucial Cases
Diana Kapiszewski

This article advances a new account of judicial behavior: the thesis of tactical balancing. Building on existing models of judicial decision making, the thesis posits that high court justices balance a discrete set of considerations—justices' ideologies, their institutional interests, the potential consequences of their rulings, public opinion, elected leaders' preferences, and law—as they decide important cases. Variation in a high court's balancing of those considerations as it decides different cases leads it to alternate between challenging and endorsing the exercise of government power. The way in which high courts carry out this “tactical balancing” reflects their broader strategy for prioritizing the different roles they can play in a polity, and thus has significant implications for the rule of law and regime stability in developing democracies. The thesis is illustrated through a detailed analysis of the Brazilian high court's rulings on cases concerning crucial economic policies (1985–2004).

Law & Society Review, June 2011: Volume 45, Issue 2

Sociological Theory 29(2)

Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism
Robert S. Jansen

Sociology has long shied away from the problem of populism. This may be due to suspicion about the concept or uncertainty about how to fit populist cases into broader comparative matrices. Such caution is warranted: the existing interdisciplinary literature has been plagued by conceptual confusion and disagreement. But given the recent resurgence of populist politics in Latin America and elsewhere, sociology can no longer afford to sidestep such analytical challenges. This article moves toward a political sociology of populism by identifying past theoretical deficiencies and proposing a new, practice-based approach that is not beholden to pejorative common sense understandings. This approach conceptualizes populism as a mode of political practice—as populist mobilization. Its utility is demonstrated through an application to mid-twentieth-century Latin American politics. The article concludes by sketching an agenda for future research on populist mobilization in Latin America and beyond.

Typecasting, Legitimation, and Form Emergence: A Formal Theory
Greta Hsu, Michael T. Hannan and László Pólos

We propose a formal theory of multiple category memberships. This theory has the potential to unify two seemingly unconnected theories: typecasting and identity-based form emergence. Typecasting, a producer-level theory, considers the consequences of specializing versus spanning across category boundaries. Identity-based form emergence considers the evolution of categories and how the attributes of producers entering a category shape its likelihood of gaining legitimacy among relevant audiences. Both theory fragments treat the processes by which audience members assign category memberships to producers. This article develops this common foundation and outlines the arguments that lead to central implications of each theory. The arguments are formalized using modal expressions to represent key categorization processes according to the theory-building framework developed by Hannan et al. (2007).

An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism
Hiro Saito

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT) to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims.

Sociological Theory, June 2011: Volume 29, Issue 2

Journal of Marriage and Family 73(3)

Methodological Innovation

Modeling Repeatable Events Using Discrete-Time Data: Predicting Marital Dissolution
Jay Teachman

Family Structure and Family Stability

Effects of Family Structure Type and Stability on Children's Academic Performance Trajectories
Yongmin Sun and Yuanzhang Li

The Effects of Family Structure on African American Adolescents' Marijuana Use
Jelani Mandara, Sheba Y. Rogers and Richard E. Zinbarg

Multipartnered Fertility and Depression Among Fragile Families
Kristin Turney and Marcia J. Carlson

Parents and Children

Paternal Work Stress and Latent Profiles of Father–Infant Parenting Quality
W. Benjamin Goodman, Ann C. Crouter, Stephanie T. Lanza, Martha J. Cox and Lynne Vernon-Feagans, The Family Life Project Key Investigators

Maternal Mental Health, Neighborhood Characteristics, and Time Investments in Children
Adrianne Frech and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro

Parental Strains and Rewards Among Mothers: The Role of Education
Kei M. Nomaguchi and Susan L. Brown

Coparenting and Relationship Quality Effects on Father Engagement: Variations by Residence, Romance
Jay Fagan and Rob Palkovitz

Of General Interest

Breakup of New Orleans Households After Hurricane Katrina
Michael S. Rendall

Individualized Marriage and the Integration of Resources
Sean R. Lauer and Carrie Yodanis

Journal of Marriage and Family, June 2011: Volume 73, Issue 3