British Journal of Criminology 51(6)

British Journal of Criminology, Volume 51, Issue 6

Untangling the Relationship Between Fear of Crime and Perceptions of Disorder: Evidence from a Longitudinal Study of Young People in England and Wales
Ian Brunton-Smith

Over the last 40 years and more, a growing number of researchers have explored the links between perceptions of disorder and fear of criminal victimization. Many of these studies have posited a causal link from perceptions of disorder to subsequent fear, with disorderly cues in the environment signalling to individuals that an area is in decline and unable to control deviant behaviour. But a growing body of evidence approaches this question from the opposite direction, emphasizing the socially constructed nature of perceived disorder and the potential role that fear may have in giving meaning to ambiguous disorderly cues present in the environment. This conceptual uncertainty stems, in part, from the reliance of existing research on cross-sectional data, making it impossible to say whether it is perceptions of disorder that shape fear or whether fear drives perceived disorder. A cross-lagged panel design is applied to longitudinal data from the Offending Crime and Justice Survey to more carefully explore the causal links between fear and disorder.

The Soldier as Victim: Peering through the Looking Glass
Ross McGarry and Sandra Walklate

Despite a rising criminological interest in the numbers of British veterans in the criminal justice system and the criminogenic context of the Iraq conflict, a concern to understand the experiences of modern soldiers is largely hidden from the criminological and victimological gaze. This paper addresses this issue by presenting data from interviews with British military veterans and considers their ‘unknowable’ experiences of war in a framework of victimological otherness, including experiencing, perpetrating and witnessing conflict. Given the masculine connotations associated with ‘soldiering’ and presumptions of vulnerability conjured by the word ‘victim’, imagining the ‘soldier as victim’ is challenging. Here, we offer an insight into this ‘victimhood’ by analysing the ‘common place’ experiences of British soldiers during the conflict in Iraq.

War Crimes In The 2008 Georgia–Russia Conflict
Christopher W. Mullins

Little has been written within empirically driven criminology about crimes committed during the conduct of warfare. The laws of war are over a century old and the current Geneva Conventions more than 50. This paper addresses this gap by providing a partial account of the nature and distribution of violations of the Geneva Conventions during the August 2008 Georgia–Russia conflict and during the post-conflict occupation period. Drawing on numerous investigations by multiple parties, it establishes that war crimes were committed by all belligerent parties. Yet, not all parties committed the same types or same number of crimes. These distribution factors are examined in light of international transnational controls and the motivations each party brought to the conflict.

Perceived Group Threat and Punitive Attitudes in Russia and The United States
Darren Wheelock, Olga Semukhina, and Nicolai N. Demidov

Extant research has examined the link between the group threat thesis and different forms of social control including the public desire to punish criminals. The group threat thesis posits that crime control, and public support for it, stems from conflict and competition between groups over scarce social resources such as jobs and education. Groups in power utilize crime control to manage and suppress groups that pose a threat to these resources. This perspective has been important in shaping criminological understandings of punishment; however, much of it has focused solely on inter-group conflict in the United States and Western Europe. This study expands the group threat lens by testing whether dynamics of group conflict and threat fuel the desire to punish in Russia. We find that, similarly to the United States and Western Europe, perceived threat is an important predictor of the desire to punish for Russian respondents. The findings draw attention to the need for further investigation of group threat theory in a comparative context.

‘I had a Hard Life’: Exploring Childhood Adversity in the Shaping of Masculinities among Men Who Killed an Intimate Partner in South Africa
Shanaaz Mathews, Rachel Jewkes, and Naeemah Abrahams

South Africa has a female homicide rate six times the global average, with half of murdered women killed by an intimate partner. The gendered nature of such murders indicates the need to explore the masculinities of men who kill an intimate partner. This paper explores the childhoods of 20 men who were incarcerated for such murders and draws on 74 in-depth interviews with these men, family and friends. This study found that traumatic childhood experiences increases emotional vulnerability, resulting in their feeling unloved, insecure and powerless. We argue that they adopt violent forms of masculinities to achieve respect and power. Yet, there is no linear relationship between traumatic childhood experiences and adopting violent masculinities.

Regulating Drug Dependency in China: The 2008 PRC Drug Prohibition Law
Sarah Biddulph and Chuanyu Xie

This paper examines the reforms to powers of Chinese state agencies to deal with drug-dependent people introduced by the PRC Drug Prohibition Law 2008. Whilst professing to take a more humane approach to problems of drug dependency, the law retains a police-centred approach to regulation. The law provides for a set of interconnected police powers that include: registration; imposition of a three year term of community rehabilitation; administrative detention for two years; and the possibility of a further supervised rehabilitation order upon release. In the absence of detailed implementing regulations, this paper examines the different ways local agencies are interpreting and implementing these powers.

Sentencing Guidelines and Judicial Discretion: Evolution of the Duty of Courts to Comply in England and Wales
Julian V. Roberts

Sentencing guideline schemes require courts to sentence within the guidelines—or give reasons why a different sentence is appropriate. Most US schemes require courts to find ‘substantial and compelling’ grounds for departing from the guidelines. The duty of a court with respect to sentencing guidelines in England and Wales changed significantly in 2010 as a result of the Coroners and Justice Act 2009. This article explores the evolution of the duty of courts to comply with the English sentencing guidelines. As will be seen, the language of the duty of a court provision has become more robust: henceforth, courts ‘must follow’ definitive guidelines rather than merely ‘have regard to’ them. At the same time, the government significantly increased the range of sentence within which courts must sentence. The essay provides some international context, drawing upon experiences in the jurisdiction in which guidelines have been longest in existence, and explores the limited compliance statistics collected in England and Wales to date. The consequences of the latest changes for sentencing in England and Wales are discussed.

Juvenile Victims in Restorative Justice: Findings from the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments
Tali Gal and Shomron Moyal

Using a randomized experimental design the Reintegrative Shaming Experiments (RISE) showed that restorative justice (RJ) is significantly more satisfying than court for both victims and offenders. It did not, however, explore the effect of victims’ age and baseline differences in the level of harm caused to victims of different crimes on outcome variables. The current study uses a two-factor ANCOVA to address these questions. Main findings suggest that whereas RJ made adults more satisfied than courts (Cohen's d = 0.50), conference juvenile victims were less satisfied than court juvenile victims (Cohen's d = –0.28). Moreover, more serious harm is associated with decreased process satisfaction for all victims. A complementary qualitative analysis identifies adult domination and insensitivity to youth's special needs as recurring themes.

Mind The Double Gap: Using Multivariate Multilevel Modelling to Investigate Public Perceptions of Crime Trends
John Mohan, Liz Twigg, and Joanna Taylor

This paper uses multivariate multilevel models with data from the British Crime Survey to investigate individual and neighbourhood influences on perceptions of local and national crime trends. In response to debates about the negative consequences of immigration and ethnic diversity, we specifically investigate the influence of ethnic heterogeneity on such perceptions. Results indicate that a person's socio-demographic background and their newspaper readership have the strongest association with perceptions of national trends whilst the strongest association with pessimistic views on localized crime is whether the individual has been a recent crime victim. Results suggest no negative effects for ethnic diversity. Moreover, the findings indicate that living in a mixed neighbourhood is associated with a reduced likelihood of perceiving rising levels of national crime.

Restating the case for the ‘suspect community’: A Reply to Greer
Christina Pantazis and Simon Pemberton

In 2009, in an article for this journal, we argued that UK legal and political developments, following the events of September 2001, had designated Muslims as the ‘enemy within’ and served to construct Muslims as the principal suspect community (Pantazis and Pemberton 2009). This work sought to utilize and extend Hillyard's original (1993) thesis, which postulated that, during the period of Irish political violence during the 1970s and into the 1990s, the whole Irish population had become a ‘suspect community’. In 2010, Steven Greer responded with an uncompromising critique of these combined works. In this reply, we rearticulate our case and demonstrate why Greer's arguments are fundamentally flawed.

Crime & Delinquency 57(6)

Crime & Delinquency, November 2011: Volume 57, Issue 6

Juvenile Penalties for "Lawyering Up": The Role of Counsel and Extralegal Case Characteristics
Gaylene S. Armstrong and Bitna Kim

The presence of counsel for juveniles in the courtroom seems advantageous from a due process perspective, yet some studies suggest that juveniles receive harsher dispositions when represented by an attorney. This study tested whether a “counsel penalty” existed regardless of attorney type and, guided by prior sentencing literature, used a more comprehensive model to determine the influence of extralegal and contextual factors that may amplify the counsel penalty. Utilizing official data from a Northeastern state in a multilevel modeling strategy, this study found that regardless of the type of counsel retained, harsher sentences were received as compared with cases in which a juvenile was not represented by counsel even after controlling for offense type. Moreover, minority youth with public defenders and males with private counsel received harsher sentences while community characteristics did not appear to have a significant influence on sentencing decisions.

Causes of School Bullying: Empirical Test of a General Theory of Crime, Differential Association Theory, and General Strain Theory
Byongook Moon, Hye-Won Hwang, and John D. McCluskey

A growing number of studies indicate the ubiquity of school bullying: It is a global concern, regardless of cultural differences. Little previous research has examined whether leading criminological theories can explain bullying, despite the commonality between bullying and delinquency. The current investigation uses longitudinal data on 655 Korean youth, in three schools, to examine the applicability of leading criminological theories (general theory of crime, differential association theory, and general strain theory) in explaining school bullying. Overall, our findings indicate limited support for the generality of these three leading criminological theories in explaining the etiology of bullying. However, the findings show the significant effects of school-generated strains (teachers’ physical and emotional punishment and examination related strain) on bullying. Directions for future research and policy implications of these findings are discussed.

Parental Status and Punitiveness: Moderating Effects of Gender and Concern About Crime
Kelly Welch

Previously identified predictors of public punitiveness include attitudinal, experiential, background, and demographic characteristics. Given the influence of parenthood on certain attitudes and beliefs, it may also affect how strongly individuals endorse harsh punishment for criminals. Few studies have explored how parenthood influences general policy preferences or support for criminal justice measures specifically, and findings have been mixed. The author estimated linear ordinary least squares regression equations, using national random telephone survey data, to test for direct effects of parenthood on measures of punitive attitudes toward juveniles and adults and overall. Two- and three-way interactions with gender and concern about crime were also estimated, and although the additive effects of parenthood on punitiveness were significant only for attitudes toward adult offenders, gender and concern about crime moderated its effects on punitive policy support, with fathers and parents for whom crime was less salient being more punitive. These findings suggest that research testing only linear influences may overlook more complex relationships.

Stability of Delinquent Peer Associations: A Biosocial Test of Warr's Sticky-Friends Hypothesis
Kevin M. Beaver, Chris L. Gibson, Michael G. Turner, Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn, and Ashleigh Holand

The study of delinquent peers has remained at the forefront of much criminological research and theorizing. One issue of particular importance involves the factors related to why people associate with and maintain a sustained involvement with delinquent peers. Although efforts have been made to address these questions, relatively little attempt has been made to understand these relationships from a biosocial perspective. This gap in the literature is addressed in an analysis of twins from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The results of the univariate behavioral genetic models reveal that genetic factors account for between 58% and 74% of the variance in the association with delinquent peers, with the remaining variance attributable to environmental factors. Bivariate Cholesky decomposition models reveal that genetic factors account for 58% of the variance in the stability in delinquent peers. The shared environment explains 34% of the variance in stability, and the remaining 8% is attributable to the nonshared environment. The importance of a biosocial approach in criminological research is discussed.

Cheating the Hangman: The Effect of the Roper v. Simmons Decision on Homicides Committed by Juveniles
Jamie L. Flexon, Lisa Stolzenberg, and Stewart J. D'Alessio

On March 1, 2005, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the execution of offenders under the age of 18 at the time of their criminal offense was unconstitutional. Although many welcomed this decision, some individuals still remain concerned that the elimination of the specter of capital punishment will inevitably increase homicidal behavior among juveniles by reducing the prospect of deterrence. Using monthly data from the Supplemental Homicide Reports and a multiple time-series research design, the authors investigate the impact of the Roper v. Simmons decision on homicides perpetrated by juveniles in the 20 states affected by the law. Maximum likelihood results reveal that the repeal of the juvenile death penalty has had no effect on juvenile homicidal behavior.

Propensity for Violence Among Homeless and Runaway Adolescents: An Event History Analysis
Devan M. Crawford, Les B. Whitbeck, and Dan R. Hoyt

Little is known about the prevalence of violent behaviors among homeless and runaway adolescents or the specific behavioral factors that influence violent behaviors across time. In this longitudinal study of 300 homeless and runaway adolescents aged 16 to 19 at baseline, the authors use event history analysis to assess the factors associated with acts of violence over 3 years, controlling for individual propensities and time-varying behaviors. Results indicate that females, nonminorities, and nonheterosexuals were less likely to engage in violence across time. Those who met criteria for substance abuse disorders (i.e., alcohol abuse, alcohol dependence, drug abuse) were more likely to engage in violence. A history of caretaker abuse was associated with violent behaviors, as were street survival strategies such as selling drugs, participating in gang activity, and associating with deviant peers. Simply having spent time directly on the streets at any specific time point also increased the likelihood for violence.

Sentencing Juveniles to Life in Prison: The Reproduction of Juvenile Justice for Young Adolescents Charged With Murder
Simon I. Singer

In Roper v. Simmons, the U.S. Supreme Court determined that the sentencing of juveniles to death violated the constitutional amendment against cruel and unusual punishment. Similarly, the Court most recently decided that life without parole for nonhomicide offenses is also unconstitutional (Graham v. Florida, 2010). Part of the reason for the Court’s decisions is the lack of consensus as to the appropriateness of punishing juveniles as if they were adults. To examine the extent to which there is consensus as to the capital penalties for capital crimes, this article examines a population of young juveniles who were initially charged with murder, and then subsequently convicted in criminal court and sentenced to life in prison. As is the case with adults, not all juveniles were convicted in criminal court for their initial charge of murder. But unlike for adults, a proportion of eligible juveniles were adjudicated delinquent in juvenile court or received youthful offender in criminal court, resulting in a less severe sentence than a maximum of life in prison. The author suggests that this reduced set of sanctions, which a segment of juveniles receive, is substantive justice and the reproduction of juvenile justice. He found significant differences in the reproduction of juvenile justice by place and prior offense.

The ANNALS of the AAPSS 638

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, November 2011: Volume 638

Work, Family, and Workplace Flexibility

Making a Case for Workplace Flexibility
Kathleen Christensen and Barbara Schneider

Family Change and Time Allocation in American Families
Suzanne M. Bianchi

The Cost of Workplace Flexibility for High-Powered Professionals
Claudia Goldin and Lawrence F. Katz

Phased Retirement and Workplace Flexibility for Older Adults: Opportunities and Challenges
Richard W. Johnson

Workplace Flexibility and Worker Agency: Finding Short-Term Flexibility within a Highly Structured Workplace
Lawrence S. Root and Alford A. Young, Jr.

The Human Face of Workplace Flexibility
Barbara Schneider

Workplace Flexibility and Daily Stress Processes in Hotel Employees and Their Children
David M. AlmeIda and Kelly D. Davis

Keeping Women in the Science Pipeline
Marc Goulden, Mary Ann Mason, and Karie Frasch

Military Families: Extreme Work and Extreme "Work-Family"
Shelley MacDermid Wadsworth and Kenona Southwell

American Journal of Sociology 117(2)

American Journal of Sociology, September 2011: Volume 117, Issue 2

Avoiding Catastrophe: The Interactional Production of Possibility during the Cuban Missile Crisis
David R. Gibson

In October 1962, the fate of the world hung on the U.S. response to the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba. President Kennedy’s decision to impose a blockade was based on hours of discussions with top advisers (the so-called ExComm), yet decades of scholarship on the crisis have missed the central puzzle: How did the group select one response, the blockade, when all options seemed bad? Recently released audio recordings are used to argue that the key conversational activity was storytelling about an uncertain future. Kennedy’s choice of a blockade hinged on the narrative “suppression” of its most dangerous possible consequence, namely the perils of a later attack against operational missiles, something accomplished through omission, self-censorship, ambiguation, uptake failure, and narrative interdiction. The article makes the very first connection between the localized dynamics of conversation and decision making in times of crisis, and offers a novel processual account of one of the most fateful decisions in human history.

Jazz and the Disconnected: City Structural Disconnectedness and the Emergence of a Jazz Canon, 1897–1933
Damon J. Phillips

The study of organizations and markets suffers from the underdevelopment of disconnected producers. This article emphasizes the imputed identities of sources to argue that difficult-to-categorize outputs were appealing when associated with a source high in disconnectedness. Worldwide data on recordings and mobility with detailed data on Midwest recordings provide evidence that jazz from cities high in disconnectedness was rerecorded more often by musicians over time. Moreover, recordings with difficult-to-categorize elements were more likely to be rerecorded when coming from cities high in disconnectedness, despite evidence that original music was paradoxically less likely to come from these cities.

Fragmented Networks and Entrepreneurship in Late Imperial Russia
Henning Hillmann, Brandy L. Aven

Emergent economies suffer from underdeveloped market infrastructures and insufficient public institutions to enforce contract commitments and property rights. Informal reputation-based arrangements may substitute for government enforcement, but they require close-knit networks that enable monitoring. Economic development also requires access to capital, information, and other resources, which is enabled by wide-reaching and diverse networks and not by closure. How is entrepreneurship possible given these conflicting demands? In this article, the authors examine how partnership networks and reputation channel the mobilization of capital for new enterprises, using quantitative information on 4,172 corporate partnerships during the industrialization of late imperial Russia (1869–1913). They find that reputation is locally effective in small and homogeneous network components. By contrast, founders in the largest components that form the network core raise more capital from investors but benefit less from reputation and more from brokerage opportunities and ties that reach diverse communities.

The Structural Sources of Association
Evan Schofer, Wesley Longhofer

Where do associations come from? The authors argue that the expansion and openness of state institutions encourage the formation of associations. Moreover, the institutional structures of world society provide important resources and legitimation for association. Longitudinal cross-national data on voluntary associations are analyzed using panel models with fixed-effects and instrumental variables models to address possible endogeneity. Institutional features of the state and the structures of world society are linked to higher levels of association, as are wealth and education. These factors differentially affect specific types of association, helping make sense of the distinctive configurations of civil society observed around the globe.

Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States
András Tilcsik

This article presents the first large-scale audit study of discrimination against openly gay men in the United States. Pairs of fictitious résumés were sent in response to 1,769 job postings in seven states. One résumé in each pair was randomly assigned experience in a gay campus organization, and the other résumé was assigned a control organization. Two main findings have emerged. First, in some but not all states, there was significant discrimination against the fictitious applicants who appeared to be gay. This geographic variation in the level of discrimination appears to reflect regional differences in attitudes and antidiscrimination laws. Second, employers who emphasized the importance of stereotypically male heterosexual traits were particularly likely to discriminate against openly gay men. Beyond these particular findings, this study advances the audit literature more generally by covering multiple regions and by highlighting how audit techniques may be used to identify stereotypes that affect employment decisions in real labor markets.

Wealth and the Marital Divide
Daniel Schneider

Marriage patterns differ dramatically in the United States by race and education. The author identifies a novel explanation for these marital divides, namely, the important role of personal wealth in marriage entry. Using event-history models and data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979 cohort, the author shows that wealth is an important predictor of first marriage and that differences in asset ownership by race and education help to explain a significant portion of the race and education gaps in first marriage. The article also tests possible explanations for why wealth plays an important role in first marriage entry.

Journal of Criminal Justice 39(5)

Journal of Criminal Justice, September 2011: Volume 39, Issue 5

Assessing the interaction between offender and victim criminal lifestyles & homicide type
Jesenia M. Pizarro, Kristen M. Zgoba, Wesley G. Jennings

This study examined the interaction between victim and offender criminal lifestyles and the characteristics of homicides.  Hierarchical Agglomerative Cluster and Logistic Regression Analyses were employed to answer the research questions.  The findings showed that victims and offenders are similar and that their characteristics influenced the incident etiology.  Researchers and practitioners should take into account criminal lifestyles when tailoring homicide prevention strategies.

Evidence of a gene × environment interaction between perceived prejudice and MAOA genotype in the prediction of criminal arrests
Joseph A. Schwartz, Kevin M. Beaver

Recent studies have shown that stressful environments interact with genetic polymorphisms to predict antisocial outcomes.  MAOA genotype and perceived prejudice are not related to the probability of arrest when examined independently.  MAOA genotype and perceived prejudice do, however, interact to predict the probability of being arrested for males.  These findings are consistent with the differential-susceptibility hypothesis.

Reintegration or stigmatization? Offenders’ expectations of community re-entry
Michael L. Benson, Leanne Fiftal Alarid, Velmer S. Burton, Francis T. Cullen

We investigate how incarcerated offenders feel about re-entering their communities.  Most offenders do not expect to be stigmatized upon re-entry.  Most offenders expect to be reintegrated upon re-entering their communities  Racial and ethnic minorities are less likely to expect to be reintegrated than whites.  The findings are encouraging for other post-conviction treatment programs.

Estimating the probability of local crime clusters: The impact of immediate spatial neighbors
Martin A. Andresen

We identify local crime clusters using a local indicator of spatial association, local Moran's I.  The local crime clusters are then model in a multinomial logistic regression to identify their predictor variables.  Knowing the type of immediate spatial neighbours is critical when identifying local crime clusters.  Local crime areas relate to their spatial neighbours: low crime areas with high crime neighbours present as high crime areas.  Efforts to understand the criminal nature of an area must not consider that area in isolation.

Parenthood and crime: The role of wantedness, relationships with partners, and ses
Peggy C. Giordano, Patrick M. Seffrin, Wendy D. Manning, Monica A. Longmore

Highly disadvantaged young men and women do not report lower average levels of criminal behavior after becoming parents.  Young men and women from more advantaged backgrounds do report lower average levels of crime after making these transitions.  Pregnancies that were described as wanted reduced female involvement in crime regardless of socioeconomic status.  Life history narratives further illustrate the promise and limitations of parenthood as a catalyst for sustained behavior change.

Motives and methods for leaving the gang: Understanding the process of gang desistance
David C. Pyrooz, Scott H. Decker

Modal responses for motives and methods for leaving the gang were internal pushes and non-hostile departures.  For one out of every five former gang members, the method of departure involved hostility or ritual violence.  Leaving the gang was not met with hostility so long as the motive is for reasons external to the gang.  Motives surrounding the key life course parameters of gang membership are consistent with asymmetrical causation.

The genetic origins of psychopathic personality traits in adult males and females: Results from an adoption-based study
Kevin M. Beaver, Meghan W. Rowland, Joseph A. Schwartz, Joseph L. Nedelec

This study examined the genetic basis to psychopathic personality traits using an adoption-based research design.  Having a criminal biological father was related to psychopathic personality traits for males, but not for females.  These results suggest that the transmission of antisocial and psychopathic traits is partially genetic in origin.

Patterns of criminal achievement in sexual offending: Unravelling the “successful” sex offender
Patrick Lussier, Martin Bouchard, Eric Beauregard

The current study proposes a concept of criminal achievement in the context of sexual offending.  There is much variation in criminal achievement both in terms of offending productivity and cost avoidance.  A small group of sex offenders are involved in a very large number of sex crime events.  The most productive offenders are also those who avoid detection longer, up to 40 years.  The successful and productive offenders do not received longer sentences and tend to be classified as low-risk offenders.

The reliability of police employee counts: Comparing FBI and ICMA data, 1954–2008
William R. King, Abdullah Cihan, Justin A. Heinonen

We systematically assess FBI and ICMA counts of police employees in 38 US cities.  For most cities we find high levels of reliability between the two data sources.  There is some evidence of reporting irregularities in specific cities.  Usually reporting errors are temporally bounded.

Social ecology, individual risk, and recidivism: A multilevel examination of main and moderating influences
Marie Skubak Tillyer, Brenda Vose

This study examined main and moderating influences of social ecology on recidivism.  We controlled for individual risk using the Level of Service Inventory-Revised.  HLM results indicate modest support for contextual effects.  The relationship between LSI-R and recidivism did not vary across contexts.