Theoretical Criminology 16(4)

Theoretical Criminology, November 2012: Volume 16, Issue 4

Law’s knowledge: On the susceptibility and resistance of legal practices to security matters
Susanne Krasmann

Contrary to the prevailing debate on the governance of security with its focus on emergency and exception, a Foucauldian perspective enables us to capture how law transforms in a rather gradual and unnoticed manner. As a practice, law constitutes itself through knowledge. Relying upon knowledge, it is notoriously susceptible to security matters. This will be illustrated by analysing the rationality of pre-emptive action that is facilitated by automated surveillance technologies. Taking a recent torture debate as an extreme example elucidates that a conception of law as practice also serves as a tool of critique and articulating dissent.

Media justice: Madeleine McCann, intermediatization and ‘trial by media’ in the British press
Chris Greer and Eugene McLaughlin

Three-year-old Madeleine McCann disappeared on 3 May 2007 from a holiday apartment in Portugal. Over five years and multiple investigations that failed to solve this abducted child case, Madeleine and her parents were subject to a process of relentless ‘intermediatization’. Across 24–7 news coverage, websites, documentaries, films, YouTube videos, books, magazines, music and artworks, Madeleine was a mediagenic image of innocence and a lucrative story. In contrast to Madeleine’s media sacralization, the representation of her parents, Kate and Gerry McCann, fluctuated between periods of vociferous support and prolonged and libellous ‘trial by media’. This article analyses how the global intermediatization of the ‘Maddie Mystery’ fed into and fuelled the ‘trial by media’ of Kate and Gerry McCann in the UK press. Our theorization of ‘trial by media’ is developed and refined through considering its legal limitations in an era of ‘attack journalism’ and unprecedented official UK inquiries into press misconduct and criminality.

Making people criminal: The role of the criminal law in immigration enforcement
Ana Aliverti

This article analyses the recent expansion of immigration offences in Britain. Drawing on criminal law scholarship, it considers the reasons for relying on the criminal law in immigration enforcement. On the one hand, criminal law is used symbolically. In this view, the creation of criminal offences may be read as an attempt to appease a sector of the electorate, the media and the Opposition about the ‘immigration problem.’ By introducing these offences, the government sent a message that the situation is under control. On the other hand, the criminal law serves regulatory functions, offering the UK Border Agency a range of options for dealing with unwanted immigrants. In practice, most immigration offences are rarely enforced. Instead, the criminal law often seems to primarily work as a threat, relied on to enforce compliance with immigration rules. A criminal prosecution is reserved for those foreigners for whom the primary sanction –expulsion- cannot be carried out. In these cases, a criminal prosecution and conviction facilitate administrative proceedings leading to removal. Given that the criminalization of immigration breaches is in stark contrast with a number of criminal law principles, this paper argues that the normative justification of criminal law in immigration matters is weak and it should have no role to play in the enforcement of immigration rules.

Dramatic lives and relevant becomings: Toward a Deleuze- and Guattari-inspired cartography of young women’s violent conflicts
Ann-Karina Henriksen and Jody Miller

The article explores how violence works to produce young women’s precarious positions in social milieus characterized by multiple marginalization. By paying attention to the micropolitics of violent engagements we argue that violent conflicts can be viewed as strategies for escaping positions of marginality into positions of relevance. The analysis builds on empirical data from Copenhagen, Denmark, gained through ethnographic fieldwork with the participation of 20 female informants aged 13–22. The theoretical contribution proposes viewing conflicts as multi-linear, multi-causal and non-chronological to account for the emotional tension and lived experience of violent conflicts. Finally we identify the need for further studies on how technosocial forms of communication play into violent conflicts among youth.

Anchoring the sentencing scale: A modest proposal
Richard L Lippke

This article proposes a partial solution to the anchoring problem in sentencing theory. I advance what I term the ‘commensurate harms principle’, according to which the losses and deprivations imposed on convicted offenders as punishment should be kept commensurate with the ‘standard’ harms (Von Hirsch and Jareborg, 1991: 4) their crimes cause victims. The principle is defended as an aid to setting sentences for core criminal offense types. Intelligent application of the principle requires us to gain an informed understanding of both the harms caused by crimes and the harms done by criminal sanctions, particularly imprisonment. Various objections to the principle are addressed, including claims that victim and penal harms cannot be compared and that the harms produced by crimes and criminal sanctions extend beyond victims and offenders. I contend that the commensurate harms principle would counsel the sparing use of imprisonment and often support less harsh sentences than are the norm in many countries.

Re-imagining youth justice: Cultural contestation in the Kimberley region of Australia since the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody
Harry Blagg

Twenty years on from the 1991 Royal Commission into Aboriginal Deaths in Custody in Australia the picture appears bleaker than in the early 1990s. This article adopts a post-colonial stance to examine emerging Aboriginal strategies on youth justice in Western Australia that focus on building forms of Aboriginal ‘cultural capital’ and ‘community owned’ justice mechanisms on Aboriginal country as an alternative to failed strategies of incarceration and ‘community based’ justice. Aboriginal contestation, or what I call, after Edward Said, ‘contrapuntality’ increasingly takes place through subtle ‘inter-cultural’ work in various ‘engagement spaces’ in-between Aboriginal and mainstream cultures. These practices challenge mainstream government to practise what it preaches in relation to its claimed respect for Aboriginal cultural rights. The article reports on Aboriginal owned and controlled cultural processes in the Kimberley region of Western Australia that are contrapuntally challenging established ideas about the meaning of justice for Aboriginal youth.

Reconceptualizing hate crime victimization through the lens of vulnerability and ‘difference’
Neil Chakraborti and Jon Garland

This article suggests that the concepts of vulnerability and ‘difference’ should be focal points of hate crime scholarship if the values at the heart of the hate crime movement are not to be diluted. By stringently associating hate crime with particular strands of victims and sets of motivations through singular constructions of identity, criminologists have created a divisive and hierarchical approach to understanding hate crime. To counter these limitations, we propose that vulnerability and ‘difference’, rather than identity and group membership alone, should be central to investigations of hate crime. These concepts would allow for a more inclusive conceptual framework enabling hitherto overlooked and vulnerable victims of targeted violence to receive the recognition they urgently need.

Criminology & Public Policy 11(4)

Criminology & Public Policy, November 2012: Volume 11, Issue 4

Race, Place, and Drug Enforcement

Editorial Introduction

Race, Policing, and Equity
Stephen D. Mastrofski

Research Article

Race, Place, and Drug Enforcement
Robin S. Engel, Michael R. Smith and Francis T. Cullen

Policy Essay

Back to Basics
David A. Klinger

Race, Drugs, and Law Enforcement
Katherine Beckett

The Racial Dilemma in Urban Policing
Sudhir Venkatesh


NCAA Rule Infractions

Editorial Introduction

College Athletes and NCAA Violations
Jason A. Winfree

Research Article

Assessing the Extent and Sources of NCAA Rule Infractions
Francis T. Cullen, Edward J. Latessa and Cheryl Lero Jonson

Policy Essay

NCAA Rule Infractions
Brad R. Humphreys

Assessing the Extent and Sources of NCAA Rule Infractions
Alex R. Piquero


Young Adult Offenders

Editorial Introduction

Young Adults
Jennifer L. Woolard

Research Article

Young Adult Offenders
David P. Farrington, Rolf Loeber and James C. Howell

Policy Essay

Aligning Justice System Processing with Developmental Science
Elizabeth Cauffman

Raising the Age
Chris L. Gibson and Marvin D. Krohn

Sociological Theory 30(3)

Sociological Theory, September 2012: Volume 30, Issue 3

Status Hierarchies and the Organization of Collective Action
Brent Simpson, Robb Willer, and Cecilia L. Ridgeway

Most work on collective action assumes that group members are undifferentiated by status, or standing, in the group. Yet such undifferentiated groups are rare, if they exist at all. Here we extend an existing sociological research program to address how extant status hierarchies help organize collective actions by coordinating how much and when group members should contribute to group efforts. We outline three theoretically derived predictions of how status hierarchies organize patterns of behavior to produce larger public goods. We review existing evidence relevant to two of the three hypotheses and present results from a preliminary experimental test of the third. Findings are consistent with the model. The tendency of these dynamics to lead status-differentiated groups to produce larger public goods may help explain the ubiquity of hierarchy in groups, despite the often negative effects of status inequalities for many group members.

Theory Construction in Qualitative Research: From Grounded Theory to Abductive Analysis
Stefan Timmermans and Iddo Tavory

A critical pathway for conceptual innovation in the social is the construction of theoretical ideas based on empirical data. Grounded theory has become a leading approach promising the construction of novel theories. Yet grounded theory–based theoretical innovation has been scarce in part because of its commitment to let theories emerge inductively rather than imposing analytic frameworks a priori. We note, along with a long philosophical tradition, that induction does not logically lead to novel theoretical insights. Drawing from the theory of inference, meaning, and action of pragmatist philosopher Charles S. Peirce, we argue that abduction, rather than induction, should be the guiding principle of empirically based theory construction. Abduction refers to a creative inferential process aimed at producing new hypotheses and theories based on surprising research evidence. We propose that abductive analysis arises from actors’ social and intellectual positions but can be further aided by careful methodological data analysis. We outline how formal methodological steps enrich abductive analysis through the processes of revisiting, defamiliarization, and alternative casing.

Looping Kinds and Social Mechanisms
Jaakko Kuorikoski and Samuli Pöyhönen

Human behavior is not always independent of the ways in which humans are scientifically classified. That there are looping effects of human kinds has been used as an argument for the methodological separation of the natural and the human sciences and to justify social constructionist claims. We suggest that these arguments rely on false presuppositions and present a mechanisms-based account of looping that provides a better way to understand the phenomenon and its theoretical and philosophical implications.

Sociological Theory 30(2)

Sociological Theory, June 2012: Volume 30, Issue 2

The Genomic Challenge to the Social Construction of Race
Jiannbin Lee Shiao, Thomas Bode, Amber Beyer, and Daniel Selvig

Recent research on the human genome challenges the basic assumption that human races have no biological basis. In this article, we provide a theoretical synthesis that accepts the existence of genetic clusters consistent with certain racial classifications as well as the validity of the genomic research that has identified the clusters, without diminishing the social character of their context, meaning, production, or consequences. The first part of this article describes the social constructionist account of race as lacking biological reality, its main shortcomings, and our proposed solution: the concept of clinal classes. The second part discusses the character of the group differences that would be consistent with clinal classes and introduces the concept of genomic individualism, which extends an emerging model for understanding biosocial causation to include the genetic effects of ancestry. The third part develops the argument for a “bounded nature” reformulation of racial constructionism that reconceptualizes racial and ethnic categorization as the social perception of ancestry. The final part summarizes the article’s contributions and outlines implications for future research.

How Sociology Lost Public Opinion: A Genealogy of a Missing Concept in the Study of the Political
Jeff Manza and Clem Brooks

In contemporary sociology the once prominent study of public opinion has virtually disappeared. None of the leading theoretical models in the closest disciplinary subfield (political sociology) currently provide ample or sufficiently clear space for consideration of public opinion as a possible factor in shaping or interacting with key policy or political outcomes in democratic polities. In this article, we unearth and document the sources of this curious development and raise questions about its implications for how political sociologists have come to understand policy making, state formation, and political conflict. We begin by reconstructing the dismissal of public opinion in the intellectual reorientation of political sociology from the late 1970s onward. We argue that the most influential scholarly works of this period (including those of Tilly, Skocpol, Mann, Esping-Andersen, and Domhoff) face an underlying paradox: While often rejecting public opinion, their theoretical logics ultimately presuppose its operation. These now classical writings did not move toward research programs seeking engagement with the operation and formation of public opinion, even though our immanent critique suggests they in fact require precisely this turn. We address the challenge of reconceptualizing how public opinion might be productively integrated into the sociological study of politics by demonstrating that the major arguments in the subfield can be fruitfully extended by grappling with public opinion. We conclude by considering several recent, interdisciplinary examples of scholarship that, we argue, point the way toward a fruitful revitalization.

Grandpa Wen: Scene and Political Performance
Bin Xu

This article remedies the divide in the theory of cultural performance between contingent strategy and cultural structure by bringing scene back in. Scene fuses components of performance and links local performance to macrolevel cultural structures and historical events. I theorize two conceptual elements: scene-act ratio and event-scene link. A scene creates an emotive context that demands consistent and timely performance; features of macrolevel events shape the emotive context of the scene. The two concepts can be deployed to explain variation in performance effectiveness. The theory is illustrated in a comparative study of Chinese leaders’ empathetic performance in disasters.

Civic Recreation and a Theory of Civic Production
Peter Hart-Brinson

The debate on civic decline inspired by Putnam’s “bowling alone” thesis exposed an important limitation in three dominant conceptions of the civic. Whether conceptualized as a locus, type, or motivation for action, the boundaries distinguishing the civic from other categories of political action are permeable and indistinct. This article develops a theory of civic production to better account for the inherent normativity and “porousness” of this analytic category. I conceptualize the civic as a variable, contingent outcome or product of a contentious performance undertaken in some venue for some reason. The phenomenon of “civic recreation,” a form of fund-raising that combines a leisure activity with a public cause, underscores the necessity of a theory of civic production. I draw from social movement theory and from ethnographic data from one fitness fund-raiser to illustrate some of the key processes and outcomes for which a theory of civic production must account.

Sociological Theory 30(1)

Sociological Theory, March 2012: Volume 30, Issue 1

The Social Calibration of Emotion Expression: An Affective Basis of Micro-social Order
Christian von Scheve

This article analyzes the role of emotions in social interaction and their effects on social structuration and the emergence of micro-social order. It argues that facial expressions of emotion are key in generating robust patterns of social interaction. First, the article shows that actors’ encoding of facial expressions combines hardwired physiological principles on the one hand and socially learned aspects on the other hand, leading to fine-grained and socially differentiated dialects of expression. Second, it is argued that decoding facial expression is contingent upon this combination so that reciprocal attributions of emotional states, situational interpretations, and action tendencies are more effective within rather than across social units. Third, this conjunction affects the conditions for emotional contagion, which is argued to be more effective within social units exhibiting similar encoding and decoding characteristics, and thus aligns emotions and action tendencies in a coherent, yet socially differentiated way.

Religion in Public Action: From Actors to Settings
Paul Lichterman

Contemporary social research often has located religion’s public influence by focusing on individual or collective religious actors. In this unitary actor model, religion is a stable, uniform feature of an individual or collectivity. However, recent research shows that people’s religious expression outside religious congregations varies by context. Building on this new work, along with insights from Erving Goffman and cultural sociology, an alternative, “cultural-interactionist model” of religious expression focuses on how group styles enable and constrain religious expression in public settings. Illustrating the model are two ethnographic cases, a religiously sponsored homeless advocacy organization and a secondary comparison setting from an activist campaign for housing, both from a U.S. metropolitan area. Shifting from actors to settings and group styles clarifies the interplay between religious and nonreligious culture over time. The shift refines our understanding of how religion’s civic or political effects work, as in the case of building social capital for collective action. The cultural-interactionist model enables us to track historical change in everyday group settings. It promotes further research on historically changing ways of managing religious diversity, and diverse ways of constructing a religious self.

Putting Values and Institutions Back into the Theory of Strategic Action Fields
Jack A. Goldstone and Bert Useem

Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam have presented a new theory of how collective action creates the structure and dynamics of societies. At issue is the behavior of social movements, organizations, states, political parties, and interest groups. They argue that all of these phenomena are produced by social actors (which may be individuals or groups) involved in strategic action. This allows Fligstein and McAdam to advance a unified theory of “strategic action fields.” This article takes issue with aspects of Fligstein and McAdam’s important contribution. We argue that that all organizations are not essentially the same; in addition to the location and interactions of their strategic actors, their dynamics are shaped and distinguished by differing values and norms, by the autonomy of institutions embedded in strategic action fields, and by the fractal relationships that nested fields have to broader principles of justice and social organization that span societies. We also criticize the view that social change can be conceptualized solely in terms of shifting configurations of actors in strategic action fields. Rather, any theory of social action must distinguish between periods of routine contention under the current institutions and norms and exceptional challenges to the social order that aim to transform those institutions and norms.

Response to Goldstone and Useem
Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam

Processual Comparative Sociology: Building on the Approach of Charles Tilly
Chares Demetriou

Charles Tilly’s work on process analysis offers a methodological approach to comparative-historical sociology that can be considered paradigmatic. Yet the approach has been widely criticized for lack of rigor. This paper maintains that the problem lies in insufficient clarification of the approach’s central concept: mechanism. Once scrutinized, the concept reveals a tension between its connotation and its denotation. This can be addressed in two ways: either by maintaining what the concept connotes according to Tilly but limiting what it denotes (thus limiting the paradigm’s scope conditions) or by limiting what it connotes and maintaining what it was intended by Tilly to denote (thus maintaining wide scope conditions). Elucidating the possibilities of processual comparison is particularly important for comparative-historical sociology because the subfield rests upon processual presuppositions.

Crime & Delinquency 58(6)

Crime & Delinquency, November 2012: Volume 58, Issue 6

General Strain Theory and School Bullying: An Empirical Test in South Korea
Byongook Moon, Merry Morash, and John D. McCluskey

Despite recognition of bullying as a serious school and social problem with negative effects on students’ well-being and safety, and the overlap between aggressive bullying acts and delinquent behavior, few empirical studies test the applicability of criminological theories to explaining bullying. This limitation in research is especially evident in studies of non-Western countries. Using longitudinal data on 2,817 South Korean youth, the current study attempts to fill the gaps by examining whether general strain theory can explain school bullying. As the theory suggests, youth who experience victimization by peers and conflict with parents are more likely to engage in bullying. However, there is limited evidence of the expected interaction effects between strains and conditioning factors. Inconsistent with general strain theory, parental attachment and positive relationships with teachers do not condition the effects of strains, and anger is not a mediating variable. Implications for interventions and for future research are discussed.

A Partial Test of Agnew’s General Theory of Crime and Delinquency
Yan Zhang, George Day, and Liqun Cao

In 2005, Agnew introduced a new integrated theory, which he labels a general theory of crime and delinquency. He proposes that delinquency is more likely to occur when constraints against delinquency are low and motivations for delinquency are high. In addition, he argues that constraints and motivations are influenced by variables in five life domains. Capitalizing on longitudinal data of Paternoster’s Youths and Deterrence: Columbia, South Carolina, 1979-1981, a structural equation model is developed to test Agnew’s theory. Data limitations preclude a full test of the theory, but the results support the core proposition of the theory: Life domains increase delinquency by reducing constraints against delinquency and by increasing motivations for delinquency. Other propositions of Agnew’s theory garner mixed results.

How Risky Is Marijuana Possession? Considering the Role of Age, Race, and Gender
Holly Nguyen and Peter Reuter

Arrest rates per capita for possession of marijuana have increased threefold over the last 20 years and now constitute the largest single arrest offense category. Despite the increase in arrest numbers, rates of use have remained stable during much of the same period. This article presents the first estimates of the arrest probabilities for marijuana, conditional on use in the previous 12 months; this is an appropriate measure of the intensity of enforcement against users. We analyze differences by age, race, and gender from 1982 to 2008. The probabilities of arrest for a marijuana user were similar across age and race categories until 1991. By 2006, that had changed sharply. Arrest rates among current marijuana users are disproportionately high for adolescents, Blacks, and males. The rate has varied between 0.8% and 1.8% across years; the rate per incident of use has ranged between about 1/3,000 and 1/6,000. There is no compelling account of why marijuana arrest probabilities have increased nationally or why the focus has been on youth, minorities, and males but the disproportionate increase for young Black males raises issues of disparate impact.

The Timing and Accumulation of Judicial Sanctions Among Drug Court Clients
Nick McRee and Laurie A. Drapela

Judicial sanctions are used by drug courts to encourage clients to comply with program requirements. However, few studies have explored the application of sanctions in drug courts or the relationship between sanctions and drug court graduation. This article reports the results of a study of sanctions as applied in a drug court in southwest Washington State. Results reveal no significant difference in the number of sanctions accrued between drug court graduates and noncompleters. However, noncompleters are significantly more likely than graduates to accrue sanctions within the first 30 days of entering drug court. Furthermore, accrual of an early sanction is highly predictive of eventual program failure. Severity of the first sanction (regardless of when it was received) is also related to a lower probability of graduation. The authors conclude that information about how offenders accrue sanctions may be useful to drug court personnel as they monitor clients and determine appropriate intervention strategies.

Drugs, Guns, and Disadvantaged Youths: Co-Occurring Behavior and the Code of the Street
Andrea N. Allen and Celia C. Lo

Guided by Anderson’s theory of the code of the street, this study explored social mechanisms linking individual-level disadvantage factors with the adoption of beliefs grounded in the code of the street and with drug trafficking and gun carrying—the co-occurring behavior shaping violence among young men in urban areas. Secondary data were employed from a sample of male inmates and a sample of male high school students. Data analysis indicated that the social disadvantage factor absent father significantly predicted this co-occurring behavior in the inmate sample, whereas the social disadvantage factor history of expulsion did so in the student sample. In both samples, race and adopting beliefs about gun carrying from the code of the street were significant predictors of drug trafficking and gun carrying. The results do not suggest that such code-based beliefs’ impact on drug trafficking and gun carrying differs by race. Implications for social policy are discussed.

A Squandered Opportunity?: A Review of SAMHSA’S National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices for Offenders
Benjamin J. Wright, Sheldon X. Zhang, and David Farabee

In the past decade, the push for evidence-based programs has taken on unprecedented prominence in the fields of substance abuse and correctional treatment as a key determinant for intervention funding. The National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP), managed and funded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, was established in 1997 to aid community agencies in adopting intervention models for their particular clientele. Although well intentioned, the NREPP has also created opportunities that invite conflicts of interests and promulgate programs with questionable efficacy. After an exhaustive review of the literature that purports to have provided the “empirical evidence” for the NREPP registered programs, the authors found numerous irregularities in the studies with findings often based on small sample sizes. A more troubling finding is that much of the supporting literature is produced by the program developers themselves. There is a general lack of independent verification of the claimed treatment effects. If the NREPP is to fulfill its intended function, a tighter vetting process is needed for programs to be registered so that community agencies and treatment practitioners can consult with confidence.

Beyond Boston: Applying Theory to Understand and Address Sustainability Issues in Focused Deterrence Initiatives for Violence Reduction
Marie Skubak Tillyer, Robin S. Engel, and Brian Lovins

Focused deterrence initiatives, including the most famous, Boston’s Operation Ceasefire, have been associated with significant reductions in violence in several U.S. cities. Despite early successes, some cities have experienced long-term sustainability issues. Recent work in Cincinnati, Ohio, has focused on institutionalizing focused deterrence in an attempt to achieve sustainability. Despite these efforts, it became apparent that institutionalization was necessary, but insufficient, to achieve long-term success. This study turns to criminological theory to understand why focused deterrence works and how the model can be improved to maximize crime prevention potential. In doing so, the authors draw from the principles of effective intervention from correctional rehabilitation research and describe how these elements have been integrated into the Cincinnati Initiative to Reduce Violence.

Social Problems 59(4)

Social Problems, November 2012: Volume 59, Issue 4

“Another Second Chance”: Rethinking Rehabilitation through the Lens of California's Prison Fire Camps
Philip Goodman

Many scholars and practitioners treat rehabilitation as a black box that, if working, necessarily outputs low(er) recidivism rates. In contrast, this article proposes a constructionist view that asks how those on the front lines of the “carceral archipelago” actually think about, and experience, rehabilitation. Here I examine California's prison fire camps, atypical carceral settings in which state prisoners work as wildland firefighters. The camps present a puzzle: how is it that there exists in California—routinely considered an extreme case in the shift toward warehouse prisons—a penal setting in which rehabilitation not only survives, but affects many aspects of everyday life for prisoners, staff, and administrators alike? The answer, I argue, is that despite some important historical continuities—especially around work and the twin impulses to reform and punish (cf. Garland 1985; Hutchinson 2006)—rehabilitation has evolved considerably. This includes a focus on an abstract notion of work ethic not dependent on the learning of concrete work skills, as well as a neoliberal discourse about personal responsibility. In sum, rehabilitation exists in the fire camps not in spite of the “punitive turn,” but in many ways precisely because of it. Implications include: (1) rehabilitation can be (and perhaps always is) more malleable and multifaceted than is often recognized; (2) the fire camps are simultaneously prisons and nonprisons, and those in them both inmates and heroes; and (3) punishment is a messy, variegated phenomenon in which the relationships between larger discourses and social structures and practices on the ground are dynamic and varied.

Buying Time: Gendered Patterns in Union Contracts
Jillian Crocker and Dan Clawson

As products of negotiations, union contracts provide insight into areas of stress concerning work hours and schedules. Our analysis demonstrates the ways workers in two occupations—nurses and firefighters—use collective bargaining to develop workplace policies that enable them to manage jobs and family. The contracts show significant differences between firefighters and nurses over issues of work scheduling, overtime, and vacations. These differences reflect nurses' concern with putting boundaries on their work lives in favor of caregiving and firefighters' concern with breadwinning. Nurse contracts specify scheduling rules in detail, heavily restrict mandatory overtime, and outline guidelines for distributing prime time vacations. Firefighter contracts, by contrast, downplay the substance of scheduling processes in favor of emphasizing fairness among firefighters in the context of restrictive weekly schedules and equal access to overtime opportunities. Findings suggest not only that union contracts are an important tool with which workers manage the competing demands of work and family, but that the manner and extent to which such negotiations happen are shaped by gendered occupation.

Does This Make Me Look Fat? Aesthetic Labor and Fat Talk as Emotional Labor in a Women's Plus-Size Clothing Store
Kjerstin Gruys

Drawing on participant observation at a women's plus-size clothing store, “Real Style,” this article draws on the unique experiences of plus-sized women in their roles as workers, managers, and customers, to examine how mainstream beauty standards, body-accepting branding, and customers' diverse feeling rules shape service interactions. Despite branding that promoted prideful appreciation for “Real” bodies, the influence of these body-accepting discourses was constrained by women's internalization of mainstream fat stigma, resulting in an environment characterized by deep ambivalence toward larger body size. This ambivalence allowed hierarchies between women to be reified, rather than dissolved; although plus-sized employees and customers expressed gratitude to have Real Style as a “safe space” to work and shop, workers experienced gender segregation of jobs, and thinner employees were privileged with special tasks. Further, managers and white (but not black or Latina) customers used body-disparaging “fat talk” to elicit workers' emotional labor while confronting thinner workers for defying aesthetic expectations. This research offers a more nuanced understanding of the ties between aesthetic labor and emotional labor, while highlighting some of the factors that prevent stigmatized groups from successfully reclaiming status within consumer contexts.

Defying (Dis)Empowerment in a Battered Women's Shelter: Moral Rhetorics, Intersectionality, and Processes of Control and Resistance
Amanda M. Gengler

Power has been fruitfully conceptualized as a relationship between two or more actors or groups (Janeway 1980; Lukes 2005). Much of this work has treated power relations in generic terms (e.g., Foucault 1978; Scott 1990), paying little attention to how actors' positions in structures of inequality shape the interactional resources available to them as they devise strategies of control and resistance in interaction with one another. Here, I argue that we can better understand processes of control and resistance by examining how actors leverage their positions in structures of inequality and employ strategies likely to most deeply resonate with their (raced, classed, and gendered) target audiences. I explore these issues by analyzing how power struggles unfolded at a battered women's shelter. Using ethnographic data gathered over a ten-month period, I show how staff developed a gendered structure of control designed to obliquely manage shelter residents, while residents developed strategies of resistance that drew on resources available to them as poor and working-class women, and were directly responsive to the particular actors and structures of control they encountered in this context. The locally valued moral rhetoric of women's “empowerment” functioned as a key resource in this struggle. I aim here to broaden current discussions of control and resistance by highlighting the locally dependent, audience-specific, and profoundly intersectional nature of these interactions.

From Varieties of Capitalism to Varieties of Activism: The Antisweatshop Movement in Comparative Perspective
Jennifer Bair and Florence Palpacuer

Recent decades have witnessed an upsurge in activism around labor issues in global production networks. A particularly prominent example is the antisweatshop movement, a diverse collection of efforts to promote labor rights and improve working conditions in international supply chains for apparel and footwear products. Much of the literature on the antisweatshop movement emphasizes its global nature and the reliance of activists on transnational advocacy networks involving coalitions of Northern (usually U.S.-based) consumers and Southern workers. Drawing theoretical inspiration from the varieties of capitalism literature, we examine instead the emergence and institutionalization of antisweatshop politics within the global North. Based on interviews with groups in eight countries, we analyze the trajectories of antisweatshop activism in Western Europe, the United States, and Canada, finding marked variation in the leadership and composition of the movement across regions. Antisweatshop politics were particularly contentious in the United States, where labor leaders were active in framing the sweatshop scourge as a domestic as well as an international social problem. In Europe and Canada, the key role was played not by organized labor, but by other civil society groups that encouraged a multistakeholder approach to what was perceived primarily as an issue of social and economic development in the global South. Overall, our analysis highlights how national institutions and political cultures shape the way that actors assess a social problem and evaluate the possibilities available to effect meaningful change.

Modularity and Transferability of Repertoires of Contention
Takeshi Wada

A “modular repertoire of contention” denotes prevalent forms of interaction that are used by a variety of actors against a variety of targets for a variety of issues in a variety of locations. Modular repertoires are important in the literature of contentious politics and social movements because of their transferability across different contentious contexts. This study addresses three limitations in the literature. First, discussion about modular repertoires to date has been framed as if some forms of contention were modular and other forms were not—thus a dichotomy is set up between modular and nonmodular forms. Second, specific dimensions of modularity (transferability across actors, targets, issues, and locations) have been mostly ignored in the literature. Third, an empirical measure has not yet been developed for the concept. By assessing how broadly a form of contention is diffused across actors, targets, issues, and locations, this study develops a new measure of modularity. Using the measure, it evaluates Charles Tilly's modular repertoire hypothesis. According to the hypothesis, public meetings, petitions, and demonstrations became a modular repertoire in Great Britain during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries as a result of Parliament's rise as the center of British national politics. The results obtained here offer new insights. The empirical measure proposed will advance our understanding of repertoires of contention and political systems.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 28(4)

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, December 2012: Volume 28, Issue 4

Race, Space, and Violence: Exploring Spatial Dependence in Structural Covariates of White and Black Violent Crime in US Counties
Michael T. Light & Casey T. Harris

Objectives: To join the literature on spatial analysis with research testing the racial invariance hypothesis by examining the extent to which claims of racial invariance are sensitive to the spatial dynamics of community structure and crime. Methods: Using 1999–2001 county-level arrest data, we employ seemingly unrelated regression models, spatial lag models, and geographically weighted regression analyses to (1) compare the extent of racial similarity/difference across these different modeling procedures, (2) evaluate the impact of spatial dependence on violent crime across racial groups, and (3) explore spatial heterogeneity in associations between macro-structural characteristics and violent crime. Results: Results indicate that spatial processes matter, that they are more strongly associated with white than black violent crime, and that accounting for space does not significantly attenuate race-group differences in the relationship between structural characteristics (e.g., structural disadvantage) and violent crime. Additionally, we find evidence of significant variation across space in the relationships between county characteristics and white and black violent crime, suggesting that conclusions of racial invariance/variation are sensitive to where one is looking. These results are robust to different specifications of the dependent variable as well as different units of analysis. Conclusions: Our study suggests the racial invariance debate is not yet settled. More importantly, our study has revealed an additional level of complexity—race specific patterns of spatially heterogeneous effects—that future research on social structure and racial differences in violence should incorporate both empirically and theoretically.

The Moving Home Effect: A Quasi Experiment Assessing Effect of Home Location on the Offence Location
Andrew Wheeler

Objectives: This study aims to test whether the home location has a causal effect on the crime location. To accomplish this the study capitalizes on the natural experiment that occurs when offender’s move, and uses a unique metric, the distance between sequential offenses, to determine if when an offender moves the offense location changes. Methods: Using a sample of over 40,000 custodial arrests from Syracuse, NY between 2003 and 2008, this quasi-experimental design uses t test’s of mean differences, and fixed effects regression modeling to determine if moving has a significant effect on the distance between sequential offenses. Results: This study finds that when offenders move they tend to commit crimes in locations farther away from past offences than would be expected without moving. The effect is rather small though, both in absolute terms (an elasticity coefficient of 0.02), and in relation to the effect of other independent variables (such as the time in between offenses). Conclusions: This finding suggests that the home has an impact on where an offender will choose to commit a crime, independent of offence, neighborhood, or offender characteristics. The effect is small though, suggesting other factors may play a larger role in influencing where offenders choose to commit crime.

Hyperbolic Time Discounting, Offender Time Preferences and Deterrence
Thomas A. Loughran, Ray Paternoster & Douglas Weiss

Objectives: This study examines the phenomena of intertemporal decision making—decisions involving costs and benefits that occur at different points in time. Two models of intertemporal time discounting are the exponential and hyperbolic models. Previous work in behavioral economics and psychology is relied on to make the case that the discounting of delayed outcomes (both gains and losses) may be hyperbolic rather than exponential. Methods: Data were collected from 478 university undergraduate students who responded to a hypothetical scenario involving drunk driving. The potential gains and losses of drunk driving were delayed at five different intervals from “tonight” to “10 years from now”, respondents were also asked to provide estimates of both the risk they would get caught if they did drink and drive and the probability that they would drink and drive under the conditions described in the scenario. Results: Our results imply that individuals have hyperbolic time preferences for both rewards and gains, and that—unlike severity, the effect of which may be muted by risk—these discount functions appear to be operating independently of changes in the risk certainty of detection. Consistent with hyperbolic discounting, for example, when the benefit of drinking and driving was delayed by 1 week the self-reported intention to drink and drive increased by nearly 10%, however, when the gain was delayed by one month, intentions to drink and drive increased by only 4%. A smaller effect was found for delayed costs. Conclusions: Avenues for additional research include the possibility of negative discount rates and the implications of persons’ awareness of their discount rates.

Post-release Employment and Recidivism in Norway
Torbjørn Skardhamar & Kjetil Telle

Objectives: Investigate the transition from prison to employment and the relationship between post-release employment and recidivism. Methods: We use a sample of every person released from Norwegian prisons in 2003 (N = 7,476), and they are followed through 2006 with monthly measures. We estimate the time to recidivism using discrete time survival models, conditioning upon both pre-release characteristics and post-release time-varying covariates (employment, educational enrollment and participation in labor market programs). Results: The majority of former inmates were employed at some point in our data window, but it took approximately 30 months for 30% of them to become employed. The hazard of recidivism is substantially lower (0.12, p < .001) when former inmates are employed compared with unemployed, although observable individual characteristics can account for a large share of this association (0.50, p < .001, after adjustment). The negative association between employment and recidivism remains when controlling for other post-release statuses. Although post-release employment periods are associated with a lower risk of recidivism for all categories of principal offence, the magnitude of the association varies. The association is smaller for those receiving social benefits. Conclusion: The findings are consistent with theories suggesting that employment reduces the risk of recidivism.

Examining What Makes Violent Crime Victims Unique: Extending Statistical Methods for Studying Specialization to the Analysis of Crime Victims
Christopher J. Schreck, Graham C. Ousey, Bonnie S. Fisher & Pamela Wilcox

Objectives: Much victimization research focuses on specific types of crime victims, which implies that the factors responsible for some victimization outcomes are distinct from others. Recent developments in victimization theory, however, take a more general approach, postulating that victimization regardless of type will share a similar basic etiology. This research examines how and whether the risk factors that are associated with violent victimization significantly differ from those that predict nonviolent victimization. Methods: Using data from 3,682 Kentucky youth, we employ Osgood and Schreck’s (2007) Item Response Theory-based statistical approach for detecting specialization to determine the properties and predictors of tendencies for individuals to fall victim to specific types of crime. Results: Findings show that victims typically experience varied outcomes, but some victims have a clear tendency toward violent victimization and that it is possible to predict this tendency. Conclusions: The findings indicate that a more nuanced general approach, one that accounts for tendencies toward specific victimization outcomes, might add insight about the causes of victimization. This research also shows how statistical methods designed to examine offense specialization can add value for research on victimization.

Does Self-Control Influence Maternal Attachment? A Reciprocal Effects Analysis from Early Childhood Through Middle Adolescence
Ryan C. Meldrum, Jacob T. N. Young, Carter Hay & Jamie L. Flexon

Objectives: The purpose of this study is twofold. First, this study assesses the extent to which self-control and maternal attachment mutually influence one another. Second, it investigates whether this process continues to occur during adolescence. To date, studies of the etiology of self-control have yet to adequately address these issues, despite the fact that a number of theoretical perspectives emphasize the reciprocal nature of the parent-child relationship. Methods: The current study seeks to shed light on these issues by examining the relationship between self-control and maternal attachment using structural equation modeling for eight waves of data spanning a period of time that encompasses early childhood through middle adolescence. Results: The results yield two findings bearing on the adequacy of Gottfredson and Hirschi’s model of self-control development. First, measures of self-control and maternal attachment were found to mutually influence one another during childhood. Second, these effects were reduced to nonsignificance during adolescence. Conclusions: This study finds that self-control emerges during childhood in a complex manner in which it both shapes and is shaped by parental attachment.

“Because You’re Mine, I Walk the Line”? Marriage, Spousal Criminality, and Criminal Offending Over the Life Course
Marieke van Schellen, Robert Apel & Paul Nieuwbeerta

Objectives: This study is an analysis of the relationship between marriage and crime in a high-risk sample of Dutch men and women. Marriages are classified as to whether the spouse had been convicted of a crime prior to the marriage, in order to ascertain if one’s criminal career after marriage unfolds differently depending on the criminal history of one’s spouse. Methods: Data are from the Criminal Career and Life-Course Study, a random sample of all individuals convicted of a criminal offense in the Netherlands in 1977 (N = 4,615). Lifetime criminal histories for all subjects are constructed from age 12 to calendar year 2003. Official marriage records are also consulted, and the criminal history of all spouses are similarly constructed. Fixed-effects Poisson models are estimated to quantify the relationship between marriage, spousal criminality, and conviction frequency, controlling for age, parenthood, prior conviction, and prior incarceration. Results: Among men, marriage reduces the frequency of criminal conviction, but only if the marriage is to a non-convicted spouse. Marriage to a convicted spouse, on the other hand, is indistinguishable from singlehood—it neither discourages nor promotes criminal behavior. Among women, marriage has a crime-reducing effect, regardless of the criminal history of the spouse. A set of preliminary follow-up analyses suggests further that men with more extensive criminal histories, and with more stable marriages, benefit in a more pronounced way from marriage to a non-convicted spouse. However, even unstable marriages to non-convicted spouses appear to reduce conviction frequency while they last. Conclusions: Marriage is indeed a salient transition in the criminal career, but there are important differences depending on the characteristics of the offender (gender, criminal history), the characteristics of the spouse (criminal history), and the characteristics of the marriage (duration). The authors conclude that while marriage matters, it does not necessarily mean the end of a criminal career, and that processes of both partner selection and partner influence deserve close attention by marriage-crime researchers. Qualifications of the study’s findings include the use of conviction data from official sources, the use of a sample of men and women who were all convicted of a crime at some point in their lives, the study of legal marriage in the Netherlands, and the inability to measure potential mechanisms for the observed marriage effects.

Criminology 50(4)

Criminology, November 2012: Volume 50, Issue 4

Age And Sexual Assault In Correctional Facilities: A Blocked Opportunity Approach
Richard B. Felson, Patrick Cundiff and Noah Painter-Davis

We use data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) to examine the effects of age on the risk of sexual and physical assault in prisons and jails. Our evidence suggests that male inmates of all ages tend to sexually assault young men. The preference for the young is much stronger for sexual than for physical assault, which suggests that the young are sexually assaulted because of their sexual attractiveness rather than because of their vulnerability. We argue that the strong relationship between sexual attractiveness and age reduces opportunities for consensual sex among older inmates. As a result of blocked opportunities for consensual sex, older men are much more likely to commit sexual assault than one would expect, given the general tendency of young men to be more violent. Thus, the age–attractiveness relationship can parsimoniously explain the contrasting age patterns one observes for offenders and victims.

The Collateral Consequences Of Incarceration Revisited: A Qualitative Analysis Of The Effects On Caregivers Of Children Of Incarcerated Parents
Jillian J. Turanovic, Nancy Rodriguez and Travis C. Pratt

While policy makers have long extolled the benefits of incarceration, criminologists have expended considerable effort demonstrating the harmful collateral consequences of incarceration. Sampson (2011) recently challenged researchers to move beyond this dichotomy and to assess the “social ledger” of incarceration, where both the potential benefits and harms associated with incarceration are examined. To shed light on the variation in the collateral consequences of incarceration, we focus on the experiences of a valuable group of individuals directly impacted by imprisonment: those caring for children of incarcerated parents. Drawing from in-depth interviews with a diverse group of caregivers (N= 100), we examine the various consequences (both positive and negative) that occur in their lives as a result of incarceration, as well as the causal processes responsible for the outcomes we observe. Our findings reveal marked variation in the effects of incarceration on caregivers. Such effects are shaped by (1) the prisoner's prior parental involvement, (2) the interpersonal relationship between caregiver and prisoner, and (3) the caregiver's family support system. These findings have important implications for future work conducted on the collateral consequences of incarceration for caregivers, children, and families.

Intimate Partner Violence In U.S. Metropolitan Areas: The Contextual Influences Of Police And Social Services
Min Xie, Janet L. Lauritsen and Karen Heimer

Although community responses to the problem of intimate partner violence typically focus on increasing and improving policing and social services, few studies have examined the relationship among police force size, social service providers, and women's safety at home. To address this issue, we use data from the National Crime Victimization Survey to examine patterns of intimate partner violence for 40 metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) over a 16-year period (1989–2004). We analyze the data using three-level multilevel models, with individual respondents (N = 487,166) nested within years, nested within MSAs. Net of other important individual and contextual factors, the results show that women's likelihood of victimization is significantly lower in MSAs that employ more sworn officers per capita, whereas the states’ mandatory arrest laws are not found to have significant independent effects. Above and beyond the effects of police force size, we also find a significant negative relationship between the size of the social service workforce and intimate partner violence. Future research should develop collaborative data collection efforts to examine the specific activities of police and social service workers in dealing with intimate partner violence so that the mechanisms underlying these significant relationships can be understood more clearly.

Policing Race: The Racial Stratification Of Searches In Police Traffic Stops
Jeff Rojek, Richard Rosenfeld and Scott Decker

Research on race effects in police traffic stops is theoretically underdeveloped. In this study, we derive propositions from Donald Black's theory of law to explain the interaction effects of officer and driver race on searches in traffic stops in St. Louis, Missouri. Our citywide results and those for stops in predominantly White communities are generally consistent with the theory: Searches are more likely in stops of Black drivers than in those of White drivers, especially by White officers, controlling for other characteristics of the officer, driver, and stop. In predominantly Black communities, however, stops of White drivers by White officers are most likely to result in a search. We interpret both sets of results as manifestations of racial profiling in segregated communities and suggest that Black's theory of law remains a promising theoretical framework for future research on the continuing significance of race-based policing in the United States.

Neighborhood Housing Investments And Violent Crime In Seattle, 1981–2007
María B. Vélez, Christopher J. Lyons and Blake Boursaw

Despite significant advances in the study of neighborhoods and crime, criminologists have paid surprisingly less attention to the extralocal forces that shape violence. To address this issue, we draw on an emerging body of work that stresses the role of home mortgage lending—a resource secured via interaction with external actors—in reducing neighborhood violence and extend it by addressing concerns that the lending–violence relationship is spurious and confounded by simultaneity. We explore the longitudinal relationship between residential mortgage lending and violence in Seattle with a pooled time series of 118 census tracts over 27 years, and we instrument our endogenous predictors (home mortgage lending and violent crime) with changes in their levels from prior periods. Employing Arellano–Bond difference models, we assess both the effect of mortgage lending on violent crime as well as the effect of violent crime levels on mortgage activity. We find that infusions of home mortgage lending yield reductions in subsequent violent crime; yet the impact of violent crime on subsequent lending is not significant. Results underscore the importance of incorporating external forces such as home mortgage lending into explanations of neighborhood violence.

Dealers, Thieves, And The Common Determinants Of Drug And Nondrug Illegal Earnings
Melissa Thompson and Christopher Uggen

Drug crime often is viewed as distinctive from other types of crime, meriting greater or lesser punishment. In view of this special status, this article asks whether and how illegal earnings attainment differs between drug sales and other forms of economic crime. We estimate monthly illegal earnings with fixed-effects models, based on data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project and the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth. Although drug sales clearly differ from other types of income-generating crime, we find few differences in their determinants. For example, the use of cocaine or heroin increases illegal earnings from both drug and nondrug crimes, indicating some degree of fungibility in the sources of illegal income. More generally, the same set of factors—particularly legal and illegal opportunities and embeddedness in criminal and conventional networks—predicts both drug earnings and nondrug illegal earnings.

Adolescent Violent Victimization And Precocious Union Formation
Danielle C. Kuhl, David F. Warner and Andrew Wilczak

This article bridges scholarship in criminology and family sociology by extending arguments about “precocious exits” from adolescence to consider early union formation as a salient outcome of violent victimization for youths. Research indicates that early union formation is associated with several negative outcomes; yet the absence of attention to union formation as a consequence of violent victimization is noteworthy. We address this gap by drawing on life course theory and data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to examine the effect of violent victimization (“street” violence) on the timing of first coresidential union formation—differentiating between marriage and cohabitation—in young adulthood. Estimates from Cox proportional hazard models show that adolescent victims of street violence experience higher rates of first union formation, especially marriage, early in the transition to adulthood; however, this effect declines with age, as such unions become more normative. Importantly, the effect of violent victimization on first union timing is robust to controls for nonviolent delinquency, substance abuse, and violent perpetration. We conclude by discussing directions for future research on the association between violent victimization and coresidential unions with an eye toward the implications of such early union formation for desistance.