Crime & Delinquency 59(1)

Crime & Delinquency, February 2013: Volume 59, Issue 1

The Dangerous Drug Offender in Federal Court: Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, and Culpability
Cassia Spohn and Lisa L. Sample

This study examines the complex relationships among stereotypes about crime, the offender’s race/ethnicity, and sentencing decisions. Using data on White, Black, and Hispanic male drug offenders sentenced in three U.S. district courts and a definition of the dangerous drug offender appropriate to the federal sentence system, the authors explore the degree to which stereotypes about dangerous drug offenders influence sentence length. The results reveal that fitting the stereotype of a dangerous federal drug offender (i.e., a male drug trafficker with a prior trafficking conviction who used a weapon to commit the current offense) affected the length of the prison sentence for Black offenders but not for White or Hispanic offenders. Further analysis revealed that this effect was confined to Black offenders convicted of drug offenses involving crack cocaine. The results provide further evidence that the focal concerns guiding judicial decision making may vary depending on the offender’s race or ethnicity.

The Institutionalization of Racial Profiling Policy: An Examination of Antiprofiling Policy Adoption Among Large Law Enforcement Agencies
Kirk Miller

The issue of racial profiling has come to represent one of the key contemporary challenges facing law enforcement agencies in the United States. One way that agencies have responded to this issue is to adopt anti-profiling policies to address concerns about racial disparities in traffic stops and their outcomes. Policy adoption is assumed to encourage more racially equitable policing as well as enhance community relations. While both of these outcomes appear beneficial to law enforcement agencies, there is also good reason to expect that agencies may differ in the extent to which they are likely to implement such policy. This study explores what factors explain the adoption of protocols addressing the racial profiling phenomenon. Using data on large law enforcement agencies from the 2003 LEMAS survey, the findings reveal that both agency organizational characteristics and environmental features of the jurisdiction are associated with the agency’s profiling policy regime.

An Examination of the Interactions of Race and Gender on Sentencing Decisions Using a Trichotomous Dependent Variable
Tina L. Freiburger and Carly M. Hilinski

This study examined how race, gender, and age interact to affect defendants’ sentences using a trichotomized dependent variable. The findings indicate that the racial and gender disparity found in sentencing decisions was largely due to Black men’s increased likelihood of receiving jail as opposed to probation. The results also show that being young resulted in increased odds of receiving probation over jail for White men and for women but resulted in decreased odds for Black men. Separate analysis of incarceration terms to jail and prison further reveal that legal factors had a greater impact on prison than on jail sentence length. Overall, the results strongly support the argument that sentencing research needs to consider sentences to jail and prison separately.

Assessing the Differential Effects of Race and Ethnicity on Sentence Outcomes Under Different Sentencing Systems
Xia Wang, Daniel P. Mears, Cassia Spohn, and Lisa Dario

Although many states have adopted sentencing guidelines, questions remain about whether guidelines achieve one of their primary goals—reducing disparities that arise from such extralegal factors as race and ethnicity. To date, research has not taken a cross-state approach to testing for racial or ethnic disparity in sentences imposed in guideline and nonguideline states or to examining whether less disparity exists in states with voluntary or presumptive guidelines. To address this research gap and inform sentencing scholarship, data from the State Court Processing Statistics program are used to determine whether offenders’ race or ethnicity affects incarceration and sentence length decisions in jurisdictions with different types of sentencing systems. Implications of the findings for theory, research, and policy are discussed.

Disproportionate Minority Confinement of Juveniles: A National Examination of Black–White Disparity in Placements, 1997-2006
Jaya Davis and Jon R. Sorensen

Beginning in fiscal year 1994, the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention included, as a requirement for a state to receive Federal Formula Grants, the determination of whether disproportionate minority confinement existed in its juvenile justice system, the identification of its causes, and the development and implementation of corrective strategies. The current study examined the extent to which U.S. juvenile justice systems have been successful in reducing disproportionate minority confinement—specifically, disproportionate African American incarceration—since the implementation of the office’s initiative. The findings suggest that, on average, there has been a reduction of nearly one fifth in the disproportionate Black:White ratio of juvenile placements, controlling for the groups’ rate of arrests during the past decade

Neighborhood Disadvantage and Verbal Ability as Explanations of the Black–White Difference in Adolescent Violence: Toward an Integrated Model
Thomas L. McNulty, Paul E. Bellair, and Stephen J. Watts

This article develops a multilevel model that integrates individual difference and sociological explanations of the Black–White difference in adolescent violence. Our basic premise is that low verbal ability is a criminogenic risk factor that is in part an outcome of exposure to neighborhood and family disadvantages. Analysis of the 1997 National Longitudinal Survey of Youth reveals that verbal ability has direct and indirect effects (through school achievement) on violence, provides a partial explanation for the racial disparity, and mediates the effect of socioeconomic disadvantage at the neighborhood level. Results support the view that neighborhood and family disadvantages have repercussions for the acquisition of verbal ability, which, in turn, serves as a protective factor against violence. We conclude that explanation of the race difference is best conceived as originating from the segregation of Blacks in disadvantaged contexts.

Law & Society Review 46(4)

Law & Society Review, December 2012: Volume 46, Issue 4

Black Hole of Responsibility: The Adjudication Committee's Role in a Chinese Court
Xin He

How courts and judges in authoritarian regimes decide cases behind closed doors has rarely been studied, but it is critically important in comparative judicial studies. Primarily drawing on the minutes of the adjudication committee in a lower court in China, this article explores its operational patterns and decision-making process. The data suggest that among the criminal cases reviewed by the committee, very few were difficult or significant, but a relatively high percentage of the suggested opinions of the adjudicating judges was modified. In contrast, many civil cases reviewed were difficult to resolve but the committee offered little assistance. Overall the operation and decision-making of the committee were subsumed by the administrative ranking system inside the court and the authority of the court president was enormous. The analysis also demonstrates the limited role of the committee in both promoting legal consistency and resisting external influences. Instead of achieving its declared goals, the committee has degenerated into a device for both individual judges and committee members to shelter responsibility. The findings compel researchers to reevaluate the role of the adjudication committee in Chinese courts, and the relationship between judges and authoritarian regimes.

Pragmatic Resistance, Law, and Social Movements in Authoritarian States: The Case of Gay Collective Action in Singapore
Lynette J. Chua

This article draws from a qualitative study of Singapore's gay movement to analyze how gay organizing occurs in authoritarian states, and where and how law matters. Singapore's gay activists engage in “strategic adaptation” to deploy a strategy of pragmatic resistance that involves an interplay among legal restrictions and cultural norms. Balancing the movement's survival with its advancement, they shun direct confrontation, and avoid being seen as a threat to the existing political order. As legal restrictions and as a source of legitimacy, law correspondingly oppresses sexual conduct and civil-political liberties, and culturally delegitimizes dissent. However, when activists mount pragmatic resistance at and through law, it also matters as a source of contestation. Further, law matters as a trade-off between reifying the existing order in exchange for survival and immediate gains. Yet, by treating law as purely tactical, these activists arguably end up de-centering law, being pragmatically unconcerned with whether they are ideologically challenging or being co-opted by it.

Replacing and Amending Constitutions: The Logic of Constitutional Change in Latin America
Gabriel L. Negretto

Since 1978, all countries in Latin America have either replaced or amended their constitutions. What explains the choice between these two substantively different means of constitutional transformation? This article argues that constitutions are replaced when they fail to work as governance structures or when their design prevents competing political interests from accommodating to changing environments. According to this perspective, constitutions are likely to be replaced when constitutional crises are frequent, when political actors lack the capacity to implement changes by means of amendments or judicial interpretation, or when the constitutional regime has a power-concentrating design. It is further argued that the frequency of amendments depends both on the length and detail of the constitution and on the interaction between the rigidity of the amendment procedure and the fragmentation of the party system. The article provides statistical evidence to support these arguments and discusses the normative implications of the analysis.

Translating Human Rights of the “Enemy”: The Case of Israeli NGOs Defending Palestinian Rights
Daphna Golan and Zvika Orr

This article explores the practices, discourses and dilemmas of the Israeli human rights NGOs that are working to protect and promote the human rights of Palestinians in the Occupied Territories. This case can shed light on the complex process of “triangular translation” of human rights, which is distinct from other forms of human rights localization studied thus far. In this process, human rights NGOs translate international human rights norms on the one hand, and the suffering of the victims on the other, into the conceptions and legal language commonly employed by the state that violates these rights. We analyze the dialectics of change and reproduction embedded in the efforts of Israeli activists to defend Palestinian human rights while at the same time depoliticizing their work and adopting discriminatory premises and conceptions hegemonic in Israeli society. The recent and alarming legislative proposals in Israel aimed at curtailing the work of human rights NGOs reinforce the need to reconsider the role of human rights NGOs in society, including their depoliticized strategies, their use of legal language and their relations with the diminishing peace movement.

The Unintended Consequences of Penal Reform: A Case Study of Penal Transportation in Eighteenth-Century London
Ashley T. Rubin

What were the consequences of penal transportation to the New World for eighteenth-century British criminal justice? Transportation has been described by scholars as either a replacement of the death penalty responsible for its decline, or a penal innovation responsible for punishing a multitude of people more severely than they would have been punished before. Using data from the Old Bailey Sessions Papers and the Parliamentary Papers, this study examines sentencing and execution trends in eighteenth-century London. It takes advantage of the natural experiment provided by the passage of the 1718 Transportation Act that made transportation available as a penal sentence, thus enabling one to assess the “effect” of transportation on penal trends. This study finds that the primary consequence of the adoption of transportation was to make the criminal justice net more dense by subjecting people to a more intense punishment. While it was also associated with a small decline in capital sentences for some types of offenders, the adoption of transportation was also associated with an increase in the rate at which condemned inmates were executed. The study closes with a discussion of the conditions that may lead to law's unintended consequences, including the mesh-thinning consequences observed here.

Performing Regulation: Transcending Regulatory Ritualism in HIV Clinics
Carol A. Heimer and J. Lynn Gazley

Sociolegal scholars suggest that regulatory encounters often are occasions for displaying a surface compliance decoupled from day-to-day practice. Yet ethnographic data from five highly regulated HIV clinics show that regulatory encounters open opportunities both for ritualism and—surprisingly—for transcending ritualism. Using a theatrical analogy, we argue that improv performance is the technology that enables regulatory inspectors and clinic staff to transcend ritualism. As regulatory encounters unfold, clinics' carefully prepared performances sometimes change into more cooperative interactions where inspectors and regulatees hash out details about how rules will be applied and even work together on reports for the regulators' supervisors. By “performing together,” regulatory inspectors gain access to the clinic's backstage where they can assess clinic workers' deeper conformity to ethical and scientific norms. But such joint performances are less likely where cultural divides and material scarcity make it difficult for clinic staff to gain inspectors' trust.

Executive Branch Socialization and Deference on the U.S. Supreme Court
Rob Robinson

Are Supreme Court justices with prior experience in the executive branch more likely to defer to the president in separation of powers cases? While previous research has suggested that such background may signal judicial policy preferences but does not shape them, I argue here that institutional socialization may indeed increase future judicial deference to the president. Using an original data set of executive power cases decided between 1942 and 2007, I model justice-votes to test this hypothesis. I uncover three noteworthy findings: (1) a clear correlation between prior executive branch experience and support for the executive branch, (2) the degree of this support intensifies as executive branch tenure increases, a finding congruent with a socialization hypothesis, and (3) contrary to received wisdom, executive powers cases possess a clear ideological dimension, in line with the expectations of the attitudinal model.

Social Psychology Quarterly 75(4)

Social Psychology Quarterly, December 2012: Volume 75, Issue 4

Special Issue of Social Psychology Quarterly: “Social Psychology and Culture: Advancing Connections”

SPQ Retraction Statement

Identity Crises in Love and at Work: Dispositional Optimism as a Durable Personal Resource
Matthew A. Andersson

Stigma and Status: The Interrelation of Two Theoretical Perspectives
Jeffrey W. Lucas and Jo C. Phelan

Too Much of a Good Thing? Psychosocial Resources, Gendered Racism, and Suicidal Ideation among Low Socioeconomic Status African American Women
Brea L. Perry, Erin L. Pullen, and Carrie B. Oser

Role-Identity Salience, Purpose and Meaning in Life, and Well-Being among Volunteers
Peggy A. Thoits

Social Forces 91(2)

Social Forces, December 2012: Volume 91, Number 2

Stratification

Shifting Social Contracts and the Sociological Imagination
Beth A. Rubin

My basic argument is that thinking about social contracts, what they are and how they have changed is a powerful way to understand society and social change at multiple levels of analysis and in multiple contexts. This article has five main sections as follows. I first discuss different conceptions of social contracts. Second, I discuss some of the factors that changed social contracts in the United States and focus on four aspects of those changes. The third section turns to some research on generational differences to illustrate shifting social contracts. The fourth section provides some examples of shifting social contracts across a number of institutions, and the fifth section concludes with some thoughts about possibilities for sociology and society. The purpose of this article is to generate interest in using this theoretical approach to a wide range of areas in sociology. I begin with conceptions of the social contract.

Social Structure and Personality during the Transformation of Urban China: A Comparison to Transitional Poland and Ukraine
Melvin L. Kohn, Weidong Wang, Yin Yue

This article compares the relationships of social structure and personality of urban China during “privatization” to those of urban Poland and Ukraine during their transitions from socialism to nascent capitalism. These relationships are similar in pattern and nearly as strong in magnitude for China as for Poland, and stronger than for Ukraine. China differs from Poland and Ukraine, though, in that the job conditions that facilitate or restrict occupational self-direction, particularly the substantive complexity of work, do not explain nearly as large a portion of the relationships of class and stratification with personality for employed Chinese as for employed Poles and Ukrainians. This results from the unique situation of those self-employed rural migrants to urban China who are officially registered as having a rural residence.

Depleting Capital?: Race, Wealth and Informal Financial Assistance
Rourke L. O’Brien

Recent work suggests that part of the racial gap in wealth is explained by racial differences in network poverty. In this article, data from the 2007 Survey of Consumer Finances and the 2005 and 2007 Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID) are used to demonstrate that middle- and upper-income blacks are more likely to provide informal financial assistance than their white counterparts. Further, a lagged model using the PSID finds that this difference in financial assistance can account for part of the racial gap in wealth. An empirically useful definition of negative social capital is developed to illustrate how obligations of group membership can have stratifying consequences for individuals.

Status Configurations, Military Service and Higher Education
Lin Wang, Glen H. Elder Jr., Naomi J. Spence

The U.S. Armed Forces offer educational and training benefits as incentives for service. This study investigates the influence of status configurations on military enlistment and their link to greater educational opportunity. Three statuses (socio economic status of origin, cognitive ability and academic performance) have particular relevance for life course options. We hypothesize that young men with inconsistent statuses are more likely to enlist than men with consistent status profiles, and that military service improves access to college for certain configurations. Analyses of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) show (1. that several status configurations markedly increased the likelihood of military enlistment and (2. within status configurations, recruits were generally more likely to enroll in higher education than nonveterans, with associate degrees being more likely.

Immigration

Occupational Linguistic Niches and the Wage Growth of Latino Immigrants
Ted Mouw, Sergio Chavez

Does the concentration of recent Latino immigrants into occupational linguistic niches—occupations with large numbers of other Spanish speakers—restrict their wage growth? On the one hand, it is possible that Latino immigrants who are concentrated in jobs with large numbers of Spanish speakers may have less onthe-job exposure to English, which may isolate them socially and linguistically and limit their subsequent economic mobility. On the other hand, working in linguistic niches can also be beneficial for upwardly mobile immigrants if it allows them to gain a foothold in the United States while they improve their English skills and develop labor market experience. Using data from the 1996, 2001 and 2004 panels of the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), we test for the effect of working in occupational linguistic niches on wages and wage growth. The results show that while workers in linguistic niche occupations earn lower wages on average, they do not experience lower rates of wage growth over time. Moreover, we find that about 20 percent of workers who start the 4-year SIPP panel in linguistic niches experience occupational mobility that reduces the percentage of workers speaking Spanish in their occupation by over 10 percent over the course of the study, and these “movers” have higher levels of wage growth than other workers in the sample.

The Educational Gradient in Intermarriage: A Comparative Analysis of Immigrant Groups in the United States
Matthijs Kalmijn

A common claim in the literature is that higher-educated persons are more likely to marry outside their ethnic/racial group than lower-educated persons. We reexamine this “educational gradient” with a multilevel analysis of 46 immigrant groups in the Current Population Survey. We find that there are positive effects not only of individual education on intermarriage but also of the educational level of a group. Moreover, the educational gradient declines when the aggregate level of education of an immigrant group is higher. The aggregate effect of education points to cultural explanations of the gradient that emphasize the role of interethnic attitudes. The interaction effect points to a structural explanation that explains the gradient in terms of opportunities of finding similarly educated spouses within the group.

School Stratification in New and Established Latino Destinations
Molly Dondero, Chandra Muller

The growth and geographic diversification of the school-age Latino population suggest that schools in areas that previously had very few Latinos now serve many of these students. This study uses the 1999–2000 Schools and Staffing Survey and the Education Longitudinal Study of 2002 to compare public high schools in new and established Latino destinations. We examine school composition, school quality indicators, instructional resources and access to advanced math courses. We find that schools in new destinations display more favorable educational contexts according to a number of measures, but offer fewer linguistic support services than schools in established destinations. We also find evidence of a within-school Latino-white gap in advanced math course taking in new destinations, suggesting greater educational stratification within schools in those areas.

Delayed Special Education Placement for Learning Disabilities among Children of Immigrants
Jacob Hibel, Andrea D. Jasper

Prior theory and research suggest that children of immigrants would be at especially high risk for special education placement with learning disabilities. However, their longitudinal special education placement patterns have received scant attention. This study examines temporal patterns of special education placement among children of immigrants, focusing on the timing of special education placement for learning disabilities among first- or second-generation children compared with their third-plus generation peers. Results provide evidence that children of immigrants face comparatively lower odds of receiving early special education intervention services, but demonstrate an increasing risk as the school years progress. This relationship is explained by children of immigrants’ frequent participation in English as a second language programs in the early grades.

Politics

Does Critical Mass Matter?: Women’s Political Representation and Child Health in Developing Countries
Liam Swiss, Kathleen M. Fallon, Giovani Burgos

Studies on developed countries demonstrate that an increase in women legislators leads to a prioritization in health, an increase in social policy spending, and a decrease in poverty. Women representatives could therefore improve development trajectories in developing countries; yet, currently, no cross-national and longitudinal studies explore this possibility. Using random effects panel regression, we examine the influence of women’s representation on child health (one development indicator) across 102 developing countries from 1980 to 2005. Compared to countries with no women in parliament, countries meeting a 20-percent threshold experience increased rates of measles immunizations (10 percentage points), DPT immunizations (12 percentage points), infant survival (0.7 percentage points) and child survival (1 percentage point). Incremental increases in women’s representation show that child health improves most in socially and economically disadvantaged countries, and in countries less integrated in the world polity. Our findings reveal the importance of increased women’s representation, particularly in less developed and less globally embedded countries.

The Role of the State in the Repression and Revival of Religiosity in Central Eastern Europe
Tim Müller, Anja Neundorf

The aim of this article is to present two different roles of the state affecting individuals’ religiosity. First, we provide evidence for the effectiveness of socialist regimes in influencing citizens’ opinions by comparing religious beliefs among several generations of Eastern Europeans. Second, the article explores whether the democratization process in Eastern Europe led to a revival of religiosity by applying two strands of reasoning from the secularization framework: Berger’s theory of plausibility structures (Berger 1969) and Norris and Inglehart’s (2004) existential security hypothesis. The results show that due to an increased plausibility structure created by the democratic states a slight religious revival can be observed in several postcommunist countries.

Unemployment

The Gendered Consequences of Unemployment Insurance Reforms
Irma Mooi-Reci, Melinda Mills

This study examines whether a series of unemployment insurance benefit reforms that took place over a 20-year period in the Netherlands had a gendered effect on the duration of unemployment and labor market outcomes. Using longitudinal data from the Dutch Labor Supply Panel (OSA) over the period 1980–2000, and adopting a quasi-experimental design, we test whether seemingly ‘gender neutral’ institutional reforms result in a structural disadvantage for women in particular. Our results demonstrate a striking gender similarity in terms of shorter unemployment durations and ultimately less favorable labor market outcomes (lower occupational class, lower wage, part-time and temporary contracts) among both men and women affected by these reforms. Findings also indicate that disadvantaged groups (older and low-skilled female workers) are the most likely to experience a negative effect from state interventions. These findings provide support for the long-term gains of unemployment benefits and their role in operating as “bridges” to better employment.

Losing a Job: The Nonpecuniary Cost of Unemployment in the United States
Cristobal Young

Drawing on the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, I track the subjective well-being of individuals as they enter and exit unemployment. Job loss is a salient trigger event that sets off large changes in well-being. The factors expected to improve the lot of the unemployed have limited efficacy: (1) changes in family income are not significantly correlated with well-being; (2) unemployment insurance eligibility seems to partly mitigate the effect of job loss, but is a poor substitute for work; and (3) even reemployment recovers only about two thirds of the initial harm of job loss, indicating a potential long-term scar effect of unemployment. This highlights the deep and intractable hardship caused by unemployment in America.

Family

Reassessing the Link between Women’s Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Quality
Spencer L. James, Brett A. Beattie

Using data from 2,898 women from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-1979, we employ a novel method to examine two perspectives, social selection and the experience of cohabitation, commonly used to explain the negative relationship outcomes cohabiting women report. Results reveal cohabitation is negatively related to marital happiness and communication and positively related to conflict. As in previous research, selection mechanisms appear to increase the odds of cohabitation while decreasing marital happiness. A closer examination of the problem also reveals a negative effect of the experience of cohabitation. This paper’s primary contributions are the ability to model selection and experience in the same model and evidence of a robust effect of cohabitation on marital quality. These results underscore the complex pathways between union formation, family structure and marital outcomes.

Intimate Partner Violence in Colombia: Who Is at Risk?
Greta Friedemann-Sánchez, Rodrigo Lovatón

The role that domestic violence plays in perpetuating poverty is often overlooked as a development issue. Using data from the 2005 Demographic Health Survey, this paper examines the prevalence of intimate partner violence in Colombia. Employing an intrahousehold bargaining framework and a bivariate probit model, it assesses the prevalence of and risk factors for physical and emotional intimate partner violence, including such variables as income, education, gender-based intrahousehold decision making, employment, migration related to armed conflict and child maltreatment. The findings of the study particularly underscore the effects of early childhood maltreatment on domestic violence and the need for policy measures that span the life cycle and include families. Its recommendations for policy makers and researchers take into consideration practical, theoretical and methodological issues.

British Journal of Criminology 53(1)

British Journal of Criminology, January 2013: Volume 53, Issue 1

Shopocalypse Now Consumer Culture and the English Riots of 2011
James Treadwell, Daniel Briggs, Simon Winlow, and Steve Hall

This article is an initial analysis and theorization of original ethnographic data gathered from young men who participated in the English riots of August 2011. The data consistently suggest that consumer culture supplied these young men with a compelling motivation to join the rioting after the initial localized response to the original incident had died down. The data are analysed in a way that builds a theory of the rioting as a product of objectless dissatisfaction. Drawing upon the resources of contemporary cultural and critical criminological theory, it argues that, in the current post-political vacuum, the rioters could not locate or articulate the objective structural and processual causes of their marginalization. Neither could they clearly recognize or ethically censure their structural antagonists. Thus, in the entire absence of truthful, comprehensible and unifying political symbolism, they had nowhere to go but the shops.

Transgression, Affect and Performance Choreographing a Politics of Urban Space
Elaine Campbell

Cultural criminological scholarship has impressively theorized and explored the cultural complexities, negotiated meanings and experiential immediacy of urban crime and its spatializing effects. Nonetheless, this important work tends to gloss over the political dynamics of spatial contestation, and assumes an urban politics which is relatively fixed and static and is locked into a dichotomy of control and resistance. This paper opens up to scrutiny the heterogeneity of political relationalities at the interstices of crime and ‘the urban’. Core cultural criminological concepts of resistance, transgression, affect and performance are critically reappraised and put to work in a critical case study that centres on an offence of ‘outraging public decency’ at the Blackpool Cenotaph, UK. This provides the empirical ground for delineating some of the myriad ways in which crime continually reconfigures the political coordinates of ‘the urban’.

Private Security and Armed Conflict A Case Study of the Scorpions during the Mass Killings in Former Yugoslavia
Samuel Tanner and Massimiliano Mulone

Based on a case study on the metamorphosis of a private security company responsible for the protection of oil wells during the Yugoslav Serbo–Croat conflict that became an armed band—the Scorpions—we show that this type of organization crystallizes mutually beneficial games that play out between a central power and those involved in local crime of low intensity. These organizations constitute the central players in a politicization of civilian crime and a privatization of political crime—genocide and crimes against humanity constituting the extreme forms. The involvement of private actors such as the Scorpions in armed conflict is considered in the fusion of instrumental and normative logic—a common element in all forms of mercenarism.

Allah’s Outlaws The Jamaat al Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago
Cynthia Mahabir

‘Sacred violence’, the long-standing relationship between religion and violence, takes unique forms shaped by local cultures. While the conditions that produce phantom revolutionary groups vary widely, those groups that invoke altruistic declarations for radical social change drawn from religious texts often resort to violence to attain their goals. In this article, it is argued that, although the social conditions conducive to the formation and initial religious revolutionary appeal of the Muslimeen of Trinidad and Tobago were economic and cultural, the subsequent gangsterism in which it engaged alienated the group from the mass support required for an effective revolutionary movement.

The Transformation of Policing From Ratios to Rationalities
Adam White and Martin Gill

A prominent feature of academic and popular writing about policing is the ‘transformation’ thesis: the contention that, as the ratio of private security to police actors increases in a policing system, the orientation of the system shifts from the public good to the market. The purpose of this article is to critique this thesis. Instead of analysing transformation using the ratio heuristic, it focuses on the everyday rationalities guiding policing actors. Applying this perspective to the British case, it argues that, rather than witnessing a marked shift towards the market, we are in fact seeing a complex blurring of identities, with both private security and police actors drawing upon a mix of public good and market rationalities to inform their actions.

Thinking Independence Calling the Police to Account through the Independent Investigation of Police Complaints
Stephen P. Savage

Over the last 15 years, a number of agencies have been established in the British and Irish islands that enable the independent investigation of police complaints and misconduct. This paper, based on over 100 interviews with practitioners from three such bodies, examines the independent investigation of police complaints by asking two central questions. First, how do those charged with the delivery of independence in investigations articulate ‘independence’ as a working philosophy and presentational tool? Second, what constraints or obstacles do practitioners perceive as inhibitors in the delivery of independence? On this basis, the paper presents a picture of independent investigation of police complaints as a constant interaction between the aspirations of independence and the ever-present challenges of regulatory capture.

Used and Abused The Problematic Usage of Gang Terminology in the United Kingdom and Its Implications for Ethnic Minority Youth
Hannah Smithson, Rob Ralphs, and Patrick Williams

This paper draws primarily on research undertaken in the north of England. The research focused on assessing the current situation in relation to the extent, and nature, of violent gang activity in three predominately Asian (Pakistani and Bangladeshi) areas. Empirical evidence is provided of the problematic way that the term ‘gang’ is being used and, argued, abused in the United Kingdom. The uncritical acceptance of the term gang into UK policy and policing practices and the policy transfer that has ensued has the potential to further marginalize and isolate some ethnic minority communities. The focus here centres upon the increased surveillance and policing of Asian communities, specifically young Pakistani and Bangladeshi males as a consequence of the application of gang labels that elevates the perceived level of risk they pose.

Crime and The Transition to Parenthood The Role of Sex and Relationship Context
Christian Weisæth Monsbakken, Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, and Torbjørn Skardhamar

Research on desistance from crime has given little attention to the transition to parenthood as a ‘turning point.’ Parenthood might have different implications for men and women, as well as for individuals in different relationship contexts. Using a within-individual design and Norwegian register data on men and women who became parents in 1997–2001, we provide detailed descriptions of offending patterns. The results imply that, for men and women, the relative likelihood of offending declines before the birth. In the post-birth period, women’s offending resumes at a lower likelihood than before the birth, while men’s stabilizes at a low level. For men with no relationship to the other parent, the likelihood of offending continues to decline after the birth.

Beyond ‘Facts’ and ‘Values’ Rethinking Some Recent Debates about the Public Role of Criminology
Elizabeth Turner

A growing number of criminologists are reflecting upon the actual and potential public role of their field. This article argues that recent literature on criminology’s public role has been unsatisfactory, failing to deal adequately with both the extant characteristics of the field and contemporary socio-political circumstances. Drawing inspiration from Weber’s classic texts on the duties of the social scientist, and from Latour’s notion of the ‘diplomat’ this article suggests that a democratic public criminology must go beyond the modern distinction between ‘facts’ and ‘values’.

The ANNALS of the AAPSS 645

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2013: Volume 645

The Nonresponse Challenge to Surveys and Statistics
 
Introduction: New Challenges to Social Measurement
Douglas S. Massey and Roger Tourangeau

Facing the Nonresponse Challenge
Frauke Kreuter

Explaining Rising Nonresponse Rates in Cross-Sectional Surveys
J. Michael Brick and Douglas Williams

Response Rates in National Panel Surveys
Robert F. Schoeni, Frank Stafford, Katherine A. Mcgonagle, and Patricia Andreski

Consequences of Survey Nonresponse
Andy Peytchev

The Use and Effects of Incentives in Surveys
Eleanor Singer and Cong Ye

Paradata for Nonresponse Adjustment
Kristen Olson

Can Administrative Records Be Used to Reduce Nonresponse Bias?
John L. Czajka

An Assessment of the Multi-level Integrated Database Approach
Tom W. Smith and Jibum Kim

Where Do We Go from Here? Nonresponse and Social Measurement
Douglas S. Massey and Roger Tourangeau

American Sociological Review 77(6)

American Sociological Review, December 2012: Volume 77, Issue 6
   
The Fringe Effect: Civil Society Organizations and the Evolution of Media Discourse about Islam since the September 11th Attacks
Christopher A. Bail

Numerous studies indicate that civil society organizations create cultural change by deploying mainstream messages that resonate with prevailing discursive themes. Yet these case studies of highly influential organizations obscure the much larger population that have little or no impact. It is therefore unclear whether civil society organizations create cultural change by deploying mainstream discourses or if they become part of the mainstream because of their success. I present an evolutionary theory of how discursive fields settle after major historical ruptures that highlights framing, social networks, and emotional energy. To illustrate this theory, I use plagiarism detection software to compare 1,084 press releases about Muslims produced by 120 civil society organizations to 50,407 newspaper articles and television transcripts produced between 2001 and 2008. Although most organizations deployed pro-Muslim discourses after the September 11th attacks, I show that anti-Muslim fringe organizations dominated the mass media via displays of fear and anger. Institutional amplification of this emotional energy, I argue, created a gravitational pull or “fringe effect” that realigned inter-organizational networks and altered the contours of mainstream discourse itself.

   
Rhetorics of Suffering: September 11 Commemorations as Theodicy
Christina Simko

Weber argued that human suffering creates the demand for theodicies: cultural vocabularies, religious or secular, that explain perceived injustices. This article combines an interpretive analysis of rhetoric commemorating the events of September 11, 2001 with an effort to construct generalizable cultural theory, demonstrating how the Weberian concept of theodicy adds to our understanding of commemorative rhetoric. In the case of September 11 commemorations, the theodicies deployed exhibit a clear fracture. Speakers at the Pentagon and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, have taken a dualistic approach to the problem of theodicy, while speakers in Manhattan have taken a tragic approach. This variation can be explained through a four-part model that argues theodicies are structured by (1) events, (2) carrier groups, (3) audiences, and (4) genre memory. More broadly, I argue for explicit attention to theodicy in cultural sociology, demonstrating that the quest for theodicy is a crucial driving force behind the impulse to commemorate in the first place.

   
The Extended Family and Children's Educational Success
Mads Meier Jæger

Research on family background and educational success focuses almost exclusively on two generations: parents and children. This study argues that the extended family contributes significantly to the total effect of family background on educational success. Analyses using the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study show that, net of family factors shared by siblings from the same immediate family, factors shared by first cousins account for a nontrivial part of the total variance in children’s educational success. Results also show that grandparents’, aunts’, and uncles’ socioeconomic characteristics have few direct effects on educational success. Furthermore, resources in the extended family compensate for lacking resources in low-SES families, which in turn promote children’s educational success. The main conclusion is that the total effect of family background on educational success originates in the immediate family, the extended family, and in interactions between these two family environments.

The Effect of Parents' Attitudes on Sons' Marriage Timing
Elyse A. Jennings, William G. Axinn, and Dirgha J. Ghimire

Theories of family stability and change, demographic processes, and social psychological influences on behavior all posit that parental attitudes and beliefs are a key influence on their children’s behavior. We have evidence of these effects in Western populations, but little information regarding this social mechanism in non-Western contexts. Furthermore, comparisons of mothers’ and fathers’ independent roles in these crucial intergenerational mechanisms are rare. This article uses measures from a 10-year family panel study featuring independent interviews with mothers and fathers in rural Nepal to investigate these issues. We test the association of specific attitudes, rather than broad ideational domains, about childbearing and old-age care with sons’ subsequent marriage behavior. Our results indicate that both mothers’ and fathers’ attitudes have important and independent influences on sons’ marriage behavior. Simultaneous study of both parents’ attitudes reveals that gender-specific parenting contexts can shape the relationship between parental attitudes and children’s behaviors. This crucial mechanism of intergenerational continuity and change is strong in this non-Western setting, with substantial implications for studies of intergenerational influences on behavior in all settings.

We Can't Win This on Our Own: Unions, Firms, and Mobilization of External Allies in Labor Disputes
Marc Dixon and Andrew W. Martin

To cope with steep losses in membership and eroding legal protections, some unions have begun to look outward for help. Scholars likewise point to broad-based coalitions as a potential route to labor’s revitalization. Yet surprisingly little is known about union coalition work, from when and why it occurs to what union allies typically bring to the table. We take up these issues with a unique dataset on strike events from the 1990s and 2000s, contributing to labor and social movement research. First, we show that despite considerable academic interest in union outreach to other social movements, this phenomenon remains fairly rare. Second, our findings demonstrate how the immediate threat to unions posed by employer intransigence matters not just for the mobilization of external allies, as the social movement literature would expect, but also for the assistance brought to bear by those allies, which has received relatively little attention from scholars. Third, although we find important distinctions in unions’ propensity for outreach, results suggest a more nuanced picture of union activity than previously conceived. In various ways during strike events, both social movement unions (typically highlighted in the literature) and declining industrial unions are turning to coalition partners.

Constructing Labor Markets: The Valuation of Black Labor in the U.S. South, 1831 to 1867
Martin Ruef

In the U.S. South, a free labor market rapidly—although, in some cases, only nominally—replaced the plantation system of slave labor in the years following the American Civil War. Drawing on data comprising 75,099 transactions in the antebellum period, as well as 1,378 labor contracts in the postbellum era, I examine how the valuation of black labor was transformed between the 1830s and the years of emancipation. I trace the process of valuation through four markets for labor, moving from slave purchases and appraisals within the plantation economy, to the antebellum system of hiring out, to wage-setting for black labor under the auspices of the Freedmen’s Bureau. Comparative analysis of labor pricing across these markets reveals systematic differences: slave markets placed price premiums on children and young women, and occupational skills emerged as the most salient influence in the pricing of wage labor. I conclude by theorizing how transvaluation of labor occurs when markets for unfree and free workers are governed by distinct institutional conditions.

Hiring as Cultural Matching: The Case of Elite Professional Service Firms
Lauren A. Rivera

This article presents culture as a vehicle of labor market sorting. Providing a case study of hiring in elite professional service firms, I investigate the often suggested but heretofore empirically unexamined hypothesis that cultural similarities between employers and job candidates matter for employers’ hiring decisions. Drawing from 120 interviews with employers as well as participant observation of a hiring committee, I argue that hiring is more than just a process of skills sorting; it is also a process of cultural matching between candidates, evaluators, and firms. Employers sought candidates who were not only competent but also culturally similar to themselves in terms of leisure pursuits, experiences, and self-presentation styles. Concerns about shared culture were highly salient to employers and often outweighed concerns about absolute productivity. I unpack the interpersonal processes through which cultural similarities affected candidate evaluation in elite firms and provide the first empirical demonstration that shared culture—particularly in the form of lifestyle markers—matters for employer hiring. I conclude by discussing the implications for scholarship on culture, inequality, and labor markets.

It's All about Control: Worker Control over Schedule and Hours in Cross-National Context
Karen S. Lyness, Janet C. Gornick, Pamela Stone, and Angela R. Grotto

Workers’ ability to control their work schedules and hours varies significantly among industrialized countries. We integrate and extend prior research from a variety of literatures to examine antecedents of control and worker outcomes. Using hierarchical linear modeling and data for 21 countries from the 1997 ISSP Work Orientations Survey supplemented with national indicators developed from a variety of sources, we find that control is associated with country characteristics (affluence, welfare state generosity, union coverage, and working-time regulations), worker attributes (being male, being older, and being better educated), and job characteristics (working part-time, being self-employed, having higher earnings, and having more advancement opportunities). We also examine the relationship of control to job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and strain-based work-family conflict. Generally, low levels of control are linked to negative outcomes for workers, especially for women, an effect sometimes modulated by country-level policy measures.

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Detecting Communities through Network Data
Jeroen Bruggeman, V. A. Traag, and Justus Uitermark

Social life coalesces into communities through cooperation and conflict. As a case in point, Shwed and Bearman (2010) studied consensus and contention in scientific communities. They used a sophisticated modularity method to detect communities on the basis of scientific citations, which they then interpreted as directed positive network ties. They assumed that a lack of citations implies disagreement. Some scientific citations, however, are contentious and should therefore be represented by negative ties, like conflicting relations in general. After expanding the modularity method to incorporate negative ties, we show that a small proportion of negative ties, commonly present in science, is sufficient to significantly alter the community structure. In addition, our research suggests that without distinguishing negative ties, scientific communities actually represent specialized subfields, not contentious groups. Finally, we cast doubt on the assumption that lack of cites would signal disagreement. To show the general importance of discerning negative ties for understanding conflict and its impact on communities, we also analyze a public debate.

Symmetry Is Beautiful
Uri Shwed and Peter S. Bearman