American Journal of Sociology 120(1)

American Journal of Sociology, July 2014: Volume 120, Issue 1

“I Don’t Like Passing as a Straight Woman”: Queer Negotiations of Identity and Social Group Membership
Carla A. Pfeffer

For decades, sociological theory has documented how our lives are simultaneously produced through and against normative structures of sex, gender, and sexuality. These normative structures are often believed to operate along presumably “natural,” biological, and essentialized binaries of male/female, man/woman, and heterosexual/homosexual. However, as the lives and experiences of transgender people and their families become increasingly socially visible, these normative structuring binaries are called into stark question as they fail to adequately articulate and encompass these social actors’ identities and social group memberships. Utilizing in-depth interviews with 50 women from the United States, Canada, and Australia, who detail 61 unique relationships with transgender men, this study considers how the experiences of these queer social actors hold the potential to rattle the very foundations upon which normative binaries rest, highlighting the increasingly blurry intersections, tensions, and overlaps between sex, gender, and sexual orientation in the 21st century. This work also considers the potential for these normative disruptions to engender opportunities for social collaboration, solidarity, and transformation.

Neither Ideologues nor Agnostics: Alternative Voters’ Belief System in an Age of Partisan Politics
Delia Baldassarri and Amir Goldberg

How do Americans organize their political beliefs? This article argues that party polarization and the growing prominence of moral issues in recent decades have catalyzed different responses by different groups of Americans. The article investigates systematic heterogeneity in the organization of political attitudes using relational class analysis, a graph-based method for detecting multiple patterns of opinion in survey data. Three subpopulations, each characterized by a distinctive way of organizing its political beliefs, are identified: ideologues, whose political attitudes strongly align with either liberal or conservative categories; alternatives, who are instead morally conservative but economically liberal, or vice versa; and agnostics, who exhibit weak associations between political beliefs. Individuals’ sociodemographic profiles, particularly their income, education, and religiosity, lie at the core of the different ways in which they understand politics. Results show that while ideologues have gone through a process of issue alignment, alternatives have grown increasingly apart from the political agendas of both parties. The conflictual presence of conservative and liberal preferences has often been resolved by alternative voters in favor of the Republican Party.

Governing Inside the Organization: Interpreting Regulation and Compliance
Garry C. Gray and Susan S. Silbey

Looking inside organizations at the different positions, expertise, and autonomy of the actors, the authors use multisite ethnographic data on safety practices to develop a typology of how the regulator, as the focal actor in the regulatory process, is interpreted within organizations. The findings show that organizational actors express constructions of the regulator as an ally, threat, and obstacle that vary with organizational expertise, authority, and continuity of relationship between the organizational member and the regulator. The article makes three contributions to the current understandings of organizational governance and regulatory compliance, thereby extending both institutional and ecological accounts of organizations’ behavior with respect to their environments. First, the authors document not only variation across organizations but variable compliance within an organization. Second, the variations described do not derive from alternative institutional logics, but from variations in positions, autonomy, and expertise within each organization. From their grounded theory, the authors hypothesize that these constructions carry differential normative interpretations of regulation and probabilities for compliance, and thus the third contribution, the typology, when correlated with organizational hierarchy provides the link between microlevel action and discourse and organizational performance.

Blocked Acculturation: Cultural Heterodoxy among Europe’s Immigrants
Andreas Wimmer and Thomas Soehl

Which immigrant groups differ most from the cultural values held by mainstream society and why? The authors explore this question using data from the European Social Survey on the values held by almost 100,000 individuals associated with 305 immigrant groups and the native majorities of 23 countries. They test whether distant linguistic or religious origins (including in Islam), value differences that immigrants “import” from their home countries, the maintenance of transnational ties and thus diasporic cultures, or legal and social disadvantage in the country of settlement shape acculturation processes. They find that only legally or socially disadvantaged groups differ from mainstream values in significant ways. For first generation immigrants, this is because the values of their countries of origin diverge more from those of natives. Among children of disadvantaged immigrants, however, value heterodoxy emerges because acculturation processes are blocked and the values of the parent generation partially maintained. From the second generation onward, therefore, cultural values are endogenous to the formation and dissolution of social boundaries, rather than shaping these as an exogenous force.

Issue Bricolage: Explaining the Configuration of the Social Movement Sector, 1960–1995
Wooseok Jung, Brayden G. King, and Sarah A. Soule

Social movements occupy a shared ideational and resource space, which is often referred to as the social movement sector. This article contributes to the understanding of the relational dynamics of the social movement sector by demonstrating how ideational linkages are formed through protest events. Using a data set of protest events occurring in the United States from 1960 to 1995, the authors model the mechanisms shaping why certain movement issues (e.g., women’s and peace or environmental and gay rights) appear together at protest events. They argue that both cultural similarity and status differences between two social movement issues are the underlying mechanisms that shape joint protest and the resultant ideational linkages between issues. Finally, they show that the linking of issues at protest events results in changes in the prominence of a given issue in the social movement sector.

Coevolution in Management Fashion: An Agent-Based Model of Consultant-Driven Innovation
David Strang, Robert J. David, and Saeed Akhlaghpour

The rise of management consultancy has been accompanied by increasingly marked faddish cycles in management techniques, but the mechanisms that underlie this relationship are not well understood. The authors develop a simple agent-based framework that models innovation adoption and abandonment on both the supply and demand sides. In opposition to conceptions of consultants as rhetorical wizards who engineer waves of management fashion, firms and consultants are treated as boundedly rational actors who chase the secrets of success by mimicking their highest-performing peers. Computational experiments demonstrate that consultant-driven versions of this dynamic in which the outcomes of firms are strongly conditioned by their choice of consultant are robustly faddish. The invasion of boom markets by low-quality consultants undercuts popular innovations while simultaneously restarting the fashion cycle by prompting the flight of high-quality consultants into less densely occupied niches. Computational experiments also indicate conditions involving consultant mobility, aspiration levels, mimic probabilities, and client-provider matching that attenuate faddishness.

Criminology & Public Policy 13(4)

Criminology & Public Policy, November 2014: Volume 13, Issue 4

Special Issue: Remodeling American Sentencing

Editorial Introduction: Reinventing Sentencing in the United States
Daniel S. Nagin

Research Article

Remodeling American Sentencing: A Ten-Step Blueprint for Moving Past Mass Incarceration
Michael Tonry

When and if the will to roll back mass incarceration and to create just, fair, and effective sentencing systems becomes manifest, the way forward is clear.
First, three-strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws should be repealed.
Second, any three-strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws that are not repealed should be substantially narrowed in scope and severity.
Third, any three-strikes, mandatory minimum sentence, and comparable laws that are not repealed should be amended to include provisions authorizing judges to impose some other sentence “in the interest of justice.”
Fourth, life-without-possibility-of-parole laws should be repealed or substantially narrowed.
Fifth, truth-in-sentencing laws should be repealed.
Sixth, criminal codes should be amended to set substantially lower maximum sentences scaled to the seriousness of crimes.
Seventh, every state that does not already have one should establish a sentencing commission and promulgate presumptive sentencing guidelines.
Eighth, every state that does not already have one should establish a parole board and every state should establish a parole guidelines system.
Ninth, every state and the federal government should reduce its combined rate of jail and prison confinement to half its 2014 level by 2020.
Tenth, every state should enact legislation making all prisoners serving fixed terms longer than 5 years, or indeterminate terms, eligible for consideration for release at the expiration of 5 years, and making all prisoners 35 years of age or older eligible for consideration for release after serving 3 years.
These proposals are evidence-based and mostly technocratic. Those calling for prison population targets and reducing the lengths of sentences being served may seem bold to some. Relative to the problems they address, they are modest and partial. Decreasing rates of imprisonment by half in the United States, a country with comparatively low crime rates, to a level that will remain 3 to 3.5 times those of other developed Western countries, can hardly be considered overly ambitious.

Commentary

Twentieth-Century Sentencing Reform Movement: Looking Backward, Moving Forward
Cassia Spohn

Creating the Will to Change: The Challenges of Decarceration in the United States
Anthony N. Doob and Cheryl Marie Webster

Ending Mass Incarceration: Some Observations and Responses to Professor Tonry
Gerard E. Lynch

Assessing the State of Mass Incarceration: Tipping Point or the New Normal?
Jeremy Travis

How Do We Reduce Incarceration Rates While Maintaining Public Safety?
Steven Raphael

The ANNALS of the AAPSS 657

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, January 2015: Volume 657

Monitoring Social Mobility in the Twenty-First Century

2014 Daniel Patrick Moynihan Lecture on Social Science and Public Policy
Inequality in America: A Policy Agenda for a Stronger Future
Joseph E. Stiglitz

Section I: The State of Knowledge about Mobility

The Measure of a Nation
Richard Reeves

A Summary of What We Know about Social Mobility
Michael Hout

Analyses of Intergenerational Mobility: An Interdisciplinary Review
Florencia Torche

A New Infrastructure for Monitoring Social Mobility in the United States
David B. Grusky, Timothy M. Smeeding, and C. Matthew Snipp

Section II: Special Topics Relevant to Building a New Infrastructure

Social Mobility in an Era of Family Instability and Complexity
Laura Tach

Measuring Networks beyond the Origin Family
Robert D. Mare

Assessing the Socioeconomic Mobility and Integration of U.S. Immigrants and Their Descendants
Brian Duncan and Stephen J. Trejo

Measuring Education and Skill
Chandra Muller

Political Mobility and Political Reproduction from Generation to Generation
Henry E. Brady, Kay Lehman Schlozman, and Sidney Verba

Using Occupation to Measure Intergenerational Mobility
Bhashkar Mazumder and Miguel Acosta

The Engagement Gap: Social Mobility and Extracurricular Participation among American Youth
Kaisa Snellman, Jennifer M. Silva, Carl B. Frederick, and Robert D. Putnam

Section III: Issues of Implementation

Potential Data Sources for a New Study of Social Mobility in the United States
John Robert Warren

The Opportunities and Challenges of Using Administrative Data Linkages to Evaluate Mobility
David S. Johnson, Catherine Massey, and Amy O’Hara

Who Is Listening? When Scholars Think They Are Talking to Congress
Kenneth Prewitt

British Journal of Criminology 55(1)

British Journal of Criminology, January 2015: Volume 55, Issue 1

Editor's Choice: Policing Humanitarian Borderlands: Frontex, Human Rights and the Precariousness of Life
Katja Franko Aas and Helene O. I. Gundhus

The article critically examines the peculiar co-existence of the securitization of the border and the growing presence and prominence of human rights and humanitarian ideals in border policing practices. Concretely, it focuses on Frontex, the agency tasked with management of EU’s external borders. Based on interviews with Frontex officials and border guard officers, and on the analysis of relevant policy documents and official reports, the article explores what may come across as a discrepancy between the organization’s activities and its public self-presentation. The objective is to provide an insight into the complex and volatile relationship between policing and human rights, which marks contemporary migration control as well as mundane forms of professional and personal self-understanding.

Half a Story? Missing Perspectives in the Criminological Accounts of British Muslim Communities, Crime and the Criminal Justice System
Julian Hargreaves

An examination of recent scholarly criminological literature concerning British Muslim reveals dominant discursive themes of victimization, discrimination and demonization and a highly politicized discourse, often rhetorical in nature and seldom supported by empirical evidence. Where such evidence is adduced, criminologists rely predominantly on limited qualitative research designs and small non-representative sample sizes. This article presents analysis of British Crime Survey/Crime Survey of England and Wales data and argues that quantitative findings highlight the need for a more nuanced criminological picture of British Muslim communities. It is argued that criminologists should place renewed focus on household crime, the effects of socio-economic factors, crimes involving non-physical forms of violence and Muslim respondents who report positive attitudes towards the police.

The 2011 England Riots in Recent Historical Perspective
Tim Newburn

The riots of 2011 arguably represent the most significant civil disorder on the British mainland in at least a generation. Over four days, there were five deaths, injuries to dozens of police officers and civilians and damage to property running into the tens of millions of pounds. Commentators writing in the aftermath of the riots have pointed both to what are taken to be unusual aspects of the 2011 disorders—the role of gangs, the nature and extent of looting and use of social media among others—as well as some of the parallels with previous riots. In placing the 2011 riots in their recent historical context, this article outlines a model for structuring comparative analysis of disorder and then moves on to consider some of the similarities between 2011 and riots in the post-war period, concluding by identifying four significant points of departure.

The 2011 English ‘Riots’: Prosecutorial Zeal and Judicial Abandon
Carly Lightowlers and Hannah Quirk

Much attention has focussed on the severity of the sentences imposed following the 2011 ‘summer rioting’ in England. The Court of Appeal confirmed that participation in a collective outbreak of disorder takes offending outside the sentencing guidelines. The position for sentencing riot-related offending in future is unclear, however, as the Court gave no indication of how to calibrate this departure, and the Sentencing Council has made offending during public disorder an aggravating factor only in its burglary guideline. This article explores new empirical evidence regarding the sentences imposed in Manchester, together with national Ministry of Justice data, to demonstrate for the first time how this ‘uplift’ effect was a feature throughout the criminal process, from arrest to sentence.

An Australian Indigenous-focussed Justice Response to Intimate Partner Violence: Offenders’ Perceptions of the Sentencing Process
Elena Marchetti

This article draws on research conducted over the past four years on the use of Indigenous sentencing courts in Australia for sentencing Indigenous offenders of intimate partner violence (IPV). It presents interview findings of offenders’ perceptions of justice of a sentencing process that involves the participation of Elders and Community Representatives, as moral and cultural guides. This study concludes that the vast majority of interview participants found an Indigenous sentencing court process is fairer than a mainstream sentencing court process despite the fact that it is more challenging and confronting facing Elders and Community Representatives when being sentenced for an IPV offence. Their respect for Elders and Community Representatives, and the respect afforded to Elders and Community Representatives by the mainstream criminal justice system created a forum that both ‘shamed’ and supported the offenders in ways that reflected cultural values and norms.

‘So Now I’m the Man’: Intimate Partner Femicide and Its Interconnections With Expressions of Masculinities in South Africa
Shanaaz Mathews, Rachel Jewkes, and Naeemah Abrahams

Intimate femicide, the killing of a woman by an intimate partner, is the leading cause of female murder in South Africa. Research on men who kill in South Africa has highlighted the psychological damage caused by exposure to severe adversity in childhood, but this alone does not explain the gendered context of these murders. This article presents analyses from in-depth interviews with 20 incarcerated men who killed their partners and explores their views on and relationships with women. We show that the men sought to perform exaggerated versions of predominant ideals of masculinity, emphasizing an extreme control of and dominance over women. We show killing as an ultimate means of taking back control in a context where gendered relationships legitimize men’s use of violence to assert power and control. Interventions to prevent intimate femicide need to be highly cognisant of the gendered context.

Craft(y)ness: An Ethnographic Study of Hacking
Kevin F. Steinmetz

The idea of the ‘hacker’ is a contested concept both inside and outside the hacker community, including academia. Addressing such contestation the current study uses ethnographic field research and content analysis to create a grounded understanding of ‘the hacker’. In doing so, hacking is revealed to parallel features found in craftwork, often sharing (1) a particular mentality, (2) an emphasis on skill, (3) a sense of ownership over tools and objects of labour, (4) guild-like social and learning structures, (5) a deep sense of commitment, (6) an emphasis on process over result, (7) a common phenomenological experience, and (8) tendencies towards transgression. The final result is that hacking is identified as a kind of transgressive craft or craft(y).

The Cultural Idiosyncrasy of Penal Populism: The Case of Contemporary China
Enshen Li

This article explores the socio-cultural divergences of penal populism in a Chinese context. It examines whether penal populism has become an influence on shaping China’s punishment after the Maoist era. By tracing the trends in criminal justice and penal policy over the last three decades, it argues that China has developed a relatively weak version of penal populism compared to a commonly understood form of this conception in some western democracies. Although China’s social and cultural conditions seem to be conducive to the rise of penal populism, this penal force can be easily submerged by political will and blocked by bureaucratic power. Penal populism has a limited impact on penal development in contemporary China.

Social Mobility and Crime: Evidence From a Total Birth Cohort
Jukka Savolainen, Mikko Aaltonen, Marko Merikukka, Reija Paananen, and Mika Gissler

This research examined intergenerational educational mobility as an antecedent of criminal offending. Anomie theory and the general theory of crime assume an inverse association between intergenerational mobility and criminal behaviour. In addition, Moffitt’s taxonomic theory and general strain theory expect intergenerational continuity in low educational attainment to be especially criminogenic. We examined the hypothesized associations with total birth cohort data from Finland. The results suggest that neither downward nor upward mobility is an important correlate of crime. For most individuals, the educational background of the family of origin was unrelated to offending net of personal attainment. As an important exception, parents’ educational attainment buffered the strong positive association between offspring educational marginalization and crime. Among those who did not pursue education beyond comprehensive school, having a parent with minimal educational credentials doubled the risk of serious offending compared with those with university-educated parents. Evidence from multivariate analysis suggests that this interaction effect is related to family adversity and psychological risk characteristics.

The Mis-synchronization of Juvenile Reform: Competing Constructions of Temporality and Risk Among Rehabilitation Programs and Young Offenders
Valli Rajah, Ronald Kramer, and Hung-En Sung

In the United States, juvenile rehabilitation programs have moved towards ‘risk-needs’ models, which not only assess risks of recidivism, but also address young peoples’ needs. While laudable for their responsiveness, we argue ‘risk-needs’ models are based on a series of beliefs concerning time and/or temporality that are inconsistent with the social locations and life experiences of young offenders. Based on observations and interview data collected from young male prisoners participating in a cognitive-treatment program, we argue that the temporal lessons that imprisoned youth learn, which are often inapplicable to their post-release lives, may limit the effectiveness of efforts to rehabilitate juvenile offenders. Study implications are discussed.

Social Science Research 49

Social Science Research, January 2015: Volume 49

Response of sensitive behaviors to frequent measurement
William G. Axinn, Elyse A. Jennings, Mick P. Couper

Variation in trajectories of women’s marital quality
Spencer L. James

Adult non-response bias from a child perspective. Using child reports to estimate father’s non-response
Kim Bastaits, Inge Pasteels, Koen Ponnet, Dimitri Mortelmans

Chinese people’s intended and actual use of the court to resolve grievance/dispute
Shanhe Jiang, Yuning Wu

Long-term health and socioeconomic consequences of early-life exposure to the 1959–1961 Chinese Famine
Wen Fan, Yue Qian

The skill-divide in job quality: A cross-national analysis of 28 countries
Haya Stier

Immigration and earnings inequality in America’s new small-town destinations
Allen Hyde, Jeremy Pais, Michael Wallace

School ethnic diversity and White students’ civic attitudes in England
Jan Germen Janmaat

Feminists wrestle with testosterone: Hormones, socialization and cultural interactionism as predictors of women’s gendered selves
Shannon N. Davis, Barbara J. Risman

The downside of marketization: A multilevel analysis of housing tenure and types in reform-era urban China
Qiang Fu, Yushu Zhu, Qiang Ren

Languages, communication potential and generalized trust in Sub-Saharan Africa: Evidence based on the Afrobarometer Survey
Katalin Buzasi

Business structure, ethnic shifts in labor markets, and violence: The link between company size, local labor markets, and non-Latino homicide
Raymond E. Barranco, Edward S. Shihadeh

The joint effect of ethnicity and gender on occupational segregation. An approach based on the Mutual Information Index
Daniel Guinea-Martin, Ricardo Mora, Javier Ruiz-Castillo

Explaining the subjective well-being of urban and rural Chinese: Income, personal concerns, and societal evaluations
Chunping Han

Explaining the Muslim employment gap in Western Europe: Individual-level effects and ethno-religious penalties
Phillip Connor, Matthias Koenig

Unemployment among Mexican immigrant men in the United States, 2003–2012
Jennifer Laird

Getting support in polarized societies: Income, social networks, and socioeconomic context
Natalia Letki, Inta Mieriņa

Variable links within perceived police legitimacy?: Fairness and effectiveness across races and places
Ralph B. Taylor, Brian R. Wyant, Brian Lockwood

Occupational conditions, self-care, and obesity among clergy in the United States
Todd W. Ferguson, Brita Andercheck, Joshua C. Tom, Brandon C. Martinez, Samuel Stroope

Transforming wealth: Using the inverse hyperbolic sine (IHS) and splines to predict youth’s math achievement
Terri Friedline, Rainier D. Masa, Gina A.N. Chowa

The spatial extent of the effect of foreclosures on crime
Seth B. Payton, Thomas D. Stucky, John R. Ottensmann

Network effects across the earnings distribution: Payoffs to visible and invisible job finding assistance
Steve McDonald

Exposure to violence, substance use, and neighborhood context
Abigail A. Fagan, Emily M. Wright, Gillian M. Pinchevsky

Intergenerational transmission of homeownership in Europe: Revisiting the socialisation hypothesis
Philipp M. Lersch, Ruud Luijkx

Three experimental approaches to measure the social context dependence of prejudice communication and discriminatory behavior
Heiko Beyer, Ulf Liebe

We trust in government, just not in yours: Race, partisanship, and political trust, 1958–2012
Rima Wilkes

Social Psychology Quarterly 77(4)

Social Psychology Quarterly, December 2014: Volume 77, Issue 4

Control in the Face of Uncertainty: Is Job Insecurity a Challenge to the Mental Health Benefits of Control Beliefs?
Paul Glavin and Scott Schieman

Trust, Cohesion, and Cooperation After Early Versus Late Trust Violations in Two-Person Exchange: The Role of Generalized Trust in the United States and Japan
Ko Kuwabara, Sonja Vogt, Motoki Watabe, and Asuka Komiya

Rationalizing Delinquency: A Longitudinal Test of the Reciprocal Relationship Between Delinquent Attitudes and Behavior
Cesar J. Rebellon, Michelle E. Manasse, Karen T. Van Gundy, and Ellen S. Cohn

Emotions and Identity Nonverification
Jan E. Stets and Peter J. Burke

American Sociological Review 79(6)

American Sociological Review, December 2014: Volume 79, Issue 6

Medical Adaptation to Academic Pressure: Schooling, Stimulant Use, and Socioeconomic Status
Marissa D. King, Jennifer Jennings, and Jason M. Fletcher

Despite the rise of medical interventions to address behavioral issues in childhood, the social determinants of their use remain poorly understood. By analyzing a dataset that includes the majority of prescriptions written for stimulants in the United States, we find a substantial effect of schooling on stimulant use. In middle and high school, adolescents are roughly 30 percent more likely to have a stimulant prescription filled during the school year than during the summer. Socioeconomically advantaged children are more likely than their less advantaged peers to selectively use stimulants only during the academic year. These differences persist when we compare higher and lower socioeconomic status children seeing the same doctors. We link these responses to academic pressure by exploiting variation between states in educational accountability system stringency. We find the largest differences in school year versus summer stimulant use in states with more accountability pressure. School-based selective stimulant use is most common among economically advantaged children living in states with strict accountability policies. Our study uncovers a new pathway through which medical interventions may act as a resource for higher socioeconomic status families to transmit educational advantages to their children, either intentionally or unwittingly.

Suspending Progress: Collateral Consequences of Exclusionary Punishment in Public Schools
Brea L. Perry and Edward W. Morris

An influential literature in criminology has identified indirect “collateral consequences” of mass imprisonment. We extend this criminological perspective to the context of the U.S. education system, conceptualizing exclusionary discipline practices (i.e., out-of-school suspension) as a manifestation of intensified social control in schools. Similar to patterns of family and community decline associated with mass incarceration, we theorize that exclusionary discipline policies have indirect adverse effects on non-suspended students in punitive schools. Using a large hierarchical and longitudinal dataset consisting of student and school records, we examine the effect of suspension on reading and math achievement. Our findings suggest that higher levels of exclusionary discipline within schools over time generate collateral damage, negatively affecting the academic achievement of non-suspended students in punitive contexts. This effect is strongest in schools with high levels of exclusionary discipline and schools with low levels of violence, although the adverse effect of exclusionary discipline is evident in even the most disorganized and hostile school environments. Our results level a strong argument against excessively punitive school policies and suggest the need for alternative means of establishing a disciplined environment through social integration.

Network Ecology and Adolescent Social Structure
Daniel A. McFarland, James Moody, David Diehl, Jeffrey A. Smith, and Reuben J. Thomas

Adolescent societies—whether arising from weak, short-term classroom friendships or from close, long-term friendships—exhibit various levels of network clustering, segregation, and hierarchy. Some are rank-ordered caste systems and others are flat, cliquish worlds. Explaining the source of such structural variation remains a challenge, however, because global network features are generally treated as the agglomeration of micro-level tie-formation mechanisms, namely balance, homophily, and dominance. How do the same micro-mechanisms generate significant variation in global network structures? To answer this question we propose and test a network ecological theory that specifies the ways features of organizational environments moderate the expression of tie-formation processes, thereby generating variability in global network structures across settings. We develop this argument using longitudinal friendship data on schools (Add Health study) and classrooms (Classroom Engagement study), and by extending exponential random graph models to the study of multiple societies over time.

Protest on the Fly: Toward a Theory of Spontaneity in the Dynamics of Protest and Social Movements
David A. Snow and Dana M. Moss

This article reexamines spontaneity as an important, albeit neglected, mechanism in collective action dynamics, and elaborates on its operation and effects in protest events and social movements. We do not presume that spontaneity is routinely at play in all collective actions. Rather, based on our grounded analysis of historical and ethnographic data, we contend that spontaneity is triggered by certain conditions: nonhierarchical organization; uncertain/ambiguous moments and events; behavioral/emotional priming; and certain ecological/spatial factors. We conclude by elaborating why the activation of spontaneous actions matters in shaping the course and character of protest events and movements, and we suggest that spontaneity be resuscitated in the study of collective action and everyday life more generally.

Political Polarization as a Social Movement Outcome: 1960s Klan Activism and Its Enduring Impact on Political Realignment in Southern Counties, 1960 to 2000
Rory McVeigh, David Cunningham, and Justin Farrell

Radical social movements can exacerbate tensions in local settings while drawing attention to how movement goals align with political party agendas. Short-term movement influence on voting outcomes can endure when orientations toward the movement disrupt social ties, embedding individuals within new discussion networks that reinforce new partisan loyalties. To demonstrate this dynamic, we employ longitudinal data to show that increases in Republican voting, across several different time intervals, were most pronounced in southern counties where the Ku Klux Klan had been active in the 1960s. In an individual-level analysis of voting intent, we show that decades after the Klan declined, racial attitudes map onto party voting among southern voters, but only in counties where the Klan had been active.

Formal Rights and Informal Privileges for Same-Sex Couples: Evidence from a National Survey Experiment
Long Doan, Annalise Loehr, and Lisa R. Miller

Attitudes toward gay rights have liberalized over the past few decades, but scholars know less about the extent to which individuals in the United States exhibit subtle forms of prejudice toward lesbians and gays. To help address this issue, we offer a conceptualization of formal rights and informal privileges. Using original data from a nationally representative survey experiment, we examine whether people distinguish between formal rights (e.g., partnership benefits) and informal privileges (e.g., public displays of affection) in their attitudes toward same-sex couples. Results show that heterosexuals are as willing to extend formal rights to same-sex couples as they are to unmarried heterosexual couples. However, they are less willing to grant informal privileges. Lesbians and gays are more willing to extend formal rights to same-sex couples, but they too are sometimes more supportive of informal privileges for heterosexual couples. We also find that heterosexuals’ attitudes toward marriage more closely align with their attitudes toward informal privileges than formal rights, whereas lesbians and gays view marriage similarly to both formal rights and informal privileges. Our findings highlight the need to examine multiple dimensions of sexual prejudice to help understand how informal types of prejudice persist as minority groups receive formal rights.

Racial Inequality Trends and the Intergenerational Persistence of Income and Family Structure
Deirdre Bloome

Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly. The second highlights change: because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units, changing family compositions can offset individuals’ changing economic chances. I examine whether black-white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage (continuity) or shifting forms of disadvantage (change). I combine cross-sectional and panel analysis using Current Population Survey, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census, and National Vital Statistics data. Results suggest that African Americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity (low upward mobility) and discontinuity (high downward mobility); both helped maintain racial inequality. Yet, intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge. On net, racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity. Economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing; as family structures shifted, family incomes did not fully reflect labor-market gains.

House of Green Cards: Statistical or Preference-Based Inequality in the Employment of Foreign Nationals
Ben A. Rissing and Emilio J. Castilla

Racial disparity in family incomes remained remarkably stable over the past 40 years in the United States despite major legal and social reforms. Previous scholarship presents two primary explanations for persistent inequality through a period of progressive change. One highlights continuity: because socioeconomic status is transmitted from parents to children, disparities created through histories of discrimination and opportunity denial may dissipate slowly. The second highlights change: because family income results from joining individual earnings in family units, changing family compositions can offset individuals’ changing economic chances. I examine whether black-white family income inequality trends are better characterized by the persistence of existing disadvantage (continuity) or shifting forms of disadvantage (change). I combine cross-sectional and panel analysis using Current Population Survey, Panel Study of Income Dynamics, Census, and National Vital Statistics data. Results suggest that African Americans experience relatively extreme intergenerational continuity (low upward mobility) and discontinuity (high downward mobility); both helped maintain racial inequality. Yet, intergenerational discontinuities allow new forms of disadvantage to emerge. On net, racial inequality trends are better characterized by changing forms of disadvantage than by continuity. Economic trends were equalizing but demographic trends were disequalizing; as family structures shifted, family incomes did not fully reflect labor-market gains.

Comment and Reply

Trust Radius versus Trust Level: Radius of Trust as a Distinct Trust Construct
André van Hoorn

In their October 2011 ASR article, “How General Is Trust in ‘Most People’? Solving the Radius of Trust Problem,” Delhey, Newton, and Welzel pioneer the measurement of trust radius, defined as the width of the circle of people among whom a certain trust level exists. One key finding of their study is that trust radius correlates so strongly with out-group trust level that the two are essentially identical constructs; this clashes with standard theory’s finding that trust level and trust radius are distinct trust constructs. This result proves to be erroneous, however, due to a mistaken label. I seek to correct this labeling error and find that trust radius is, in fact, a separate trust construct. Trust radius differs from established trust level constructs such as level of trust in most people and level of out-group trust, not only theoretically but empirically as well.

The Radius of Trust Problem Remains Resolved
Jan Delhey, Kenneth Newton, and Christian Welzel

Criminology 52(4)

Criminology, November 2014: Volume 52, Issue 4

Impact Of Victimization On Residential Mobility: Explaining Racial And Ethnic Patterns Using The National Crime Victimization Survey
Min Xie And David Mcdowall

Criminal victimization is known to influence households’ moving decisions, but theories suggest that the processes leading to a moving decision can vary across racial and ethnic groups. Drawing from current literature, we hypothesized that victimization would have a stronger effect on moving decisions for Whites than for Blacks or Hispanics, and that racial/ethnic residential segregation would moderate the impact of victimization on mobility. Using a longitudinal sample of 34,134 housing units compiled from the National Crime Victimization Survey for the 40 largest metropolitan areas in the United States (1995–2003), we found results that both support and contradict the hypotheses. Specifically, White residents display consistent evidence that victimization is a significant predictor of household mobility. Blacks and Hispanics, in contrast, are more varied in their moving behavior after victimization. In addition, significant differences exist among these groups in responses to victimization and in how mobility is influenced by residential segregation. Higher levels of residential segregation play a part in the victimization–mobility relationship among Blacks in a way that is more complex than we hypothesized.

Demonstrating The Validity Of Twin Research In Criminology
J. C. Barnes, John Paul Wright, Brian B. Boutwell, Joseph A. Schwartz, Eric J. Connolly, Joseph L. Nedelec And Kevin M. Beaver

In a recent article published in Criminology, Burt and Simons (2014) claimed that the statistical violations of the classical twin design render heritability studies useless. Claiming quantitative genetics is “fatally flawed” and describing the results generated from these models as “preposterous,” Burt and Simons took the unprecedented step to call for abandoning heritability studies and their constituent findings. We show that their call for an “end to heritability studies” was premature, misleading, and entirely without merit. Specifically, we trace the history of behavioral genetics and show that 1) the Burt and Simons critique dates back 40 years and has been subject to a broad array of empirical investigations, 2) the violation of assumptions in twin models does not invalidate their results, and 3) Burt and Simons created a distorted and highly misleading portrait of behavioral genetics and those who use quantitative genetic approaches.

The Edge Of Stigma: An Experimental Audit Of The Effects Of Low-Level Criminal Records On Employment
Christopher Uggen, Mike Vuolo, Sarah Lageson, Ebony Ruhland And Hilary K. Whitham

Ample experimental evidence shows that the stigma of a prison record reduces employment opportunities (Pager, 2007). Yet background checks today uncover a much broader range of impropriety, including arrests for minor crimes never resulting in formal charges. This article probes the lesser boundaries of stigma, asking whether and how employers consider low-level arrests in hiring decisions. Matched pairs of young African American and White men were sent to apply for 300 entry-level jobs, with one member of each pair reporting a disorderly conduct arrest that did not lead to conviction. We find a modest but nontrivial effect, with employer callback rates about 4 percentage points lower for the experimental group than for the matched control group. Interviews with the audited employers suggest three mechanisms to account for the lesser stigma of misdemeanor arrests relative to felony convictions: 1) greater employer discretion and authority in the former case; 2) calibration of the severity, nature, and timing of the offense; and 3) a deeply held presumption of innocence, which contrasts the uncertainty of arrest with the greater certainty represented by convictions. In addition, personal contact and workplace diversity play important roles in the hiring process.

Incorporating Routine Activities, Activity Spaces, And Situational Definitions Into The Social Schematic Theory Of Crime
Ronald L. Simons, Callie H. Burt, Ashley B. Barr, Man-Kit Lei And Eric Stewart

Simons and Burt's (2011) social schematic theory (SST) of crime posits that adverse social factors are associated with offending because they promote a set of social schemas (i.e., a criminogenic knowledge structure) that elevates the probability of situational definitions favorable to crime. This study extends the SST model by incorporating the role of contexts for action. Furthermore, the study advances tests of the SST by incorporating a measure of criminogenic situational definitions to assess whether such definitions mediate the effects of schemas and contexts on crime. Structural equation models using 10 years of panel data from 582 African American youth provided strong support for the expanded theory. The results suggest that childhood and adolescent social adversity fosters a criminogenic knowledge structure as well as selection into criminogenic activity spaces and risky activities, all of which increase the likelihood of offending largely through situational definitions. Additionally, evidence shows that the criminogenic knowledge structure interacts with settings to amplify the likelihood of situational definitions favorable to crime.

Gender, Friendship Networks, And Delinquency: A Dynamic Network Approach
Dana L. Haynie, Nathan J. Doogan And Brian Soller

Researchers have examined selection and influence processes in shaping delinquency similarity among friends, but little is known about the role of gender in moderating these relationships. Our objective is to examine differences between adolescent boys and girls regarding delinquency-based selection and influence processes. Using longitudinal network data from adolescents attending two large schools in AddHealth (N = 1,857) and stochastic actor-oriented models, we evaluate whether girls are influenced to a greater degree by friends’ violence or delinquency than boys (influence hypothesis) and whether girls are more likely to select friends based on violent or delinquent behavior than boys (selection hypothesis). The results indicate that girls are more likely than boys to be influenced by their friends’ involvement in violence. Although a similar pattern emerges for nonviolent delinquency, the gender differences are not significant. Some evidence shows that boys are influenced toward increasing their violence or delinquency when exposed to more delinquent or violent friends but are immune to reducing their violence or delinquency when associating with less violent or delinquent friends. In terms of selection dynamics, although both boys and girls have a tendency to select friends based on friends’ behavior, girls have a stronger tendency to do so, suggesting that among girls, friends’ involvement in violence or delinquency is an especially decisive factor for determining friendship ties.

An Explicit Test Of Plea Bargaining In The “Shadow Of The Trial”
Shawn D. Bushway, Allison D. Redlich And Robert J. Norris

Bargaining in the “shadow of the trial,” which hinges on the expectations of trial outcomes, is the primary theory used by noncriminologists to explain variation in the plea discount given to defendants who plead guilty. This study develops a formal mathematical representation of the theory and then presents an empirical test of the theory using an innovative online survey with responses to a hypothetical case from 1,585 prosecutors, defense attorneys, and judges. The key outcomes are the probability that the defendant will be convicted at trial, the sentence for the defendant if convicted, and the best plea that the respondent would accept or offer. Variation in the outcomes is created through experimental variation in the information presented to the respondents. Structural regression models are estimated to fit the formal theoretical models, and the instrumental variables method is used to correct for measurement error in the estimate for probability of conviction. The data support the basic shadow model, with minor modifications, for only prosecutors and defense attorneys. Controlling for the characteristics of the individual actors and their jurisdictions adds explanatory value to the model, although these control variables did not affect the key coefficients from the shadow model.

Correction: Pulling Back The Curtain On Heritability Studies: Biosocial Criminology In The Postgenomic Era 
Callie H. Burt And Ronald L. Simons

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 30(4)

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, December 2014: Volume 30, Issue 4

Validating Self-Nomination in Gang Research: Assessing Differences in Gang Embeddedness Across Non-, Current, and Former Gang Members
Scott H. Decker, David C. Pyrooz, Gary Sweeten, Richard K. Moule Jr.

Objective: The study of gang members is closely linked to the self-nomination method. It is timely to revisit the criterion validity of self-nomination, as recent theoretical and empirical advancements in gang disengagement necessitate further differentiating current from former gang members. This study assessed differences in gang embeddedness—a construct that taps individual immersion within deviant social networks—across three groups: current gang members, former gang members, and those individuals who have never joined a gang. Methods: Data gathered in 2011 from a high-risk sample of 621 individuals in five cities were used to assess the validity of the self-nomination method. Standardized differences in a mixed graded response model of gang embeddedness were evaluated across the three statuses of gang membership. Results: Self-nomination was strongly related to embeddedness in gangs, even after controlling for demographic, theoretical, and gang-related factors. The strongest predictor of gang embeddedness was self-nomination as a current or a former gang member, although current gang members maintained levels of gang embeddedness about one standard deviation greater than former gang members. Self-nomination was also the primary determinant of gang embeddedness for males, females, whites, blacks, and Hispanics. Conclusion: The results of this study provide strong evidence in support of the use of self-nomination to differentiate between non-gang and gang members as well as current and former gang members, adding to a body of research demonstrating that self-nomination is a valid measure of gang membership.

The Salience of Social Contextual Factors in Appraisals of Police Interactions with Citizens: A Randomized Factorial Experiment
Anthony A. Braga, Christopher Winship, Tom R. Tyler, Jeffrey Fagan, Tracey L. Meares

Objectives: Prior research indicates that public assessments of the manner in which the police exercise their authority are a key antecedent of judgments about the legitimacy of the police. In this study, the importance of context in influencing people’s assessment of police wrongdoing is examined. Methods: A randomized factorial experiment was used to test how respondents perceive and evaluate police–citizens interactions along a range of types of situations and encounters. 1,361 subjects were surveyed on factors hypothesized to be salient influences on how citizens perceive and evaluate citizen interactions with police. Subjects viewed videos of actual police–citizen encounters and were asked for their evaluations of these observed encounters. Contextual primes were used to focus subjects on particular aspects of the context within which the encounter occurs. Results: Structural equation models revealed that social contextual framing factors, such as the climate of police–community relations and the legality of the stop that led to the encounter, influence citizen appraisals of police behavior with effects comparable in size to and even larger than demographic variables such as education, race, and income. Conclusions: These results suggest that the understandings and perceptions that people bring to a situation are important determinants of their assessment of police fairness. The police can positively influence citizen interpretations of police actions by striving to create a climate of positive police–community relationships in cities.

Accounting for Racial Disparities in the Nature of Violent Victimization
Mark T. Berg

Objectives: Prior research suggests racial differences in violent victimization reflect differences in severity and not frequency. The current study proposes and tests hypotheses regarding the sources of racial variation in the nature of violent victimization. Methods: A person-incident data file is employed to examine theoretical mechanisms that purportedly explain the effects of race on the nature of violent victimization. Data are analyzed with multinomial logistic regression models. Mediation processes are examined using a decomposition model that simultaneously adjusts for parameter rescaling and confounding. Results: Descriptive statistics reveal larger proportions of black males compared to whites experience gun violence, yet higher percentages of white males suffer unarmed violence. Differential exposure variables explain a larger quantity of racial differences in the likelihood of gun versus unarmed violence compared to behavioral attributes variables. Still, race remains a robust predictor of firearm victimization controlling for the full array of study variables. Conclusions: It appears that black males are more likely than whites to suffer serious forms of violence and not minor forms due more to their exposure to risky settings than to their behavioral characteristics. Nonetheless, there is some evidence that stereotypes also partially account for the higher rates of gun victimization among black males. This study advances research on race and interpersonal violence. Moreover, the study demonstrates the importance of specifying the proper dependent variable when testing theories of interpersonal violence and victimization.

The Impact of Leadership Removal on Mexican Drug Trafficking Organizations
Matthew Dickenson

Objectives: Has the Mexican government’s policy of removing drug-trafficking organization (DTO) leaders reduced or increased violence? In the first 4 years of the Calderón administration, over 34,000 drug-related murders were committed. In response, the Mexican government captured or killed 25 DTO leaders. This study analyzes changes in violence (drug-related murders) that followed those leadership removals. Methods: The analysis consists of cross-sectional time-series negative binomial modeling of 49 months of murder counts in 32 Mexican states (including the federal district). Results: Leadership removals are generally followed by increases in drug-related murders. A DTO’s home state experiences more subsequent violence than the state where the leader was removed. Killing leaders is associated with more violence than capturing them. However, removing leaders for whom a $30m peso bounty was offered is associated with a smaller increase than other removals. Conclusion: DTO leadership removals in Mexico were associated with an estimated 415 additional deaths during the first 4 years of the Calderón administration. Reforming Mexican law enforcement and improving career prospects for young men are more promising counter-narcotics strategies. Further research is needed to analyze how the rank of leaders mediates the effect of their removal.

Incentivizing Responses to Self-report Questions in Perceptual Deterrence Studies: An Investigation of the Validity of Deterrence Theory Using Bayesian Truth Serum
Thomas A. Loughran, Ray Paternoster, Kyle J. Thomas

Objective: Criminological researchers want people to reveal considerable private information when utilizing self-report surveys, such as involvement in crime, subjective attitudes and expectations, and probability judgments. Some of this private information is easily accessible for subjects and all that is required is for individuals to be honest, while other information requires mental effort and cognitive reflection. Though researchers generally provide little or no incentive to be honest and thoughtful, it is generally assumed that subjects do provide honest and accurate information. We assess the accuracy of deterrence measures by employing a scoring rule known as the Bayesian truth serum (BTS)—that incentivizes honesty and thoughtfulness among respondents. Method: Individuals are asked to report on self-report offending and estimates of risk after being assigned to one of two conditions: (1) a group where there is a financial incentive just for participation, and (2) a BTS financial incentive group where individuals are incentivized to be honest and thoughtful. Results: We find evidence that there are some important differences in the responses to self-reporting offending items and estimates of the probability of getting arrested between the groups. Individuals in the BTS condition report a greater willingness to offend and lower estimates of perceived risk for drinking and driving and cheating on exams. Moreover, we find that the negative correlation between perceived risk and willingness to offend that is often observed in scenario-based deterrence research does not emerge in conditions where respondents are incentivized to be accurate and thoughtful in their survey responses. Conclusion: The results raise some questions about the accuracy of survey responses in perceptual deterrence studies, and challenge the statistical relationship between perceived risk and offending behavior. We suggest further exploration within criminology of both BTS and other scoring rules and greater scrutiny of the validity of criminological data.

Investigating the Functional Form of the Self-control–Delinquency Relationship in a Sample of Serious Young Offenders
Christopher J. Sullivan, Thomas Loughran

Objective: This work further examines the functional form of the self-control–delinquency relationship as an extension of recent work by Mears et al. (J Quant Criminol, 2013). Given the importance of the authors’ conclusions regarding the nonlinear relationship between these two variables and the recognition that there are some potential limitations in the sample and assumptions required for the analytic methods used, we apply both similar and alternative techniques with a data set comprised of serious youthful offenders to determine whether key findings can be replicated. Methods: Data from the Pathways to Desistance study, which comprise extensive individual and social history interviews with 1,354 offenders over multiple waves spread out over 84 months, is utilized in this analysis. These data are well-suited to investigating the questions of interest as the target population comprises youth with offending histories that are more extensive than those likely to be found in general surveys of adolescents. The analyses consider the self-control–delinquency relationship in an alternative sample with the previously used Generalized Propensity Score (GPS) procedure, which requires strong assumptions, as well as nonparametric regression which requires far weaker assumptions to consider the functional form of the self-control–delinquency relationship. Results: The results generally show that the identified functional form of the self-control–delinquency relationship seems to be at least partly dependent on aspects of the modeling of dose–response associated with GPS procedures. When nonparametric general additive models are used with the same data, the relationship between self-control and delinquency seems to be approximately linear. Conclusions: Identifying functional form relationships has importance for many criminological theories, but it is a task that requires that the balance of model assumptions to exploratory data analysis falls toward the latter. Nonparametric approaches to such questions may be a necessary first step in learning about the nature of mechanisms presumed to be at work in important explanations for crime and criminality.

Enhancing Consistency in Sentencing: Exploring the Effects of Guidelines in England and Wales
J. Pina-Sánchez, R. Linacre

Objectives: The development and application of methods to assess consistency in sentencing before and after the 2011 England and Wales assault guideline came into force. Methods: We use the Crown Court Sentencing Survey to compare the goodness of fit of two regression analyses of sentence length on a set of legal factors before and after the assault guideline came into force. We then monitor the dispersion of residuals from these regressions models across time. Finally, we compare the variance in sentence length of equivalent types of offences using exact matching. Results: We find that legal factors can explain a greater portion of variability in sentencing after the guideline was implemented. Furthermore, we detect that the unexplained variability in sentencing decreases steadily during 2011, while results from exact matching point to a statistically significant average reduction in the variance of sentence length amongst same types of offences. Conclusions: We demonstrate the relevance of two new methods that can be used to produce more robust assessments regarding the evolution of consistency in sentencing, even in situations when only observational non-hierarchical data is available. The application of these methods showed an improvement in consistency during 2011 in England and Wales, although this positive effect cannot be conclusively ascribed to the implementation of the new assault guideline.

Social Forces 93(2)

Social Forces, December 2014: Volume 93, Issue 2

Economic Inequality

Increasing Returns to Education, Changing Labor Force Structure, and the Rise of Earnings Inequality in Urban China, 1996–2010
Xiang Zhou

Self-Made Wealth or Family Wealth?: Changes in Intergenerational Wealth Mobility
Marianne Nordli Hansen

Sexuality

Casual Contraception in Casual Sex: Life-Cycle Change in Undergraduates’ Sexual Behavior in Hookups
Jonathan Marc Bearak

Sexual Subjectivity among Adolescent Girls: Social Disadvantage and Young Adult Outcomes
Simon Cheng, Laura Hamilton, Stacy Missari, Josef (Kuo-Hsun) Ma

Gender and Family

Single Mothers and Poverty in Japan: The Role of Intergenerational Coresidence
Sawako Shirahase, James M. Raymo

Gender Equality Perceptions, Division of Paid and Unpaid Work, and Partnership Dissolution in Sweden
Livia Sz. Oláh, Michael Gähler

Gender and Labor Markets

Globally Themed Organizations as Labor Market Intermediaries: The Rise of Israeli-Palestinian Women’s Employment in Retail
Erez Aharon Marantz, Alexandra Kalev, Noah Lewin-Epstein

Are Asian American Women Advantaged?: Labor Market Performance of College Educated Female Workers
ChangHwan Kim, Yang Zhao

Education

The Scarring Effects of Primary-Grade Retention?: A Study of Cumulative Advantage in the Educational Career
Megan Andrew

Maternal Education and the Unequal Significance of Family Structure for Children’s Early Achievement
Jennifer March Augustine

Birth Cohort Changes in the Association Between College Education and Religious Non-Affiliation
Philip Schwadel

Testing the Oppositional Culture Explanation in Desegregated Schools: The Impact of Racial Differences in Academic Orientations on School Performance
John B. Diamond, James P. Huguley

Political Sociology

The Asymmetry of Legitimacy: Analyzing the Legitimation of Violence in 30 Cases of Insurgent Revolution
Eric W. Schoon

Social Networks

The Power of Integration: Affiliation and Cohesion in a Diverse Elite Network
Benjamin Cornwell, Fedor A. Dokshin

Volunteering

Volunteering over the Life Course
Bram Lancee, Jonas Radl

Journal of Criminal Justice 42(6)

Journal of Criminal Justice, November 2014: Volume 42, Issue 6

Antisocial Traits Murdered the Code of the Street in a Battle for Respect 
Matt DeLisi

Implementing Intelligence-Led Policing: An Application of Loose-Coupling Theory
Jeremy G. Carter, Scott W. Phillips, S. Marlon Gayadeen

Purpose: This research is intended to inform a knowledge gap in the literature and present the first national findings related to intelligence-led policing adoption among state and local agencies. Specific practices are identified to inform scholars and practitioners regarding intelligence-led policing behaviors. Methods: Original survey research from a federally-funded project is gleaned to explore intelligence-led policing adoption through a loose-coupling theoretical perspective. Negative binomial and logistic regression models are employed to identify predictive relationships. Results: Agencies nationwide appear to be closely following the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan recommendations to enhance information sharing. Consistent with the Department of Homeland Security’s Target Capabilities List is also observed. Agency size appears to have a significant effect on key organizational information sharing behaviors. The findings are tempered due to limitations in the research design. Conclusions: Local agencies appear to be tightly-coupled with the recommendations put forth in the National Criminal Intelligence Sharing Plan in their efforts to adopt intelligence-led policing. Agency size appears to enhance adoption across most dependent metrics. This research progresses the limited evidence base and progress regarding this emerging policing philosophy.

The influence of strain on law enforcement legitimacy evaluations
Frank V. Ferdik

Purpose: While law enforcement officers have the state-sanctioned authority to use force as a way to ensure citizen obedience with the law, research has found that when private citizens evaluate the police as legitimate, they are more likely to comply with legal demands and cooperate with the police. Although procedural justice has shown to be a highly significant predictor of perceived police legitimacy, research has found other correlates of this outcome, including ethnic identity, low self-control and structural economic disadvantage. To date, no study has explored whether strain influences perceptions of the legitimacy of law enforcement. Methods: A series of linear regression equations was estimated using survey data collected from a convenience sample of college students to determine the effect of strain on perceived police legitimacy. Results: Even after controlling for procedural justice, strain exerted a negative and statistically significant influence on law enforcement legitimacy evaluations. Conclusions: Police officers are encouraged to interact with citizens in procedurally just manners and to also consider people's strain levels when enforcing the law.

A biosocial analysis of the sources of missing data in criminological research
Joseph A. Schwartz, Kevin M. Beaver

Purpose: Failing to deal with missing data patterns effectively may result in biased parameter estimates and ultimately may produce inaccurate results and conclusions. The vast majority of criminological research has addressed this issue with listwise deletion (LD) and multiple imputation (MI) techniques. Identifying the specific covariates that directly contribute to patterns of missingness is highly important in deciding which technique to use. One of the more surprising omissions from the identified list of covariates is the potential role of genetic influences in the development of missingness. Methods: The current study addresses this gap in the literature by estimating genetic (A), shared environmental (C), and the nonshared environmental (E) influences on missingness across measures of delinquency and self-control within a longitudinal sample of twin and sibling pairs. Results: The results indicated that genetic influences explain a significant portion of the variance in missing values related to both delinquency and self-control. Conclusions: Current methodological techniques aimed at addressing missing data should be amended to take genetic influences into account. Such modifications and the implications of the findings for future research are discussed.

Causes and correlates of prison inmate misconduct: A systematic review of the evidence
Benjamin Steiner, H. Daniel Butler, Jared M. Ellison

Purpose: Inmate rule violations or “misconducts” reflect offending within a prison, and this study involved a systematic review of studies of the causes/correlates of inmate misconduct published between 1980 and 2013. Methods: An exhaustive search of relevant high impact journals yielded 98 studies of causes/correlates of inmates misconduct published between 1980 and 2013. The final models from these studies were examined to assess the impact of the predictor variables on misconduct. Results: Findings revealed that predictor variables reflecting inmates’ background characteristics (e.g., age, prior record), their institutional routines and experiences (e.g., prior misconducts), and prison characteristics (e.g., security level) all impact misconduct. Conclusions: Researchers should apply general theories of crime and deviance (e.g., control) that can incorporate all of the empirically relevant inmate and prison characteristics to the study of offending in prison (misconduct). Researchers should also examine the sources of variability in the effects of predictor variables across studies.

On the consequences of ignoring genetic influences in criminological research
J.C. Barnes, Brian B. Boutwell, Kevin M. Beaver, Chris L. Gibson, John P. Wright

Purpose: Many criminological scholars explore the social causes of crime while giving little consideration to the possibility that genetic factors underlie the observed associations. Indeed, the standard social science method (SSSM) assumes genetic influences do not confound the association between X and Y. Yet, a nascent stream of evidence has questioned the validity of this approach by revealing many criminological variables are at least partially affected by genetic influences. As a result, a substantial proportion of the literature may be misspecified due to uncontrolled genetic factors. No effort has been made to directly estimate the extent to which genetic confounding has biased the associations presented in criminological studies. Methods: The present study seeks to address this issue by drawing on simulated datasets. Results: clusions Results: gest genetic confounding may account for a negligible portion of the relationship between X and Y when their correlation (ryx) is larger than the correlation between genetic factors and Y (i.e., ryx > ryg). Genetic confounding appears to be much more problematic when the correlation between X and Y is in the moderate-to-small range (e.g., ryx = .20) and the genetic effect is in the moderate-to-large range (e.g., ryg ≥ .30).

Criminal epidemiology and the immigrant paradox: Intergenerational discontinuity in violence and antisocial behavior among immigrants
Michael G. Vaughn, Christopher P. Salas-Wright, Brandy R. Maynard, Zhengmin Qian, Lauren Terzis, Abdi M. Kusow, Matt DeLisi

Purpose: A growing number of studies have examined the immigrant paradox with respect to antisocial behavior and crime in the United States. However, there remains a need for a comprehensive examination of the intergenerational nature of violence and antisocial behavior among immigrants using population-based samples. Methods: The present study, employing data from Wave I and II data of the National Epidemiologic Survey of Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC), sought to address these gaps by examining the prevalence of nonviolent criminal and violent antisocial behavior among first, second, and third-generation immigrants and compare these to the prevalence found among non-immigrants and each other in the United States. Results: There is clear evidence of an intergenerational severity-based gradient in the relationship between immigrant status and antisocial behavior and crime. The protective effect of nativity is far-and-away strongest among first-generation immigrants, attenuates substantially among second-generation immigrants, and essentially disappears among third-generation immigrants. These patterns were also stable across gender. Conclusion: The present study is among the first to examine the intergenerational nature of antisocial behavior and crime among immigrants using population-based samples. Results provide robust evidence that nativity as a protective factor for immigrants wanes with each successive generation.

The impact of neighborhood crime levels on police use of force: An examination at micro and meso levels
Hoon Lee, Michael S. Vaughn, Hyeyoung Lim

Purpose: Neighborhood contextual factors have gained a considerable amount of attention, relating neighborhood crime levels to police force. Prior research mainly examined the relationship either at the police district level or at the city level. The current study intends to investigate the relationship at lower levels of geographic aggregation. Methods: Using Geographic Information System techniques, the current study utilized four radial buffer zones around each use of force incident location to measure the impact of neighborhood violent criminal activities at the micro level on the level of police force used. In addition, hierarchical linear modeling using neighborhood crime rates within police command areas allowed for a comparison study to measure the impact of neighborhood criminal activities at the meso level on police force. Results: The current study found that neighborhood crime levels have a significant and positive effect of increasing the level of police force used at the micro level. Conclusions: The current study supports the work of Black and Smith, concluding that more training and supervision are required for officers working in high crime areas.

Correctional destabilization and jail violence: The consequences of prison depopulation legislation
Jonathan W. Caudill, Chad R. Trulson, James W. Marquart, Ryan Patten, Matthew O. Thomas, Sally Anderson

Purpose: This study explored the effects of prison depopulation on local jail violence through a general systems perspective – where an abrupt shift in the processing of offenders had the potential to create ripple effects through other organizations – of the criminal justice system. Methods: In 2011, California passed the Criminal Justice Realignment legislation aimed to reduce prison population by making low-level felony offenders ineligible for state incarceration and diverting those already in state prison for the included offenses from state to county-level community supervision once paroled. This study incorporated bivariate and negative binomial regression analyses to model officially-recorded county jail panel data to estimate the effects of state prison depopulation on California county jails. Results: Findings demonstrated support for the general systems framework as there was a significant decrease in jail utility in the bivariate analysis and a significant increase in jail violence in the multivariate analysis associated with passage of California’s prison depopulation legislation. Conclusions: The results supported the notion of an interconnected criminal justice system. Policy implications include the consequences of increased violence on jail operations, the potential for a cadre of habitual offenders, and generalizing these findings to the community.

Sex industry exposure over the life course on the onset and frequency of sex offending
Christina Mancini, Amy Reckdenwald, Eric Beauregard, Jill S. Levenson

Purpose: Research has examined pornography use on the extent of offending. However, virtually no work has tested whether other sex industry experiences affect sex crime. By extension, the cumulative effect of these exposures is unknown. Social learning theory predicts that exposure should amplify offending. Separately, the developmental perspective highlights that the timing of exposure matters. Methods: Drawing on retrospective longitudinal data, we first test whether exposure during adolescence is associated with a younger age of onset; we also examine whether adulthood exposure is linked with greater frequency of offending. Results: Findings indicate that most types of adolescent exposures as well as total exposures were related to an earlier age of onset. Exposure during adulthood was also associated with an overall increase in sex offending, but effects were dependent on “type.” Conclusion: There are nuances in the effect of sex industry exposure on offending patterns. Implications of results are discussed.

Do the adult criminal careers of African Americans fit the “facts”?
Elaine Eggleston Doherty, Margaret E. Ensminger

Purpose: A major gap in the criminal career research is our understanding of offending among African Americans, especially beyond early adulthood. In light of this gap, this study describes the criminal career patterns of a cohort of African American males and females. Methods: This paper uses official criminal history data spanning ages 17 to 52 from the Woodlawn Study, a community cohort of 1,242 urban African American males and females. We use basic descriptive statistics as well as group-based modeling to provide a detailed description of the various dimensions of their adult criminal careers. Results: We find cumulative prevalence rates similar to those for African Americans from national probability sample estimates, yet participation in offending extends farther into midlife than expected with a substantial proportion of the cohort still engaged in offending into their 30s. Conclusions: The descriptive analyses contribute to the larger body of knowledge regarding the relationship between age and crime and the unfolding of the criminal career for African American males and females. The applicability of existing life course and developmental theories is discussed in light of the findings.

Dissecting the relationship between mental illness and return to incarceration
James A. Wilson, Peter B. Wood

Purpose: We examine all releases to parole supervision in a single state over a period of four years to consider how a diagnosis of mental illness is associated with return to incarceration. Methods: We use survival methods and Cox regression to understand patterns of and influences on return to prison. Our measure of mental illness is based on in-prison clinical diagnoses. Data include a rich set of administrative variables with demographic, criminal history and institutional controls. Results: Our findings suggest that (1) there is a statistically significant relationship between having a DSM diagnosis and reincarceration, (2) substance-related disorders account for most of that relationship, and (3) there are some important variations among types of disorders examined. Conclusions: Research that examines mental illness and recidivism without controlling for substance use disorders/problems is likely to be uninformative and misleading. Findings provide qualified support for the notion that programming addressing criminogenic risks and needs may be as important, or more so, than therapeutic programming focusing on mental illness when recidivism reduction is the goal.

General strain theory, exposure to violence, and suicide ideation among police officers: A gendered approach
Stephen A. Bishopp, Denise Paquette Boots

Purpose: A wide body of research has demonstrated that police officers are profoundly affected by their exposure to violence and the traumatic events viewed commonly as part of their job duties. Faced with stress, officers learn to adapt by incorporating coping techniques. Methods: The current study utilizes Agnew's general strain theory to explain occurrences of the most dangerous maladaptive coping technique: suicide ideation. Male and female police officers from three large cities in Texas were surveyed (n = 1,410). Results: The present study utilizes logistic regression techniques, finding that strain has a positive and direct effect on male officers suicide ideation risk, but not for female police. Moreover, depression has a mediating effect on strain and suicide ideation for both genders. Conclusions: Some critical differences in suicide ideation outcomes between male and female police officers are reported. Policy implications concerning retention and recruiting are also discussed.

Cops and cameras: Officer perceptions of the use of body-worn cameras in law enforcement
Wesley G. Jennings, Lorie A. Fridell, Mathew D. Lynch

Purpose: There has been a recent surge in the adoption of and media attention to the use of body-worn cameras in law enforcement. Despite this increase in use and media attention, there is little to no research on officer perceptions of body-worn cameras. Methods: This study relies on baseline data of officer perceptions toward body-worn cameras collected from surveys administered to Orlando Police officers who are participants in a randomized experiment evaluating the impact of body-worn cameras (Taser AXON Flex) in law enforcement. Results: Results suggest that police officers are, by and large, open to and supportive of the use of body-worn cameras in policing, they would feel comfortable wearing them, and that they perceive a potential for benefits of body-worn cameras in improving citizen behavior, their own behavior, and the behavior of their fellow officers. Conclusions: Officers are generally supportive of body-worn cameras, and they hold perceptions that these devices can be beneficial in positively affecting relevant outcomes. Study limitations and implications are also discussed.

Assessing stereotypes of adolescent rape
Monica Williams, Bill McCarthy

Purpose: This study examined adolescent rape in light of two popular stereotypes of young rapists. The “deficit” view emphasizes various sexual, psychological, or social problems, whereas the “entitlement” perspective highlights instrumental motivation, confidence, and gender-based privileges. Methods: The study analyzed data on adolescent males from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). We used rare events logistic regression analysis to test the associations between rape and sexual abuse, sexual activity, personality and social attributes, and control variables. Results: Findings indicated notable associations between adolescent rape and variables emphasized by both stereotypes: net of a range of controls, a history of sexual abuse and low sexual self-control were associated with rape, but rape was also positively associated with self-esteem. We found no significant relationships between adolescent rape and sexual precociousness, number of sexual partners, using sex as a coping mechanism, social isolation, impulsivity, or narcissism. Conclusions: These findings suggest that both the deficit and entitlement stereotypes hold some merit for understanding why some young men rape.

In the eye of the beholder? An examination of the inter-rater reliability of the LSI-R and YLS/CMI in a correctional agency
Michael Rocque, Judy Plummer-Beale

Purpose: To examine the inter-rater reliability of two risk assessment tools: The Level of Service Inventory-Revised (LSI-R) and the Youth Level of Service/Case Management Inventory (YLS/CMI). Methods: Two identical experiments are reported. For both studies, a random sample of 10 offenders were interviewed and videotaped with each tool (totaling 20 offenders). The tapes were then shown to a random selection of 20 raters (for a total of 40 raters) employed at a state agency. The fully-crossed design allowed each of the raters to rate the each of the cases, resulting in 200 total risk score observations for each tool. Inter-rater reliability analyses were then conducted. Results: The LSI-R demonstrated adequate to fair reliability, with certain domains showing lower reliability. Overall, the LSI-R had an ICC of .65. The YLS/CMI demonstrated higher reliability (ICC of .78). In addition, for the LSI-R study, comparisons were made between staff raters who work in a facility versus those in the community (e.g., probation officers). For the YLS/CMI study, comparisons were made between incarcerated offenders versus probationers. Neither comparison yielded consistent differences. Conclusions: The YLS/CMI is generally reliable. The LSI-R showed less reliability. However, each study showed certain domains with less than ideal reliability.

Revisiting broken windows theory: A test of the mediation impact of social mechanisms on the disorder–fear relationship
Jacinta M. Gau, Nicholas Corsaro, Rod K. Brunson

Purpose: Broken windows theory predicts that disorder signals a lack of neighborhood control, sparks fear of crime, and sets off a chain reaction ultimately resulting in crime. Support has been found for the disorder–fear link, but the present study argues that this link is actually intended to be indirect—perceived loss of control is what should cause fear. Methods: Hierarchical linear models and structural equation models test four hypotheses regarding whether social cohesion and expectations for social control mediate the disorder–fear relationship. Results: Results support partial mediation. Conclusion: Results suggest confirmation of a portion of broken windows theory, in that disorder may inspire fear partially as a result of its detrimental impact on neighborhood cohesion and shared expectations for social control.

The Effects of Suspect Characteristics on Arrest: A Meta-Analysis
Daniel J. Lytle

Purpose: Synthesis research on the correlates of arrest has had a long history of analysis in police decision making research. Yet, much of this line of synthesis research has found mixed results and has been unable to definitively state whether relationships exist between suspect demographic characteristics, race, gender, age, and ethnicity, and arrest. This research attempts to clear this confusion created by previous synthesis attempts particularly. Methods: Meta-analysis was used to generate weighted mean effect sizes of the effect of race, gender, age, and ethnicity on arrest. Effect sizes were weighted using the inverse variance method and random effects modeling was also used. Moderator analyses were also performed. Results: Black individuals, males, and Hispanic individuals were significantly more likely to be arrested than white individuals, females, and non-Hispanic individuals. These effects persisted across the majority of moderator categories. Age was not a significant predictor of arrest. Conclusions: The results here bring some degree of order to a large amount of arrest decision making literature. The findings confirm the results of a previous meta-analysis on race and arrest and also expand upon that research. These results expand “what we know” about the effect of race on arrest.