Social Science Research 44

Social Science Research, March 2014: Volume 44

Individuals’ openness to migrate and job mobility
Johannes Huinink, Sergi Vidal, Stefanie Kley

School accountability and the black–white test score gap
S. Michael Gaddis, Douglas Lee Lauen

Relationships of choice: Can friendships or fictive kinships explain the race paradox in mental health?
Dawne M. Mouzon

The racial foundations of whites’ support for child saving
Justin T. Pickett, Ted Chiricos, Marc Gertz

Relational trustworthiness: How status affects intra-organizational inequality in job autonomy
Celeste Campos-Castillo, Kwesi Ewoodzie

Citizen-making: The role of national goals for socializing children
Michael Harris Bond, Vivian Miu-Chi Lun

Theories of lean management: An empirical evaluation
Michael J. Handel

Social origins and post-high school institutional pathways: A cumulative dis/advantage approach
Francesco Giudici, Aaron M. Pallas

A non-stationary panel data investigation of the unemployment–crime relationship
Johan Blomquist, Joakim Westerlund

The color of juvenile justice: Racial disparities in dispositional decisions
Jamie J. Fader, Megan C. Kurlychek, Kirstin A. Morgan

Marital age homogamy in China: A reversal of trend in the reform era?
Zheng Mu, Yu Xie

Ethnic Stratification amid China’s Economic Transition: Evidence from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region
Xiaogang Wu, Xi Song

Changes in college attainment and the economic returns to a college degree in urban China, 2003–2010: Implications for social equality
Anning Hu, Jacob Hibel

Do mother’s and father’s education condition the impact of parental divorce on child well-being?
Jornt J. Mandemakers, Matthijs Kalmijn

The preferred role and perceived performance of the welfare state: European welfare attitudes from a multidimensional perspective
Femke Roosma, Wim van Oorschot, John Gelissen

Online questionnaire development: Using film to engage participants and then gather attitudes towards the sharing of genomic data
A. Middleton, E. Bragin, K.I. Morley, M Parker, on behalf of the DDD Study

Journal of Criminal Justice 42(1)

Journal of Criminal Justice, January 2014: Volume 42, Issue 1

False positive and false negative rates in self-reported intentions to offend: A replication and extension
M. Lyn Exum, Diana Bailey, Eric L. Wright

Purpose: Studies of criminal decision making commonly rely on college students’ self-reported intentions to commit a hypothetical offense. The current study evaluates the predictive validity of these intentions to offend. Methods: Undergraduate students (n = 726) read a fictitious but seemingly realistic newspaper article describing an illegal opportunity for acquiring digital music files, and then reported their intentions to act upon the opportunity. Afterward, participants’ real world attempts to follow-through on the opportunity were monitored covertly. Results: Findings reveal that participants who reported weak intentions to offend typically refrained from the act, resulting in a low false negative rate. However, those who reported strong intentions to offend also typically refrained from the act, thereby resulting in a high false positive rate. Conclusions: These findings suggest that while participants’ predictions of criminal abstention are generally accurate, their predictions of criminal involvement are more problematic. Such faulty intentions have important implications for research on criminal decision making.

Foundation for a temperament-based theory of antisocial behavior and criminal justice system involvement
Matt DeLisi, Michael G. Vaughn

Background: Temperament has been shown to be associated with behavior for millennia but has not been explicitly used in a theory of crime. Methods: This state-of-the-art review incorporates theory and research from over 300 studies from developmental psychology, psychiatry, genetics, neuroscience, and criminology to introduce a temperament-based theory of antisocial conduct with criminal justice system implications. Findings: Two temperamental constructs—effortful control and negative emotionality—are significantly predictive of self-regulation deficits and behavioral problems in infancy, in toddlerhood, in childhood, in adolescence, and across adulthood. Conclusion: Unlike other theories that focus merely on explaining problem behaviors, our temperament approach also explains negative and aversive interactions with criminal justice system practitioners and associated maladjustment or noncompliance with the criminal justice system. A program of research is also offered to examine and test the theory.

A New Look into Broken Windows: What Shapes Individuals’ Perceptions of Social Disorder?
Joshua C. Hinkle, Sue-Ming Yang

Purpose: This study compares perceptual and observational measures of social disorder to examine the influence of observable levels of disorder in shaping residents’ perceptions of social problems on their street. Methods: This study uses regression models utilizing data from a survey of residents, systematic social observations and police calls for service to explore the formation of perceptions of social disorder. Results: We find little correspondence between residents’ perceptual and researchers’ observational measures of social disorder, suggesting that residents form perceptions of social disorder differently than do outsiders to their community. However, researchers’ observations of physical disorder were found to strongly influence residents’ perceptions of social disorder. Findings also suggest that people with different demographic backgrounds and life experiences may perceive the same social environment in very different ways. Conclusions: The results add to a growing literature suggesting that social disorder is a social construct, rather than a concrete phenomenon. Moreover, we suggest that the linkage between physical disorder and residents’ perceptions of social disorder might provide an avenue for police to address residents’ fear of crime while avoiding some of the criticisms that have been leveled against programs targeting social disorder.

Formal and informal control views in China, Japan, and the U.S.
Shanhe Jiang, Eric G. Lambert, Jianhong Liu, Toyoji Saito

Purpose: This study compared and contrasted the views of formal and informal crime control among college students from China, Japan, and the U.S., and examined the correlates behind the views. Methods: Using the same questionnaire, this study collected data from 1,275 completed surveys in the three nations. Results: The study revealed that both Chinese and Japanese respondents evaluated formal and informal control and their combination in crime control as more important than American counterparts did. The variable trust in police was a predictor of attitudes toward formal control and the mix of formal and informal control in all the three nations. Demographics in the U.S. were more important factors than in China and Japan in predicting the respondents' ranking of the importance of formal control and informal control and their combination in crime control. Conclusions: This is the first empirically comparative study of the perceived importance of formal and informal mechanisms in crime prevention and control in China, Japan and the U.S. The study found both similarities and differences in the perceived importance and reasons behind them. More research is needed in the future.

Genetic and environmental influences on the co-occurrence of early academic achievement and externalizing behavior
Jamie Newsome, Danielle Boisvert, John Paul Wright

Purpose: Several studies have observed a relationship between academic achievement and externalizing behaviors, both of which are predictors of delinquency and criminal behavior in adulthood. There is, however, no consensus on an explanation for their co-occurrence. One perspective is that both emerge as a result of a common underlying factor. This study investigates the degree to which the same genetic and environmental factors account for the co-occurrence of these two outcomes. Methods: The sample consists of twins (N = 360) from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Survey-Kindergarten Class of 1998-1999. Bivariate genetic analyses were conducted to assess the genetic and environmental influence on the relationship between academic achievement and externalizing behaviors during kindergarten. Results: The covariation was due primarily to common shared environmental factors (55-87%), followed by common genetic (8-44%) and nonshared environmental factors (1-13%). Conclusions: Both early academic achievement and externalizing behaviors are partially influenced by the same genetic and environmental factors. The large proportion of covariance attributed to shared environmental influences suggests that identifying and targeting shared environmental factors in prevention and intervention strategies may improve both behavior and academic achievement.

Do school disciplinary policies have positive social impacts? Examining the attenuating effects of school policies on the relationship between personal and peer delinquency
Gregory M. Zimmerman, Carter Rees

Purpose: Empirical research has yet to demonstrate that strict school disciplinary policies deter student misconduct. However, underlying the null and negative effects observed in prior research may be competing social impacts. What is missing from prior research is an acknowledgement that the deviance amplification effects of criminogenic risk factors may be partially offset by the general deterrence effects of strict school sanctions. Methods: Using data from the school administrator questionnaire, the in-school interview, and the in-home interview from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, this study employs logistic hierarchical models to investigate whether strict school sanctions condition the relationship between personal and peer smoking, drinking, and fighting. Results: Results indicate that the effects of peer smoking, drinking, and fighting on corresponding respondent delinquency are attenuated in schools with strict sanction policies for these behaviors. Conclusions: Results suggest that school policies can aid in preventing crime in unanticipated ways, for example, by reducing the crime-inducing effects of having delinquent peers. Prior research may therefore be unintentionally discounting the general deterrence effects of school disciplinary policies by neglecting the moderating mechanisms through which these policies operate.

Psychopathic traits and offending trajectories from early adolescence to adulthood
Evan C. McCuish, Raymond Corrado, Patrick Lussier, Stephen D. Hart

Purpose: Measures of adolescent psychopathy have yet to be examined in offending trajectory studies. This may explain why identifying etiological differences between individuals following high-rate and moderate-rate offending trajectories has remained elusive. The current study used the Psychopathy Checklist: Youth Version (PCL:YV) to examine psychopathic traits and offending trajectories within a sample of incarcerated offenders. Methods: Convictions were measured for Canadian male (n = 243) and female (n = 64) offenders at each year between ages 12 and 28. Semi-parametric group based modeling identified four unique trajectories: adolescence-limited (AL) (27.3% of sample), explosive-onset fast desister (EOFD) (30.6%), high-rate slow desister (HRSD) (14.6%), and high frequency chronic (HFC) (27.5%). Findings: Both a three and a four factor model of psychopathy were tested, and both factor structures were positively and significantly associated with the HRSD and HFC trajectories. Regarding individual factors of psychopathy, the ‘Antisocial’ factor of the PCL:YV was the only individual dimension significantly associated with membership in high-rate compared to moderate-rate offending trajectories. Conclusions: Psychopathic traits appear more commonly present amongst individuals who follow chronic versus moderate offending trajectories. Implications for early intervention and risk management of offenders are discussed.

Inked into Crime? An Examination of the Causal Relationship between Tattoos and Life-Course Offending among Males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development
Wesley G. Jennings, Bryanna Hahn Fox, David P. Farrington

Purpose: There have been a number of prior studies that have investigated the relationship between tattoos and crime with most documenting evidence of an association. Specifically, prior research often suggests that individuals with tattoos commit more crime, are disproportionately concentrated in offender and institutionalized populations, and often have personality disorders. Having said this, the bulk of the prior research on this topic has been correlational. Methods: In the current study, we rely on data from a prospective longitudinal study of 411 British males from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and employ propensity score matching to determine if the link between tattoos and crime may in fact be causal. Results: Results suggest that having tattoos is better considered as a symptom of another set of developmental risk factors and personality traits that are both related to tattooing and being involved in crime rather than as a causal factor for predicting crime over the life-course. Conclusions: Study limitations and directions for future research are discussed.

Sociological Theory 31(1)

Sociological Theory, December 2013: Volume 31, Issue 4

Gender and Public Talk: Accounting for Women’s Variable Participation in the Public Sphere
Francesca Polletta and Pang Ching Bobby Chen

This article develops a theory of the gendered character of public talk as a way to account for women’s variable participation in the settings that make up the public sphere. Public settings for citizen talk such as radio call-in shows, social networking sites, letters to the editor, and town hall meetings are culturally coded female or male. In feminized settings, where the people who organize public talk are from feminized professions and where the favored modes of talk and action emphasize stereotypically feminine values, women are likely to be as active and influential participants as men. We test this proposition by way of an examination of the organized public deliberative forums in which many Americans today discuss policy issues. We show that women truly are equal participants in these forums. We account for this surprising development by demonstrating the female gendered character of the contemporary field of organized public deliberation.

Bourdieu, Marx, and Capital: A Critique of the Extension Model
Mathieu Hikaru Desan

It has been claimed that in extending its critical problematic to the cultural sphere, Pierre Bourdieu transcends the economism of Marx’s concept of capital. I argue that this claim must be rejected. First, I show that Marx’s concept of capital was not economistic. Second, I trace Bourdieu’s changing understanding of capital, showing how it became less compatible with Marx’s over time. Third, I point out ambiguities in Bourdieu’s concept of capital that, despite gestures toward a Marxist understanding of capital, further distance him from Marx. Fourth, I argue that Bourdieu tends to take the economic field and economic capital for granted, unlike Marx. I conclude that if different forms of capital are but extended forms of economic capital, the notion of economic capital that they extend is not a Marxist one.

Toward a Sociology of Public Demonstrations
Claude Rosental

This paper develops a social-theoretical approach to public demonstrations (e.g., software demos, the performances of “market pitchers,” even street protests). Public demonstrations are often viewed as proofs, persuasion tools, and theatrical performances. I argue that they play a larger set of roles in social life. Depending the spaces of their enactment, they may serve as transactional and coordination devices, cognitive and relational tools, mobilization and competition apparatuses, observatories for demonstrators, and resources for project design, management, and assessment. They constitute an important form of interaction and help to structure social relationships. My argument is based on investigations into the uses of public demonstrations by the European Commission and U.S. scientists and engineers. These studies illustrate how “demo-cracies”—regimes that use public demonstrations for the management of public affairs—have developed in industrial and postindustrial societies.

The Worldwide Expansion of "Organization"
John W. Meyer and Patricia Bromley

We offer an institutional explanation for the contemporary expansion of formal organization—in numbers, internal complexity, social domains, and national contexts. Much expansion lies in areas far beyond the traditional foci on technical production or political power, such as protecting the environment, promoting marginalized groups, or behaving with transparency. We argue that expansion is supported by widespread cultural rationalization in a stateless and liberal global society, characterized by scientism, rights and empowerment discourses, and an explosion of education. These cultural changes are transmitted through legal, accounting, and professionalization principles, driving the creation of new organizations and the elaboration of existing ones. The resulting organizations are constructed to be proper social actors as much as functionally effective entities. They are painted as autonomous and integrated but depend heavily on external definitions to sustain this depiction. So expansion creates organizations that are, whatever their actual effectiveness, structurally nonrational. We advance institutional theories of social organization in three main ways. First, we give an account of the expansive rise of “organization” rooted in rapid worldwide cultural rationalization. Second, we explain the construction of contemporary organizations as purposive actors, rather than passive bureaucracies. Third, we show how the expanded actorhood of the contemporary organization, and the associated interpenetration with the environment, dialectically generate structures far removed from instrumental rationality.

Journal of Marriage and Family 76(1)

Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2014: Volume 76, Issue 1

Brief Reports

Assortative Mating Among Dutch Married and Cohabiting Same-Sex and Different-Sex Couples
Ellen Verbakel and Matthijs Kalmijn

Variation in Associations Between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-Being
Ann Meier and Kelly Musick

Immigration and the Family Circumstances of Mexican-Origin Children: A Binational Longitudinal Analysis
Nancy S. Landale, R. S. Oropesa and Aggie J. Noah

Gender, Families, and Wages

“Behind Every Great Man…”: The Male Marriage Wage Premium Examined Qualitatively
Sarah Ashwin and Olga Isupova

The Motherhood Penalty at Midlife: Long-Term Effects of Children on Women's Careers
Joan R. Kahn, Javier García-Manglano and Suzanne M. Bianchi

Measurement

Who Is the Residential Parent? Understanding Discrepancies in Unmarried Parents' Reports
Maureen R. Waller and Maggie R. Jones

Identity Versus Identification: How LGBTQ Parents Identify Their Children on Census Surveys
Amanda K. Baumle and D'Lane R. Compton

Relationship Quality and Conflict

Gender Differences in Marital Satisfaction: A Meta-analysis
Jeffrey B. Jackson, Richard B. Miller, Megan Oka and Ryan G. Henry

Marital Conflict in Older Couples: Positivity, Personality, and Health
James Iveniuk, Linda J. Waite, Edward Laumann, Martha K. McClintock and Andrew D. Tiedt

Paths to Intimate Relationship Quality From Parent–Adolescent Relations and Mental Health
Matthew D. Johnson and Nancy L. Galambos

Of General Interest

Proceed With Caution? Parents' Union Dissolution and Children's Educational Achievement
Wendy Sigle-Rushton, Torkild Hovde Lyngstad, Patrick Lie Andersen and Øystein Kravdal

Does Family Instability Make Girls Fat? Gender Differences Between Instability and Weight
Daphne C. Hernandez, Emily Pressler, Cassandra Dorius and Katherine Stamps Mitchell

Indicators of Adolescent Depression and Relationship Progression in Emerging Adulthood
Sara E. Sandberg-Thoma and Claire M. Kamp Dush

Historical Trends in the Marital Intentions of One-Time and Serial Cohabitors
Jonathan Vespa

Families, Resources, and Suicide: Combined Effects on Mortality
Justin T. Denney

Comment and Rejoinder

Maternal Attachment, Paternal Overnight Contact, and Very Young Children's Adjustment: Comment on Tornello et al. (2013)
Paul Millar and Edward Kruk

Rejoinder to Millar and Kruk (2014): Who Assumes the Burden of Proof When There Is No Neutral Null Hypothesis?
Robert E. Emery and Samantha L. Tornello

Criminology 52(1)

Criminology, February 2014: Volume 52, Issue 1

2013 Presidential Address To The American Society Of Criminology
Social Concern And Crime: Moving Beyond The Assumption Of Simple Self-Interest 
Robert Agnew

Most leading crime theories and crime-control policies are based on the assumption that people are self-interested. But recent work in a variety of fields has challenged this assumption, suggesting that people are both self-interested and socially concerned. Social concern involves biologically based inclinations that sometimes lead people to give more consideration to others than to their own interests. These inclinations include caring about others, forming close ties to and cooperating with others, following certain moral intuitions, and conforming. This article describes the nature of and evidence for social concern, as well as the ways in which social factors shape social concern. The article then presents a theory of social concern and crime. Social concern has direct, indirect, mediating, and conditioning effects on crime. Although social concern generally reduces the likelihood of crime, it has little effect on or increases crime under certain conditions.

Restrictive Deterrent Effects Of A Warning Banner In An Attacked Computer System
David Maimon, Mariel Alper, Bertrand Sobesto And Michel Cukier

System trespassing by computer intruders is a growing concern among millions of Internet users. However, little research has employed criminological insights to explore the effectiveness of security means to deter unauthorized access to computer systems. Drawing on the deterrence perspective, we employ a large set of target computers built for the sole purpose of being attacked and conduct two independent experiments to investigate the influence of a warning banner on the progression, frequency, and duration of system trespassing incidents. In both experiments, the target computers (86 computers in the first experiment and 502 computers in the second) were set either to display or not to display a warning banner once intruders had successfully infiltrated the systems; 1,058 trespassing incidents were observed in the first experiment and 3,768 incidents in the second. The findings reveal that although a warning banner does not lead to an immediate termination or a reduction in the frequency of trespassing incidents, it significantly reduces their duration. Moreover, we find that the effect of a warning message on the duration of repeated trespassing incidents is attenuated in computers with a large bandwidth capacity. These findings emphasize the relevance of restrictive deterrence constructs in the study of system trespassing.

Unpacking The Black Box Of Peer Similarity In Deviance: Understanding The Mechanisms Linking Personal Behavior, Peer Behavior, And Perceptions
Jacob T. N. Young, Cesar J. Rebellon, J. C. Barnes And Frank M. Weerman

The strong correlation between measures of personal and peer deviance occurs with near “law-like” regularity. Yet, as with other manifestations of peer similarity (often referred to as homophily), the mechanisms generating this relationship are widely debated. Specific to the deviance literature, most studies have failed to examine, simultaneously, the degree to which similarity is the consequence of multiple causes. The current study addresses this gap by using longitudinal network data for 1,151 individuals from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) School Project. Structural equation modeling is used to address these issues by adapting Jussim and Osgood's () model of deviant attitudes in dyadic pairs to the current data. Across two separate behavioral domains (substance use and property offending), the results provide strong support for the prediction that individuals project their own deviant tendencies inaccurately onto their peers. Conversely, the results provide little or no support for the predictions that respondents accurately perceive their peers’ deviance or that their perceptions of peer deviance influence their own behavior. Implications for understanding the role of peer behavior in the etiology of adolescent deviance are discussed.

Self-Control And Victimization: A Meta-Analysis
Travis C. Pratt, Jillian J. Turanovic, Kathleen A. Fox And Kevin A. Wright

A consequential development in victimization theory and research was the idea that individuals with low self-control self-select into the various risky behaviors that may ultimately result in their victimization. To establish the empirical status of the self-control–victimization link, we subjected this body of work to a meta-analysis. Our multilevel analyses of 311 effect size estimates drawn from 66 studies (42 independent data sets) indicate that self-control is a modest yet consistent predictor of victimization. The results also show that the effect of self-control is significantly stronger when predicting noncontact forms of victimization (e.g., online victimization) and is significantly reduced in studies that control directly for the risky behaviors that are assumed to mediate the self-control–victimization link. We also note that the studies assessing self-control and victimization are not representative of victimization research as a whole, with intimate partner violence (IPV), violence against women, and child abuse being severely underrepresented. We conclude that future research should continue to examine the causal processes linking self-control to victimization, how self-control shapes victims’ coping responses to their experience, and whether self-control matters in contexts where individuals may have limited autonomy over the behavioral routines that put them at risk for victimization.

The Role Of Neighborhood Context In Youth Co-Offending
David R. Schaefer, Nancy Rodriguez And Scott H. Decker

Despite co-offending being a core criminological fact, locating suitable peers has many challenges. Chief among these, given the risky nature of co-offending, is finding trustworthy accomplices. We propose that neighborhoods serve as youths’ most ready source of accomplices, and as such, their composition affects the likelihood of identifying suitable co-offenders. In particular, youth are more likely to co-offend in contexts with more peers of their race/ethnicity, less disadvantage, and greater residential stability—all of which promote trust among neighbors. We test our hypotheses using multilevel models applied to census data and official court records for 7,484 delinquent youth in a large metropolitan area. The results offer support for our hypotheses and provide greater insight into how individual and contextual factors combine to affect co-offending behavior. An implication of these findings is that many of the same neighborhood characteristics that reduce crime lead to a greater proportion of co-offending.

Crime & Delinquency 60(1)

Crime & Delinquency, February 2014: Volume 60, Issue 1

Registered Sex Offenders in the United States: Behind the Numbers
Andrew J. Harris, Jill S. Levenson, and Alissa R. Ackerman

Although sex offender registration and notification policies have occupied an increasingly prominent place on state and federal crime control agendas, much policy discourse has occurred amid a dearth of reliable and relevant national data. This article presents the results of a study designed to broaden knowledge about the registered sex offender (RSO) population and the content of the nation’s sex offender registries. The authors analyze state-level RSO populations across several dimensions, including levels of public Internet disclosure, RSO residential status, supervision status, and assigned risk levels. Findings suggest significant interstate variation across these dimensions, and indicate that the nation’s RSO population is considerably more diverse and complex than commonly portrayed in the media and in policy debates. Implications for federal and state policies aimed at reforming the nation’s sex offender registries are discussed.

Calling the Police in Instances of Family Violence: Effects of Victim–Offender Relationship and Life Stages
Crime & Delinquency 2014;60 34-59

This study examines the impact of the victim–offender relationship on the willingness of victims to call the police in family violence incidents, with particular attention to the life stages of victims. Different stages of life have an impact on the decision to report criminal victimization. Family composition and the roles of family members change over life stages. When children are young, adults in the household have child-rearing responsibilities that shape the interpersonal dynamics in the household. When children approach adulthood and parents age, the parents may become more dependent on the children in a variety of ways. These changes in family composition and organization across life stages can affect the normative and cost–benefit considerations in deciding whether to call the police or not. Yet studies of responses to family violence have virtually ignored the influence of life stage on the decision to call the police. In addition, most studies of victims of family violence focus on marital or intimate relationships and fail to examine any other relationships in the family. It is not clear whether the findings from the general literature on domestic violence are applicable to intergenerational family violence. This article examines the impact of a broader range of victim–offender relationships across three age groups representing different life stages. The authors find that the factors explaining victims’ decisions to report victimization to the police vary across life stages.

A Game of Catch-Up? The Offending Experience of Second-Generation Immigrants
Bianca E. Bersani

Evidence continues to accumulate documenting a generational disparity in offending whereby second-generation immigrants (the children of immigrants) evidence a precipitous increase in offending compared with their first-generation, foreign-born peers. An understanding of this pattern is most often couched in terms reflective of segmented assimilation theory highlighting the unique assimilation experiences and challenges faced by the children of immigrants. Importantly, alternative explanations of this pattern exist, namely, those promoting a regression to the mean hypothesis—born and socialized in the U.S. mainstream, second-generation immigrants are simply native-born youth. Using data from nine waves of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997, this alternative hypothesis is evaluated. The differential influence of variables tapping into important family, school, peer, and neighborhood domains on offending trajectories are compared across second-generation immigrant and native-born subsamples. The results reveal a high degree of similarity comparing second-generation immigrants and native-born Whites. At the same time, differences are also observed when compared with native-born Black and Hispanic peers particularly among measures of more serious offending. Implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.

The Aftermath of Criminal Victimization: Race, Self-Esteem, and Self-Efficacy
Matt DeLisi, Gloria Jones-Johnson, W. Roy Johnson, and Andy Hochstetler

Criminal victimization is associated with a cascade of negative effects on social development, but research has primarily focused on children and adolescents. Less is known about the effects of criminal victimization on psychosocial functioning of Americans age 50 and older. Relying on individual-level data from Waves 1 and 2 of a longitudinal panel study of older adults—the Americans’ Changing Lives study—the current study explored the effects of criminal victimization on self-esteem and self-efficacy separately for Whites and African Americans. Net of the effects of employment, income, depression, age, sex, self-esteem, and self-efficacy, criminal victimization reduced self-esteem and self-efficacy among African Americans but not Whites. However, Whites who had greater difficulty dealing with their victimization evinced lower subsequent self-esteem. Greater difficulty with their victimization was also modestly associated with subsequent self-efficacy for Whites and African Americans. Implications and directions for future research are provided.

Females in the Juvenile Justice System: Who Are They and How Do They Fare?
Charlotte Lyn Bright, Patricia L. Kohl, and Melissa Jonson-Reid

Increasing numbers of female youth involved in the juvenile justice system highlight the need to examine this population. This study enumerates distinct profiles of risk and protection among juvenile court-involved females, examining young adult outcomes associated with these profiles. Administrative data on 700 participants were drawn from multiple service sectors in a Midwest metropolitan region. Latent class and Pearson chi-square analyses were used. Five unique classes were identified; these classes were associated with young adult outcomes. One class of impoverished African American females was most likely to experience problematic young adult outcomes but least likely to have received juvenile justice services. Findings highlight the heterogeneity in the female juvenile court population and discrepancies between service needs and service receipt.

First Offenders With Psychosis: Justification of a Third Type Within the Early/Late Start Offender Typology
Josanne D. M. van Dongen, Nicole M. L. Buck, and Hjalmar J. C. van Marle

Within the early/late start typology of offenders with schizophrenia, a third type, first offenders (FO), has been proposed. The aim of this study was to examine the justification of this first offender type. Retrospective file study consisted of 97 early starters (ES), 100 late starters, and 26 FO. Variables in different domains were scored. There were significant differences between the groups within the domains life functioning, abuse and family-related problems, psychiatric functioning, substance misuse, antisocial personality, and offense characteristics. Most differences were between the ES and FO. The existence of the first offender type is justified by the present findings. These findings underscore the importance of offender subtyping for better offender treatment interventions.

A Method for Internal Benchmarking of Criminal Justice System Performance
Greg Ridgeway and John M. MacDonald

Although sex offender registration and notification policies have occupied an increasingly prominent place on state and federal crime control agendas, much policy discourse has occurred amid a dearth of reliable and relevant national data. This article presents the results of a study designed to broaden knowledge about the registered sex offender (RSO) population and the content of the nation’s sex offender registries. The authors analyze state-level RSO populations across several dimensions, including levels of public Internet disclosure, RSO residential status, supervision status, and assigned risk levels. Findings suggest significant interstate variation across these dimensions, and indicate that the nation’s RSO population is considerably more diverse and complex than commonly portrayed in the media and in policy debates. Implications for federal and state policies aimed at reforming the nation’s sex offender registries are discussed.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 51(1)

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, February 2014: Volume 51, Issue 1 

Offenses around Stadiums: A Natural Experiment on Crime Attraction and Generation
Justin Kurland, Shane D. Johnson, and Nick Tilley

Objectives: Inspired by ecological theories of crime, the aim of this study was to make use of a natural experiment to see if a U.K. soccer stadium generates or attracts crime in the area that surrounds it. Method: Data for theft and violent crime around Wembley stadium are analyzed to see if the rate (per-unit time and ambient population) of crime differ for days on which the stadium is used and those it is not. In addition, differences in the spatial and temporal distribution of crime are examined for these two types of days. Results: Analyses indicate that on days when the stadium is used, the rate of crime per-unit time is elevated, but that the rate per ambient population at risk is not. The spatial and temporal pattern of crime also clearly differs for the two types of days. For example, the level of crime is elevated in the surrounding area when the stadium is used relative to when it is not. Conclusions. The case study suggests that the facility studied contributes to levels of crime in the area that surrounds it. The research provides further support for ecological theories of crime and their utility in informing criminological understanding and policy-related questions.

Intimate Partner Violence and the Victim-Offender Overlap
Marie Skubak Tillyer and Emily M. Wright

Objectives: Examine the prevalence and correlates of intimate partner violence (IPV) victimization and offending, as well as the overlap of these experiences. Method: Data from wave 4 of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health were analyzed to examine IPV among adults ages 24 to 33. A multinomial logistic regression model was estimated to determine whether the correlates of IPV vary across victims, perpetrators, and victim-perpetrators. Results: Approximately 20% of respondents reported some IPV involvement in the past year, one-third of whom reported victimization and perpetration. The victim-offender overlap was observed for males and females across various measures of IPV. Bivariate correlations suggest victimization and perpetration have common correlates. Multivariate analysis, however, reveals considerable differences once we distinguish between victims, offenders, and victim-offenders and control for other variables. Perpetrators and victim-perpetrators were more likely to live with a nonspouse partner; feel isolated; display negative temperaments; and report substance use problems. “Victims only” were more likely to live with children and have lower household incomes. Conclusions: The victim-offender overlap exists for IPV across a variety of measures. Though perpetrators and victim-perpetrators have similar characteristics, those who are victims only appear distinctly different. We discuss the implications for theory, policy, and research.

From Colors and Guns to Caps and Gowns? The Effects of Gang Membership on Educational Attainment
David C. Pyrooz

Objectives: This study examined the effects of adolescent gang membership on educational attainment over a 12-year period. A broader conceptualization of gang membership—as a snare in the life course—is used to study its noncriminal consequences. Method: Data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1997 and propensity score matching were used to assess the cumulative and longitudinal effects of gang membership on seven educational outcomes, including educational attainment in years and six educational milestones. After adjusting for nonrandom selection into gangs, youths who joined a gang were compared annually to their matched counterparts from 1998 to 2009. Results: Selection-adjusted estimates revealed disparities between gang and nongang youth in education attainment. Youth who joined gangs were 30 percent less likely to graduate from high school and 58 percent less likely to earn a four-year degree than their matched counterparts. The effects of gang membership on educational attainment were statistically observable within one year of joining, and accumulated in magnitude over time to reach −0.62 years (ES=0.25) by the final point of observation. Conclusion: The snare-like forces linked to the onset of gang membership have consequences that spill into a range of life domains, including education. These findings take on added significance because of a historical context where education has a prominent role in social stratification.

The Spatial Distribution and Social Context of Homicide in Toronto’s Neighborhoods
Sara K. Thompson and Rosemary Gartner

Objectives: To examine the social ecology of homicide in Toronto, Canada. Method: Using both ordinary least squares regression and negative binomial models, we analyze the structural correlates of 965 homicides occurring in 140 neighborhoods in Toronto between 1988 and 2003. Results: Similar to research in U.S. cities, Toronto neighborhoods with higher levels of economic disadvantage, higher proportions of young and Black residents, and greater residential instability have higher homicide rates. In contrast to U.S. studies, Toronto neighborhoods with higher proportions of residents who are recent immigrants also have higher homicide rates. In multivariate models, only two of these characteristics—economic disadvantage and the proportion of residents aged 15 to 24—are significantly associated with homicide in Toronto’s neighborhoods. Despite low levels of both lethal violence and spatial inequality in Toronto, the correlates of homicide in its neighborhoods are similar in some respects to those in U.S. cities. Conclusion: Our findings lend support to the notion of invariance in some ecological covariates of homicide but also highlight the need to be cautious about generalizing from U.S.-based research on the relationship between immigration and homicide.

Emergent Regularities of Interpersonal Victimization: An Agent-Based Investigation
Daniel Birks, Michael Townsley, and Anna Stewart

Objectives: Apply computational agent-based modeling to explore the generative sufficiency of several mechanisms derived from the field of environmental criminology in explaining commonly observed patterns of interpersonal victimization. Method: Controlled simulation experiments compared patterns of simulated interpersonal victimization to three empirically derived regularities of crime using established statistical techniques: (1) spatial clustering (nearest neighbor index), (2) repeat victimization (Gini coefficient), and (3) journeys to crime (Pearson’s coefficient of skewness). Results: Large, statistically significant increases in spatial clustering, repeat victimization, and journey to crime skewness are observed when virtual offenders operate according to mechanisms proposed by the routine activity approach, rational choice perspective, and geometry/pattern theories of crime. Conclusion: This research provides support for several propositions of environmental criminology in explaining why interpersonal victimization tends to be spatially concentrated, experienced by a small number of repeat victims, and why aggregate journey to crime curves tend to follow a distance decay relationship. By extending previous work in agent-based modeling of property victimization, it also demonstrates that the same core mechanisms are sufficient to generate plausible patterns of crime when examining fundamentally different types of offending.

American Journal of Sociology 119(2)

American Journal of Sociology, September 2013: Volume 119, Issue 2

Budgetary Units: A Weberian Approach to Consumption
Erin Metz McDonnell

Established consumption theory relies heavily on application of individualistic frames and market models of behavior. A framework built around consumption-oriented groups would facilitate progress toward a more general theory of consumption. This article reintroduces and extends Weber’s “budgetary unit” concept to address this gap, correcting key problems dogging the consumption literature. The budgetary unit concept (1) offers a new framework for theorizing and better accounting for observed consumption patterns, (2) reveals how consumption units have organizational logics, preferences, strengths, and vulnerabilities that are consequentially distinct from market logic of production and profit, and (3) focuses attention on social processes and features enabling theorization of general social patterns of consumption across diverse contexts. This article highlights the explanatory power and broad applicability of Weber’s budgetary unit approach using the conventionally dissimilar cases of Russian organized crime, Catholic nuns, immigrant remittances, and low-income families’ child support.

Misdemeanor Justice: Control without Conviction
Issa Kohler-Hausmann

Current scholarship has explored how the carceral state governs and regulates populations. This literature has focused on prison and on the wide-reaching collateral consequences of a felony conviction. Despite the obvious importance of these findings, they capture only a portion of the criminal justice system’s operations. In most jurisdictions, misdemeanors, not felonies, constitute the bulk of criminal cases, and the number of such arrests is rising. This article explores a puzzling fact about New York City’s pioneering experiment in mass misdemeanor arrests: the preponderance result in no finding of guilt and no assignment of formal punishment. Drawing on two years of fieldwork, this article explores how the criminal justice system functions to regulate significant populations without conviction or sentencing. The author details the operation of penal power through the techniques of marking through criminal justice record keeping, the procedural hassle of case processing, and mandated performance evaluated by court actors to show the social control capacity of the criminal justice system.

Racialized Conflict and Policy Spillover Effects: The Role of Race in the Contemporary U.S. Welfare State
Hana E. Brown

This article introduces a racialized conflict theory to explain how racial divisions structure welfare state development in the absence of de jure discrimination. The author explains the effect of racial divisions on policy outcomes as the result of the attitudinal, cultural, and political spillover effects of prevailing conflicts in a social field. Using a paired-case comparison and analysis of multiple data sources, the author applies this theory to analyze Georgia’s and Alabama’s surprisingly divergent welfare reforms in the 1990s. Results support the racialized conflict theory and suggest important revisions to prevailing theories about the sociopolitical effects of contemporary racial divides.

Counterbalances to Economic Homophily: Microlevel Mechanisms in a Historical Setting
Denis Trapido

The tendency to transact within, rather than across, identity-based groups is a well-established effect of identity divisions. While previous work emphasized macrolevel, impersonal factors that counteract this tendency, this article looks at how individuals may counteract it in everyday interaction. Two microlevel counterbalances to economic homophily are examined with unique data on partnerships among Tory and Whig merchants in 18th-century Bristol, England. No conclusive support is found for the first examined counterbalance, which presumes that cross-group social relations, such as joint civic activities, induce parallel economic relations. Instead, the analysis shows that Tory-Whig partnerships were facilitated by the practice of choosing cross-party partners of unequal professional prominence. Such professionally unequal relations involve tacit status subordination, which reduces the relation-specific uncertainty associated with transacting across a salient identity division. The results highlight the potential of uncertainty avoidance to sustain inequality between social groups and suggest unexplored contingencies to theories of status homophily.

Diversity, Integration, and Social Ties: Attraction versus Repulsion as Drivers of Intra- and Intergroup Relations
John Skvoretz

Interethnic and intergroup social ties are critical to knitting together increasingly diverse societies into cohesive wholes. Yet their formation faces the homophily hurdle: important and intimate social ties tend to be established disproportionately between those sharing significant social attributes. In the spirit of analytical sociology, the author explores two mechanisms that could drive intra- and intergroup relations: attraction to similar versus repulsion from dissimilar others. The models differ in predictions as illustrated by data on interethnic marriages in Great Britain and the United States, on U.S. dating and cohabitation relations by religion and education, on educational diversity in marriages in 22 European countries, and on marriages of the native and foreign-born in Austria. A unified model for the two mechanisms, in which tie formation is a conceptualized as a two-stage process of encounter and consummation, is proposed, and its empirical and theoretical analysis provides deeper understanding of the homophily hurdle.

Disavowing Politics: Civic Engagement in an Era of Political Skepticism
Elizabeth A. Bennett, Alissa Cordner, Peter Taylor Klein, Stephanie Savell, and Gianpaolo Baiocchi

Today, Americans are simultaneously skeptical of and engaged with political life. How does widespread cynicism affect the culture of civic participation? What are the implications for democracy? This study synthesizes data from a one-year collective ethnography of seven civic groups and theoretical work on boundary making, ambiguity, and role distancing. The authors find skepticism generates “disavowal of the political,” a cultural idiom that allows people to creatively constitute what they imagine to be appropriate forms of engagement. Disavowal generates taboos, and the authors show how disdain for conflict and special interests challenges activism around inequality. Political disavowal both facilitates and constrains civic engagement in an era of political skepticism.