Criminology Happens: April 2014

Sunday, April 27, 2014

Criminology & Public Policy 13(1)

Criminology & Public Policy, February 2014: Volume 13, Issue 1

VOLLMER AWARD

Interventions for Juvenile Offenders: A Serendipitous Journey
Mark W. Lipsey

This is a story of a concatenation of largely unplanned and unexpected events that propelled a line of research on the effectiveness of interventions for juvenile offenders along a trajectory that is more coherent in retrospect than at the time of any of those events. In the course of that serendipitous journey, insights were gained on the limitations of individual studies, the value of systematic analysis of a body of research, and the challenges of transporting evidence into evidence-based practice.

VOLLMER AWARD COMMENTARIES

Mark Lipsey's Contribution to Evidence-Based Services for Juvenile Offenders: What Works across Juvenile Justice Systems
James C. Howell

From Research Synthesis to Evidence-Based Policy and Practice: How Mark Lipsey Is Improving Juvenile Offender Treatment
Brandon C. Welsh

JUVENILE ECONOMIC SANCTIONS

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Rehabilitative and Restorative Justice for Juvenile Offenders: How Might Economic Sanctions Help?
John W. Raine

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Juvenile Economic Sanctions: An Analysis of Their Imposition, Payment, and Effect on Recidivism
Stacy Hoskins Haynes, Alison C. Cares and R. Barry Ruback

Research Summary: Economic sanctions, particularly restitution, can help juvenile offenders both learn the extent of the harm they caused and assume responsibility for repairing that harm. If that assumption is true, then restitution should be imposed in every case for which it is appropriate, other factors should not affect imposition, and paying restitution should be negatively related to recidivism. This analysis of 921 juvenile cases in five Pennsylvania counties found that restitution was imposed in only 33% of cases for which it was appropriate, whereas fees were imposed in 66% of cases. Consistent with expectations, restitution was more likely to be imposed for property offenses, but contrary to expectations, restitution was more likely to be imposed for felonies and for males. Judges were less likely to revoke the sentences of juveniles who paid a greater percentage of their total economic sanctions and of juveniles whose violation of sentencing conditions was for nonpayment of economic sanctions.

Policy Implications: Given that support for both punitive and progressive policies exists, policy makers have a unique opportunity to pursue alternatives, like economic sanctions, that appeal to both perspectives. Economic sanctions are particularly important for juveniles because they are less likely to interfere with other financial obligations (in large part because juveniles have fewer financial obligations than do adults) and because they avoid the stigma associated with more punitive sentences, such as incarceration. The negative relationship between payment of economic sanctions and recidivism, found in this study and in other studies, also suggests that, in both the short and the long term, economic sanctions are more cost-effective. Furthermore, the restorative aspect of economic sanctions, particularly restitution, suggests that policy makers should consider how best to impose and collect economic sanctions, as they also are consistent with efforts to improve the treatment of crime victims.

POLICY ESSAYS

The Costs of Delinquency
Mark A. Greenwald, Sherry L. Jackson and Michael T. Baglivio

Juvenile Economic Sanctions: A Logical Alternative?
Tamara Walsh

SERIOUS, VIOLENT, AND CHRONIC JUVENILE OFFENDERS

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Delinquency Referrals; Predictive and Protective Factors for Serious, Violent, and Chronic Offenders; and Juvenile Justice Interventions
Kenneth C. Land

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Serious, Violent, and Chronic Juvenile Offenders: A Statewide Analysis of Prevalence and Prediction of Subsequent Recidivism Using Risk and Protective Factors
Michael T. Baglivio, Katherine Jackowski, Mark A. Greenwald and James C. Howell

Research Summary: The prevalence of serious, violent, and chronic offenders is assessed across 5 years of delinquency referrals to a centralized juvenile justice agency. Differences in prevalence by gender and race/ethnicity and by age at first referral are compared for these youth with the other juveniles referred. Analyses examine whether subsequent official reoffending of these juveniles is predicted by similar risk and protective factors as with other youth. Stability in the proportion of youth meeting the serious, violent, and chronic classification was found. Males were more than twice as likely to be serious, violent, and chronic offenders. Serious, violent, and chronic offenders were almost three times more likely to have been first referred when 12 years old or younger. Predictive risk and protective factors are substantively different for these serious, violent, and chronic youth. Policy implications regarding appropriate delinquency interventions to address significant risk and protective factors for different subgroups of youth are discussed.

Policy Implications: Our study examines the prevalence rates of juvenile offenders classified as serious, violent, and chronic, thereby necessitating an analysis of resource allocation strategies for a juvenile justice agency. In light of this and other empirical findings, agency policies have been adjusted and new policies implemented, including a reduction in the number of residential beds by more than 50% in the last 3 years and reallocation of “deep-end” resources to prevention and community-based programming.

POLICY ESSAYS
What are the Policy Implications of Our Knowledge on Serious, Violent, and Chronic Offenders?
Rolf Loeber and Lia Ahonen

Moving from Description to Implementation of Evidence-Based Research Findings
Alex R. Piquero

SEX OFFENDER RESIDENCE RESTRICTIONS

EDITORIAL INTRODUCTION
Evidence of Ineffectiveness: Advancing the Argument Against Sex Offender Residence Restrictions
Richard Tewksbury

RESEARCH ARTICLE
The Effect and Implications of Sex Offender Residence Restrictions
Beth M. Huebner, Kimberly R. Kras, Jason Rydberg, Timothy S. Bynum, Eric Grommon and Breanne Pleggenkuhle

Research Summary: We evaluated the efficacy of sex offender residence restrictions in Michigan and Missouri using a quasi-experimental design with propensity score matching. First, we examined the implementation of the laws and found that sex offenders in both states were less likely to live in restricted areas after the implementation of the laws than the prerestriction sample, but the differences were not statistically significant. In our outcome analysis, we find little evidence that residence restrictions changed the prevalence of recidivism substantially for sex offenders in the postrelease period. In Michigan, trends indicate that the implementation of the laws led to a slight increase in recidivism among the sex offender groups, whereas in Missouri, this effect resulted in a slight decrease in recidivism. Technical violations also declined for both groups in Missouri. The small effect sizes, inconsistent results across states, and the null results between sex offender and non–sex offender models cast doubt on the potential usefulness of the laws to influence individual patterns of recidivism broadly.

Policy Implications: The results caution against the widespread, homogenous implementation of residence restrictions. Instead, we advocate individualization in sex offender programming and call for the development of risk-centered models of residence restrictions that draw on the established literature. In addition, the research highlights the practical challenges in defining restricted areas, enforcing restrictions, and promoting successful returns to the community. Furthermore, a call for reframing the focus of sex offender reentry to include collaborative treatment groups and enhanced communication and services between key stakeholders is made. Finally, we close with a discussion of several best practice models that provide alternative housing sources for individuals sentenced under residence restrictions without a suitable home plan.

POLICY ESSAYS

Sex Offender Residency Restrictions : Successful Integration or Exclusion?
Elizabeth Ehrhardt Mustaine

Residence Restrictions Are Ineffective, Inefficient, and Inadequate: So Now What?
Kelly M. Socia

The study synthesizes the literature on turnover intentions to assess what domains (e.g., personal characteristics, work environment, and job attitudes) account for the strongest association with turnover intent, what are the characteristics of these relationships, and how do these relationships differ by criminal justice practitioner type. The current study utilizes a systematic review to obtain studies for conducting a meta-analysis. The researchers utilized the r family/correlation coefficient. Studies were weighted by sample size, correlations converted to Fisher’s z, analyses performed, and results converted back to r for interpretation. In terms of the individual predictors for law enforcement, the five strongest variables included alternative job search behavior, job satisfaction, psychological distress, emotional exhaustion, procedural and distributive justice. The five strongest predictors of turnover intent for institutional corrections were normative commitment, emotional exhaustion, depersonalization, affective commitment, and job satisfaction. The five strongest predictors for community corrections included experience, alternative job search behavior, perceptions of coworkers, growth need strength, and job satisfaction. The results of the meta-analysis confirmed the domain of personal characteristics, overall, has the weakest association with turnover intent whereas work environment and job attitude domains consistently display moderate-to-large effects for both law enforcement and corrections.

An investigation into the empirical relationship between time with peers, friendship, and delinquency
Bob Edward Vásquez, Gregory M. Zimmerman

Much of the research on peer influence has examined the relationship between peer associations and delinquency. Relatively little empirical research has addressed the effects of delinquent behavior on peer intimacy and time spent with peers. Our research attempts to fill these gaps in the literature as we hypothesize that, net of peer delinquency, delinquents spend more time with their peers but are less closely attached to their peers. Using data from two waves of the National Youth Survey (NYS), we present two sets of regression models to account for selection bias resulting from whether respondents reported having friends. To assess the stability of our findings, we supplement our presented findings with extensive use of alternate estimation strategies. Conclusions regarding our hypotheses do not vary by estimation strategy. Delinquents spend more time with their peers, but delinquents and non-delinquents do not report differences in closeness to their peers. Given our control variables, our finding introduces complexity in the causal priority between time spent with peers and delinquency. Prior delinquency may be a predictor of more time with peers, but partly as an avenue for opportunities for crime, not for the sake of friendship.

Prior problem behavior accounts for the racial gap in school suspensions
John Paul Wright, Mark Alden Morgan, Michelle A. Coyne, Kevin M. Beaver, J.C. Barnes

A large body of empirical research finds a significant racial gap in the use of exclusionary school discipline with black students punished at rates disproportionate to whites. Furthermore, no variable or set of variables have yet to account for this discrepancy, inviting speculation that this association is caused by racial bias or racial antipathy. We investigate this link and the possibility that differential behavior may play a role. Using data from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study, Kindergarten Class (ECLS-K), the largest sample of school-aged children in the United States, we first replicate the results of prior studies. We then estimate a second model controlling for prior problem behavior. Replicating prior studies, we first show a clear racial gap between black and white students in suspensions. However, in subsequent analyses the racial gap in suspensions was completely accounted for by a measure of the prior problem behavior of the student – a finding never before reported in the literature. These findings highlight the importance of early problem behaviors and suggest that the use of suspensions by teachers and administrators may not have been as racially biased as some scholars have argued.

The effect of prison gang membership on recidivism
Brendan D. Dooley, Alan Seals, David Skarbek

How does prison gang membership affect recidivism? In this paper, we use a unique dataset of all releasees from prisons operated by the Illinois Department of Corrections during the month of November 2000, which includes demographic information and data on gang participation. We attempt to control for confounding factors that are traditionally associated with both prison gang membership and rearrest. We develop a potential-outcomes framework and describe the conditions under which a counterfactual can be estimated when gang membership is not randomly assigned. We combine regression analysis with Coarsened Exact Matching, which has several advantages over the more popular propensity score matching, to estimate the effect of gang membership on recidivism. Prison gang membership results in a six percentage point increase in recidivism. Despite the strengths of the data, unobserved heterogeneity among inmates could still bias estimates. However, there are probably important subtleties to the gang participation decision such that experimental or quasi-experimental data are unlikely to increase our understanding of the relationship between gang-membership and post-release outcomes. We recommend incorporating ethnography with survey data collection, because ethnographers are able to document otherwise unobservable contextual information concerning the selection process which could be used to identify causal relationships.

Social Control Across Immigrant Generations: Adolescent Violence at School and Examining the Immigrant Paradox
Anthony A. Peguero, Xin Jiang

Social control predicts adolescent violence; however, there is limited research about the extent to which social control explains adolescent violence across immigrant generations. Because it is estimated that one out of four children in the United States has at least one immigrant parent, understanding the correlates of violence for adolescents in immigrant families warrants investigation. This study explores whether and how the adolescent associations between social control (i.e., attachment, commitment, involvement, and belief) and school-based misconduct and victimization vary across immigrant generations. Data are drawn from the Educational Longitudinal Study of 2002. Findings indicate important nuances related to immigrant generation in the conceptual links between social control and adolescent violence. For instance, attachment to school is linked to decreased misconduct for third-plus generation adolescents but a potential factor toward misconduct for first generation adolescents. The implications of the relationships between social control and adolescent violence across immigrant generations are discussed more generally.

The Relationship between Self-Control in Adolescence and Social Consequences in Adulthood: Assessing the Influence of Genetic Confounds
Joseph L. Nedelec, Kevin M. Beaver

Assess the relationship between levels of self-control in adolescence and a variety of later-life outcomes and evaluate the confounding effects of genetic factors. The current study employed data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and examined whether levels of self-control in adolescence are related to economic, educational, employment, health, relationship and family, and behavioral outcomes in adulthood using DeFries-Fulker regression-based analyses. Analyses employing non-genetically sensitive methods indicated robust associations between self-control and various social consequences. After estimating genetically-sensitive analyses, however, many associations were no longer significant. Those associations which remained significant were in the reversed direction relative to the non-genetically sensitive models. Additionally, further analyses indicated that some of the remaining significant associations were influenced by nonshared genetic effects. The findings indicate that even after controlling for the effect of genetic factors, levels of self-control are associated with differences in a variety of social outcomes. However, given the reduction in the number of significant associations and reversal of associations in the genetically sensitive models, analyses of the social consequences of low self-control which do not account for the effect of genetic factors are likely misspecified.

Sex as a moderator and perceived peer pressure as a mediator of the externalizing-delinquency relationship: A test of gendered pathways theory
Glenn D. Walters

The current study sought to determine whether sex moderated peer mediation of the externalizing-delinquency relationship as part of a larger test of the gendered pathways theory of crime. Data gathered from 4,144 (2,079 males and 2,065 females) members of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth-Child sample were subjected to simple correlational and moderated mediation analysis. Externalizing behavior and delinquency correlated equally in boys and girls but in testing a full moderated mediation model it was discovered that sex moderated the mediating effect of perceived peer pressure on the externalizing–delinquency relationship. Whereas externalizing behavior predicted delinquency in both boys and girls, perceived peer pressure only mediated the externalizing-delinquency relationship in boys. These results support the gendered pathways to delinquency model to the extent that the relationship between childhood externalizing behavior and delinquency was mediated by perceived peer pressure in males but not females. The implications of these results for theoretical refinement of the gendered pathways approach and crime prevention and intervention are discussed.

Sunday, April 20, 2014

American Journal of Sociology 119(3)

American Journal of Sociology, November 2013: Volume 119, Issue 3

Special Contributions

Causal Thinking and Ethnographic Research
Mario Luis Small

Styles of Causal Thought: An Empirical Investigation
Gabriel Abend, Caitlin Petre, and Michael Sauder

While most work on causation in ethnography addresses the normative question of what ethnographers should do, this article addresses the empirical question of what ethnographers actually do. Specifically, it investigates whether ethnographic articles make causal arguments and how these arguments are made. The authors draw on a content analysis of 48 ethnographic articles sampled from four groups of sociological journals: contemporary generalist journals, contemporary specialist journals, mid-20th-century generalist journals—all in the United States—and contemporary generalist journals in Mexico. They find that ethnographies in U.S. contemporary generalist journals are most likely to advance strong and central causal claims and to use logical and rhetorical devices comparable to those used in quantitative articles. They also find that most Mexican ethnographic articles undertake a different kind of project, which they call “shedding light” on social phenomena. In addition to offering one methodological and one substantive suggestion to account for these findings, the authors highlight their implications for the sociology of social science.

How Options Disappear: Causality and Emergence in Grassroots Activist Groups
Kathleen Blee

This study advances recent theorizing on causality and emergence by analyzing how new activist groups create a collective sense of plausible tactics. A comparative ethnographic approach is used to observe shifts in the discussions of four fledgling activist groups. In each group, implicit discursive rules, often set off by minor comments and events, authorize some options and silence others. Although such rules emerge without deliberation or explicit decision making, they shape the group’s sense of possibility into the future. This study contributes both a new understanding of the role of contingency in collective activism and a method for using ethnographic observation to locate subtle causal mechanisms in social life.

A Pragmatist Approach to Causality in Ethnography
Iddo Tavory and Stefan Timmermans

Drawing on early pragmatist theorizing, the authors propose three interrelated methodological activities for the construction of robust causal claims in ethnographic research. First, Charles S. Peirce’s semiotic approach offers ethnographers a useful foundation for a mechanism-based approach to causality by tracing iterations of meaning-making-in-action. Second, taking advantage of the structure of Peirce’s semiotics ethnographers can examine three forms of observed variation to distinguish regularly occurring causal sequences and temporally and spatially remote causal processes. Third, the authors emphasize that the standards to evaluate causal arguments—their plausibility and assessments of explanatory fit—are always made in relation to challenges provided within a disciplinary community of inquiry. The use-value of the pragmatic approach to causality is demonstrated with an explanation of the different reactions of parents and clinicians to positive newborn screening results.

Other Articles

The Transformation of Prison Regimes in Late Capitalist Societies
John R. Sutton

Recent studies argue that cultural and political-economic shifts have led to a sea change in penal regimes among modern Western societies, resulting in more punitive social policies in general and a trend toward higher incarceration rates in particular. This is a special case of a wider argument that globalization has led to a decline in state autonomy and convergence on a market-based model of economic and social policy. This thesis has been challenged by the empirical literature on welfare states, which finds persistent cross-national diversity in institutional structures, policies, and patterns of inequality. Focusing on incarceration rates as the outcome of interest, this study evaluates these arguments by applying a Bayesian change-point model to four decades of data from 15 countries. Results show that a regime shift did occur but that incarceration rates increased mainly among countries with unregulated labor markets, decentralized polities, or weak labor unions. Profound institutional differences persist and are fateful for incarceration trajectories.

The Self-Expressive Edge of Occupational Sex Segregation
Erin A. Cech

Recent gender scholarship speculates that occupational sex segregation is reproduced in large part through the gendered, self-expressive career decisions of men and women. This article examines the effects of college students’ expression of their self-conceptions on their likelihood of entering occupations with a high or low proportion of women and theorizes the consequences of this mechanism for gender inequality. The author uses unique longitudinal data on students from four U.S. colleges to examine how the gender composition of students’ field at career launch is influenced by their earlier self-conceptions. Students with emotional, unsystematic, or people-oriented self-conceptions enter fields that are more “female,” even net of their cultural gender beliefs. Results suggest that cultural ideals of self-expression reinforce occupational sex segregation by converting gender-stereotypical self-conceptions into self-expressive career choices. The discussion section broadens this theoretical framework for understanding the role of self-expression in occupational sex segregation and notes the difficulty of addressing this mechanism through social or policy actions.

Challenger Groups, Commercial Organizations, and Policy Enactment: Local Lesbian/Gay Rights Ordinances in the United States from 1972 to 2008
Giacomo Negro, Fabrizio Perretti, and Glenn R. Carroll

Drawing on theories of social movements and organizations, the authors examine how the expanding presence of commercial organizations and the growing diversity of their forms foster policy change securing rights for a group of challengers. In particular, they suggest that these organizations can operate as bridges and can signal the legitimacy of the group in a community. Empirically, they analyze organizations linked to lesbians/gays and the promulgation of local ordinances banning discrimination, using a data set covering American counties from 1972 to 2008. Using hazard models, they find that the rate of policy enactment increases (1) with greater presence of lesbian/gay commercial organizations, particularly of those linking toward the larger community, and (2) with greater diversity of their organizational forms. Finally, they find evidence that commercial and political organizations are linked in a complex way.

Sunday, April 6, 2014

American Sociological Review 79(2)

American Sociological Review, April 2014: Volume 79, Issue 2

Cross-Field Effects and Ethnic Classification: The Institutionalization of Hispanic Panethnicity, 1965 to 1990
G. Cristina Mora

Research on racial/ethnic categorization provides insight on how broad processes, such as migration trends or political shifts, precede the establishment of new categories, but does not detail the struggles and compromises that emerge between state and non-state actors. As a result, we know little about why new census categories are defined in certain ways or how they become legitimated. This article addresses this gap by using an organizational lens to reconstruct how the Hispanic category emerged in the United States. I demonstrate that categories can become institutionalized through a two-stage process as state actors and ethnic entrepreneurs (1) negotiate a classification’s definition and (2) work together to popularize the category. I argue that cross-field effects undergird these stages—movements toward developing a new category within state agencies are reinforced by similar classification efforts occurring among social movement groups and media firms, and vice versa. I identify three organizational mechanisms that sustained these effects in the Hispanic case: the development of boundary-spanning networks between state and non-state actors, the transposition of resources across fields, and the use of analogy and ambiguity as cognitive tools to describe and legitimate the new category. I discuss the theoretical merits of incorporating organizational analysis, especially the concept of cross-field effects, into the study of racial/ethnic classification.

Are Suicidal Behaviors Contagious in Adolescence? Using Longitudinal Data to Examine Suicide Suggestion
Seth Abrutyn and Anna S. Mueller

Durkheim argued that strong social relationships protect individuals from suicide. We posit, however, that strong social relationships also have the potential to increase individuals’ vulnerability when they expose people to suicidality. Using three waves of data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, we evaluate whether new suicidal thoughts and attempts are in part responses to exposure to role models’ suicide attempts, specifically friends and family. We find that role models’ suicide attempts do in fact trigger new suicidal thoughts, and in some cases attempts, even after significant controls are introduced. Moreover, we find these effects fade with time, girls are more vulnerable to them than boys, and the relationship to the role model—for teenagers at least—matters. Friends appear to be more salient role models for both boys and girls. Our findings suggest that exposure to suicidal behaviors in significant others may teach individuals new ways to deal with emotional distress, namely by becoming suicidal. This reinforces the idea that the structure—and content—of social networks conditions their role in preventing suicidality. Social ties can be conduits of not just social support, but also antisocial behaviors, like suicidality.

Casualties of Social Combat: School Networks of Peer Victimization and Their Consequences
Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee

We point to group processes of status conflict and norm enforcement as fundamental elements in the development of school-based victimization. Socially vulnerable youth are frequently harassed for violating norms, but the logic of status competition implies they are not the only victims: to the extent that aggression is instrumental for social climbing, increases in status should increase risk—at least until the pinnacle of the hierarchy is reached. Victimization causes serious harm, and, we argue, at the margin these consequences will be magnified by status. We test these ideas using longitudinal network data on friendship and victimization from 19 schools. For most students, status increases the risk of victimization. However, youth at the uppermost extremes of the school hierarchy—students in the top 5 percent of centrality and those with cross-gender friendships where such friendships are rare—sit just above the fray, unlikely to fall victim to their peers. As expected, females and physically or socially vulnerable youth are victimized at particularly high rates. Victims experience psychological distress and social marginalization, and these adverse effects are magnified by status. For most students, gains in status increase the likelihood of victimization and the severity of its consequences.

Insiders, Outsiders, and the Struggle for Consecration in Cultural Fields: A Core-Periphery Perspective
Gino Cattani, Simone Ferriani, and Paul D. Allison

Building on recent research emphasizing how legitimacy depends on consensus among audiences about candidates’ characteristics and activities, we examine the relationship between cultural producers’ (candidates) position in the social structure and the consecration of their creative work by relevant audiences. We argue that the outcome of this process of evaluation in any cultural field, whether in art or science, is a function of (1) candidates’ embeddedness within the field, and (2) the type of audience—that is, peers versus critics—evaluating candidates’ work. Specifically, we hypothesize that peers are more likely to favor candidates who are highly embedded in the field, whereas critics will not show such favoritism. We find support for these hypotheses in the context of the Hollywood motion picture industry.

“Notable” or “Not Able”: When Are Acts of Inconsistency Rewarded?
Stoyan V. Sgourev and Niek Althuizen

Atypical practices of crossing categories or genres are generally discouraged in the market, but the ideal of the Renaissance mind1 persists. Building on recent work elaborating the need to reward the greater risk associated with atypicality for it to survive, this article provides the first systematic, direct evidence for such a reward. We focus on stylistic inconsistency—mixing distinct artistic styles. In a between-subject experimental design, 183 subjects estimated the aesthetic and market value of consistent and inconsistent sets of artworks by Pablo Picasso in three status conditions. Controlling for cognitive difficulties posed by inconsistency, we show that inconsistency is rewarded (i.e., evaluated higher than consistency on aesthetic value) only at high status. Status cues guide perception so that inconsistent works by a prominent artist are given the benefit of the doubt and interpreted as a sign of creativity. The association with creativity leads to a reward for atypicality in the absence of tangible proof that it performs better than typicality.

Who’s the Boss? Explaining Gender Inequality in Entrepreneurial Teams
Tiantian Yang and Howard E. Aldrich

Sociologists have examined gender inequalities across a wide array of social contexts. Yet, questions remain regarding how inequalities arise among autonomous groups pursuing economic goals. In this article, we investigate mixed-sex entrepreneurial teams to unpack the mechanisms by which gender inequality in leadership emerges, despite strong pressures toward merit-based organizing principles. We theorize the potentially competing relationships between merit and gender and explore the contingencies moderating their effects. Drawing on a unique, nationally representative dataset of entrepreneurial teams sampled from the U.S. population in 2005, we use conditional logistic regression to test our hypotheses. We demonstrate that merit’s effect becomes much larger when multiple merit-based criteria provide consistent predictions for which team member is superior to others, and when entrepreneurial founders adopt bureaucratic templates to construct new ventures. However, gender stereotypes of leaders pervasively constrain women’s access to power positions, and gender’s effect intensifies when spousal relationships are involved. Women have reduced chances to be in charge if they co-found new businesses with their husbands, and some family conditions further modify women’s chances, such as husbands’ employment and the presence of children.

Entrepreneurship as a Mobility Process
Jesper B. Sørensen and Amanda J. Sharkey

We advance a theory of how organizational characteristics, in particular the structure of opportunity within organizations, shape the decision to become an entrepreneur. Established organizations play an important yet understudied role in the entrepreneurial process, because they shape the environment within which individuals may choose to enter self-employment. Yet, despite the fact that sociologists have long recognized that inequality within organizations plays an important role in career attainment and mobility, we lack an understanding of how it shapes the pursuit of entrepreneurial opportunities. We develop a formal model in which entrepreneurial choice is driven by differences in the arrival rate of various types of advancement opportunities. Entrepreneurship then arises as a result of matching processes between workers and employers, as well as the features of opportunity structures in paid employment. Analyses using Danish census data provide support for empirical implications derived from the model.

Comment and Reply

Is the Motherhood Penalty Larger for Low-Wage Women? A Comment on Quantile Regression
Alexandra Killewald and Jonathan Bearak

Statistical Models and Empirical Evidence for Differences in the Motherhood Penalty across the Earnings Distribution
Michelle J. Budig and Melissa J. Hodges

Critical Criminology 22(2)

Critical Criminology, May 2014: Volume 22, Issue 2

Toys for the Boys? Drones, Pleasure and Popular Culture in the Militarisation of Policing
Michael Salter

This paper argues that the various and contradictory rationales offered for law enforcement drones are symptomatic of a ‘weapons fetish’ evident in popular culture. This fetishisation imbues military technology such as the drone with masculine fantasies of control and domination that obscure the practical limitations and ethical implications of drones for crime control and prevention. By linking the pleasures of militarism to crucial shifts in the social and economic order, the paper argues that counter-terrorism discourse functions to legitimate the militarised masculine subject positions of paramilitary policing specifically and the neoliberal state generally. In such a context, the drone features as a regressive ‘weapon-toy’ that fuses state control with technological transcendence.

Mad Men in Bib Overalls: Media’s Horrification and Pornification of Rural Culture
Walter S. DeKeseredy, Stephen L. Muzzatti, Joseph F. Donnermeyer

The media play a key role in stereotyping as “ignorant and uncouth hillbillies” people who live in rural US communities. As well, since the early 1970s, popular films frequently portray rural areas as dangerous locations, places where urban people are at high risk of being savagely killed and tortured by demented, in-bred locals without conscience or constraint. Further, with the advent of the Internet, rural women continue to be depicted in a degrading, highly sexualized manner and “gonzo” pornographic videos of them are widely and freely accessible. Informed by feminist and cultural criminological modes of inquiry, this paper presents some exploratory research on rural horror films and pornographic videos. A key argument is that with the help of new information technologies, these media are normalized, mainstreamed, and contribute to the horrification/pornification of rural culture, and by doing so, mask the real issues about crime, violence, and gender relations in the rural context.

“Because That’s What Justice Is to Us”: Exploring the Racialized Collateral Consequences of New Parochialism
Sarah Becker

Renewed interest in communities as spaces for criminal opportunity has generated numerous studies of neighborhood social dynamics and crime. Most of this research is rooted in social disorganization theory, which examines neighborhood structural characteristics that facilitate effective social control. While many studies tout the benefits of community-based controls, the potential externalities of these efforts remain underexplored. In the modern neoliberal context, where policing strategies stress community involvement and often focus on vaguely-defined problems like “quality of life” or “incivilities” and where police have considerable enforcement discretion, the unintended consequences of community-based controls are important to document. I use the ethnographic case study of Gardner Village to explore the potential collateral consequences of one form of collective social control: new parochialism. Applying a critical lens to the social disorganization literature, I argue that when embedded in particular structural contexts, new parochialism contributes to the reproduction of inequality and undermines community-building processes.

Seeking Asylum and Residence Permits in Sweden: Denial, Acknowledgement, and Bureaucratic Legitimacy
Isabel Schoultz

Sweden’s reputation as one of the most encompassing welfare states in the world is maintained by means of a good self-image, not least in relation to refugee policies. At the same time, external authorities have been critical of Sweden’s handling of the process of seeking asylum. Drawing on Stanley Cohen’s concepts of denial and partial acknowledgment, the article explores how Swedish state officials respond to complaints regarding the process of seeking asylum and other forms of residence permit. The study analyzes judgments from the Parliamentary Ombudsman, the Chancellor of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights. The analysis suggests that even within the well-developed democratic state, denials constitute a form of account that may be utilized to maintain bureaucratic legitimacy. In addition, partial acknowledgments serve to present state actors as decent and self-correcting. At the same time these acknowledgements could be understood as constituting a means of avoiding moral censure.

The Coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives in Criminal Justice and Criminology Introductory Textbooks
Favian Alejandro Martín

This paper examines the coverage of American Indians and Alaskan Natives (AI/AN) in the most widely read introductory criminal justice and criminology books published between 2004 and 2010. The current research extends upon Young’s (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) assessment of AI/ANs in criminal justice and criminology introductory textbooks, where he found no mention of AI/ANs. The replication of Young (J Crim Justice Educ 1:111–116, 1990) is especially important because AI/ANs continue to face a wide array of social issues (i.e. substance abuse and poverty), which leads to an overrepresentation of AI/ANs in the criminal justice system. To accomplish this, a content analysis was conducted on thirty-one introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks to determine whether AI/ANs have received more academic coverage in current textbooks. The findings reveal that introductory criminal justice and criminology textbooks still under represent AI/ANs despite experiencing crime, victimization, and justice related problems.

Risky Reports: Crime Risk Assessments and Spatial Governance
Murray Lee, Garner Clancey, Daren Fisher

The identification, assessment, and minimization of crime risk has permeated practices that extend well beyond traditional criminal justice responses. This article analyses crime risk assessment reports and the guidelines and processes through which they are produced for large-scale commercial and residential developments and redevelopments, taking New South Wales Australia as a case study. The article suggests that although the crime risk assessment guidelines and reports deploy a language of risk, there is a messiness and inconsistency to the crime risk assessment process that raises significant questions its normative utility. The article concludes that the language and promise of risk minimisation can silence or ‘black box’ what appear to be coherent regulatory process making them little more than symbolic gestures.

A Prescription for Violence: The Legacy of Colonization in Contemporary Forensic Mental Health and the Production of Difference
Ameil J. Joseph

In this paper I will argue, through the example of the “treatment” of racialized minorities diagnosed with mental illness, that the mental health system (including its unique laws, production of different identity categories and ruling disciplines), with its dogmatic adherence to and reliance on alleged expert opinion and internal inquiry, allows for the erasure of subaltern voices. Often we hear about a tragic incident as reported by the media about someone diagnosed with a mental illness who has committed a crime. These representations routinely present the person as violent, aggressive, uncontrollable, and unpredictable. Repeatedly the voice of the accused is not represented; his or her social, historical, and political contexts are not considered relevant. The technologies of the criminal justice and mental health system’s use of physical or chemical restraint, coercive treatment, or practices such as deportation are also not reported, thus reproducing systems of harm. We don’t get to look inside the asylum. Patients’ voices are excluded from the discursive practices, disciplinary hegemony or dominant regimes of truth within the mental health system. This creates a system impermeable to criticism, where violence continues to prevail. Through a discussion of the disproportionate criminalization and deportation of the mentally ill, the false associations between mental illness and violence, the colonial ancestry of internal inquiry, and example cases from the media, this paper reviews how these particular technologies of violence owe their inheritance to the orientalising, discursive practices and disciplinary hegemony developed during colonization that when ignored, reproduce the dehumanizing outcomes upon which they were built.

‘Cultural Criminology, Governmentality and the Liquidity of the Failing State: The View from Ireland’ for Critical Criminology
Liam Leonard

A number of incidents and community movements in the post-economic growth era have come to shape understandings of the Republic of Ireland’s marginalised groupings. These groups exist in both urban streetscapes and rural communities; all have come to represent a new culture of transgressive resistance in a state that has never completely dealt with issues of political legitimacy or extensive poverty, creating a deviant form of ‘liquid modernity’ which provides the space for such groupings to exist. The article demonstrates that the prevailing ideology in contemporary, post-downturn Ireland have created the conditions for incidents of ‘cultural criminology’ that at times erupt into episodes of counter hegemonic governmentality. The article further argues that these groups which have emerged may represent the type of transgressive Foucaultian governmentality envisaged by Kevin Stenson, while they are indicative of subcultures of discontent and nascent racism which belie the contented findings of various affluence and contentment surveys conducted during the years of rapid growth. The paper develops this theme of counter-hegemonic ‘governmentality’, or the regional attempts to challenge authorities by local groups of transgressors. The paper finally argues that, in many ways, the emergence of a culture of criminality in the Irish case, and media depictions of the same, can be said to stem from the corruption of that country’s elites as much as from any agenda for resistance from its beleaguered subcultures.

British Journal of Criminology 54(3)

British Journal of Criminology, May 2014: Volume 54, Issue 3

Recognizing the 2011 United Kingdom Riots as Political Protest: A Theoretical Framework Based on Agency, Habitus and the Preconscious
Sadiya Akram

Drawing on the 2011 United Kingdom riots, this article explores contestation over the meaning of riots. Is rioting criminality and looting, or are there political aspects to the act? For those advocating a political element, there is difficulty in reconciling how an apparently spontaneous act can have political motivations. This article argues that rioting is a distinctly political action, and in order to understand it we must theorize the characteristics of agency that underpin the act. Drawing on Bourdieu’s habitus, but developing it to include a preconscious component, the article develops a novel theoretical framework for understanding the rioter. Habitus is presented as a mechanism that can help better understand how experiences in the past affect the rioter’s present, thereby leading to a coming to the surface of underlying political grievances.

The Life Course of Young Male and Female Offenders: Stability or Change between Different Birth Cohorts?
Olof Bäckman, Felipe Estrada, Anders Nilsson, and David Shannon

Individuals’ life chances are shaped by the times and events that they experience. This emphasizes the need for studies that focus on staggered birth cohorts. The article presents a new longitudinal data set that includes three complete Swedish birth cohorts, born in 1965, 1975 and 1985. Comparisons between the different birth cohorts show how offending distributions among young offenders, as well as their socio-demographic backgrounds and life chances, have developed over time. The analyses of stability and change presented in the study may serve as a point of departure for more informed discussions of the significance of societal changes for the criminality and life chances of male and female offenders.

Crime and the Transition to Marriage: The Role of the Spouse’s Criminal Involvement
Torbjørn Skardhamar, Christian W. Monsbakken, and Torkild H. Lyngstad

Influential perspectives in life course criminology maintain that marriage leads to desistance from crime, and the mechanisms are largely related to spousal social control. Whether and to what degree marriage represents a break from a criminal past might depend on the spouse’s criminal attitude. We study how changes in offending are related to marriage, and how the patterns vary by the wife’s criminal record. We use data from Norwegian administrative registers that cover the total population of all persons who married in Norway between 1997 and 2001 (N = 80,064). We use information on these persons’ criminal records in two five-year periods before and after marriage as well as information on their wives’ criminal records in the same period, to estimate the probability of offending across an 11-year period around the time of marriage. We do so in a way that takes premarital changes in criminal behaviour into account. We find that the desistance process tend to start up to several years before marriage, and that the decline is greater for those who marry a wife with a criminal record.

Exposing ‘Sex’ Offenders: Precarity, Abjection and Violence in the Canadian Federal Prison System
Rosemary Ricciardelli and Dale Spencer

Imprisoned sex offenders face abjection because of their criminality and are the most victimized group of adult male prisoners. Drawing on Judith Butler’s work on gender, abjection and precarity, and scholarship focused on prison masculinities, we examine the experiences of sex offenders while incarcerated and the role of various agents in exposing their convictions to other prisoners and, ultimately, to victimization. Given each prisoner’s convictions are not immediately known when they enter the penitentiary and recognizing that prison is unsafe for sex offenders, we sought to understand how sex offenders attempt to pass among the general prisoner population and the methods through which their convictions become known. Utilizing interviews with 59 formerly incarcerated men, we analyse the modalities that sex offenders employ to ‘pass’ as non-sex offenders and the anxieties associated with awaiting their inevitable exposure. Former prisoners reveal the methods used by staff and prisoners to expose those with sex-related convictions.

Self-efficacy Beliefs and Preferred Gender Role in Policing: An Examination of Policewomen’s Perceptions in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates
Doris C. Chu and Mohammed Murad Abdulla

In Dubai, one of the fastest-growing cities in the world, women are encouraged to pursue higher education and careers in different spheres. Since the first group of 17 women joined the Dubai police force in 1977, the number of women choosing the police profession has risen. Today, more than 1,400 female officers work in Dubai. Using data from surveys conducted with 278 female police officers in Dubai, this study assesses female officers’ attitudes towards women in policing and their preferred gender role at police work. In general, female officers believed that they are effective as patrol officers on the street, and a majority of the sampled policewomen believed that women can be as good as male officers in doing police work. The findings reveal that professional role confidence is significantly associated with positive self-appraisal. In addition, policewomen who are confident about their work and those with longer tenure in the police force are more likely to favour the same assignment as policemen. Female officers with higher education attainment are less likely to endorse gender-restrictive assignments. Suggestions for future research are addressed.

Police Understanding of the Foundations of Their Legitimacy in the Eyes of the Public: The Case of Commanding Officers in the Israel National Police
Tal Jonathan-Zamir and Amikam Harpaz

The dialogic approach to legitimacy postulates that a complete picture of police legitimacy requires considering not only citizens’ views, but also police understanding of their legitimacy and the interaction between the two. This article addresses a particular aspect of police perceptions of their legitimacy in the eyes of the public: the foundations of their external legitimacy. The analysis reveals that, in contrast to the priorities of citizens as reflected in community surveys, Israeli commanding police officers associate their external legitimacy more with their accomplishments in fighting crime than with procedural justice. We consider the implications of these findings for Israeli policing, as well as in relation to the ‘legitimacy as a dialogue’ approach and legitimacy research more generally.

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