Theory and Society 40(2)

The re-accomplishment of place in twentieth century Vermont and New Hampshire: history repeats itself, until it doesn’t
Jason Kaufman, Matthew E. Kaliner

Much recent literature plumbs the question of the origins and trajectories of “place,” or the cultural development of space-specific repertoires of action and meaning. This article examines divergence in two “places” that were once quite similar but are now quite far apart, culturally and politically speaking. Vermont, once considered the “most Republican” state in the United States, is now generally considered one of its most politically and culturally liberal. New Hampshire, by contrast, has remained politically and socially quite conservative. Contrasting legacies of tourist promotion, political mobilization, and public policy help explain the divergence between states. We hypothesize that emerging stereotypes about a “place” serve to draw sympathetic residents and visitors to that place, thus reinforcing the salience of those stereotypes and contributing to their reality over time. We term this latter process idio-cultural migration and argue its centrality to ongoing debates about the accomplishment of place. We also elaborate on several means by which such place “reputations” are created, transmitted, and maintained.

Granite and green: thinking beyond surface in place studies
Harvey Molotch

Through their dense range of empirical sortings, Kaufman and Kaliner, in this issue of Theory and Society, are effective in showing mechanisms through which places replicate themselves over time, but also in how their cultural and economic profiles can shift. Their work points to the utility of matched comparisons of historical interaction, both symbolic and material, as tool for understanding trajectories of stability and change.

Reconstructing the authenticity of place
Sharon Zukin

Sociologists tend to over-conceptualize the divergent cultures of adjacent places, both neglecting necessary structural and institutional factors and focusing on symbols more than interests. In the post-industrial era, sense of place reflects geographical mobility, the social construction of landscape, and marketing strategies. Like gentrified neighborhoods and hipster districts in cities, rural regions like Vermont are reborn through the social, cultural, and economic efforts of local entrepreneurs to create a distinctive and authentic sense of place.

Everyday morality in families and a critique of social capital: an investigation into moral judgements, responsibilities, and sentiments in Kyrgyzstani households
Balihar Sanghera, Mehrigiul Ablezova, Aisalkyn Botoeva

This article examines individuals’ lay understandings of moral responsibilities between adult kin members. Moral sentiments and practical judgments are important in shaping kinship responsibilities. The article discusses how judgments on requests of support can be reflexive and critical, taking into account many factors, including merit, social proximity, a history of personal encounters, overlapping commitments, and moral identity in the family. In so doing, we argue that moral responsibilities are contextual and relational. We also analyze how class, gender, and capabilities affect how individuals imagine, expect and discuss care responsibilities. We also offer a critique of social capital theory of families, suggesting that their versions of morality are instrumental, alienated, and restrictive. Although Bourdieu’s concept of habitus overlaps with our proposed moral sentiments approach, the former does not adequately address moral concerns, commitments, and evaluations. The article aims to contribute to a better understanding of everyday morality by drawing upon different literatures in sociology, moral philosophy, postcommunism, and development studies.

Does acclamation equal agreement? Rethinking collective effervescence through the case of the presidential “tour de France” during the twentieth century
Nicolas Mariot

This article discusses the integrative function frequently assigned to festive events by scholars. This function can be summed up in a proposition: experiencing similar emotions during collective gatherings is a powerful element of socialization. The article rejects this oft-developed idea according to which popular fervor could be an efficient tool to measure civic engagement. It raises the following question: what makes enthusiasm “civic”, “patriotic”, “republican” or simply “political”? Based on a study of French presidential tours in France from 1888 to 2007, this article casts a different light on the topic. The enthusiasm of the crowds interacting with the successive French presidents is not civic because an inquiry may find “patriotism” into participants’ minds. It can be called civic simply because the forms and meaning of the festive jubilation, which may be summarized into the formula: “if spectators applaud, it means they support,” necessarily preexist its multiple manifestations.

Theory and Society, March 2011: Volume 40, Issue 2

Critical Criminology 19(1)

Qualitative Research and Intersectionality
Adam Trahan

Much of the extant criminological literature on the relationships between race, class, gender, and crime has treated these demographic characteristics as isolated, independent variables. More recent theorizing has called our attention to fact that these constructs are not autonomous. Instead, people’s identity lies at the intersection of race, class, and gender and it is the combination of these constructs that often shapes people’s experiences with the criminal justice system and other social structures. It is well-documented, however, that purely quantitative methodologies are not well suited to studying intersecionality. The findings of qualitative research have lent a greater understanding to the intersection of race, class, gender, and crime. The appropriateness of certain methodological frameworks and the thematic contributions of qualitative research to intersectionality are discussed.

Vandalizing Meaning, Stealing Memory: Artistic, Cultural, and Theoretical Implications of Crime in Galleries and Museums
Avi Brisman

This paper discusses two different types of crime that occur in art museums: the theft of art objects and the vandalism of works of art. This paper explores the extent to which theft may affect our memory of a given work of art (regardless of whether the object is ultimately recovered), as well as our experience of the museum (especially if efforts are subsequently undertaken to improve security, such as with the Munch Museum following the theft of the Scream). With respect to vandalism, this paper considers whether and how such acts subsequently affect the value we place on the assaulted items as cultural icons and the meaning of the paintings as art objects. This paper argues that how we regard such events should be determined not by their criminality, but by the individual’s or individuals’ intent and the effect of the acts on the meaning and memory of the works.

Deciphering the Ambiguous Menace of Sexuality for the Innocence of Childhood
J. C. W. Gooren

This article examines how late modern Western society/culture deals with the utterly despised phenomenon of paedophilia. It will be argued there are ambiguous factors and forces, which are an inherent part of mainstream culture and the wider social fabric, that make an unequivocal stand against sexuality interfering with children somewhat hypocritical. The zealous efforts in battling sexual child molesters as the primordial danger for the innocence of childhood are seen as a strategy for overt redemption. A hidden agenda is detected by recovering complicit support from a diverse range of adjacent sources that defies the genuineness of guarding the sexual innocence of children.

Above the Law? A Comparative Study of National Prosecutions of Heads of State
Napoleon C. Reyes & Jurg Gerber

Official polices on the appropriate government response to crimes committed by a head of state are seldom dictated by strict principles of justice. Deciding whether to bring an errant leader to justice is often influenced by political expediency. Given the number of documented cases of official abuse, there is a need to understand why some governments choose to prosecute a former or sitting head of state while others do not. Yet, few studies have been done on this subject. This study reviews 52 cases of heads of state accused of crimes and explores how their own national governments responded to such accusations. Using data culled from various documentary sources, it employs a grounded theory approach to focus on the process that drives the decision to prosecute. Analysis indicates that political legitimacy, perception of threat, political stability, and degree of politicization of the military influence the decision to prosecute. The article concludes with a discussion of the significance and implications of these findings and suggestions for future research.

Embracing Emotionality: Clothing My “Naked Truths”
Felice Yuen

There is increasing awareness and recognition that researchers’ emotions will contribute to a richer and deeper understanding of what they are studying. Researchers’ emotions as analytic tools are particularly relevant when working with marginalized or oppressed groups because of the emotional aspect generally associated with human suffering. This paper discusses how adopting a reflexive practice can help researchers embrace and use their emotions as a part of the research process, enabling a more humanistic approach to studying crime and those whose marginalization and oppression are intricately tied to their crime. More specifically, this paper examines my own experiences of doing research with Aboriginal female offenders in a federal prison. I problematize the process of embracing emotionality by reflecting on the paralysis that evolved in my research with these women as I experienced an overwhelming sense of despair and hopelessness. I contend that social science in the academic arena, not unlike many other institutions in society, has adopted a method of surveillance thereby instilling a sense of fear and judgment upon those working in academic arenas. After describing my reflexive process throughout this emotional paralysis, I describe my discovery of safe spaces as a way of dealing with my emotions and how engaging in creative analytic practice enabled me to clothe my nakedness and vulnerability as I represented, and ultimately re-created my self in the research process. As part of that evolution, embracing emotionality ultimately enabled me to engage in knowledge building as well as advocacy with and for Aboriginal women in prison.

Critical Criminology, March 2011: Volume 19, Issue 1

Criminology 49(1)

The Big Picture: 2010 Presidential Address To The American Society Of Criminology
Richard Rosenfeld

Microanalysis holds sway over macroanalysis in contemporary criminology. All of criminology would be better off if greater attention were devoted to the big picture—the relationship between crime and the interplay of institutions in the social systems of whole societies. Microlevel researchers often assume that the reduction of individual criminal propensities leads ipso facto to reductions in aggregate crime rates, but the implied connection is illusive, has not been demonstrated, and is belied by the macroanalysis of crime. The perspectives, methods, and data of macrocriminology also need to be developed, however, if they are to advance our understanding of crime at the level of social systems. Emile Durkheim, Talcott Parsons, Karl Polanyi, and C. Wright Mills have contributed essential building blocks for the study of the big picture of crime. Improvements in the quality and timeliness of aggregate crime data, finally, are necessary to bolster the policy relevance of macrocriminology

The Predictive Value Of Criminal Background Checks: Do Age And Criminal History Affect Time To Redemption?
Shawn D. Bushway, Paul Nieuwbeerta And Arjan Blokland

Criminal record checks are being used increasingly by decision makers to predict future unwanted behaviors. A central question these decision makers face is how much time it takes before offenders can be considered “redeemed” and resemble nonoffenders in terms of the probability of offending. Building on a small literature addressing this topic for youthful, first-time offenders, the current article asks whether this period differs across the age of last conviction and the total number of prior convictions. Using long-term longitudinal data on a Dutch conviction cohort, we find that young novice offenders are redeemed after approximately 10 years of remaining crime free. For older offenders, the redemption period is considerably shorter. Offenders with extensive criminal histories, however, either never resemble their nonconvicted counterparts or only do so after a crime-free period of more than 20 years. Practical and theoretical implications of these findings are discussed.

Fighting Over Trivial Things: Explaining The Issue Of Contention In Violent Altercations
Elizabeth Griffiths, Carolyn Yule And Rosemary Gartner

Violent altercations can lead to serious injury and death, and yet some interpersonal disputes that prompt physical violence originate over what are seemingly trivial issues. This study evaluates the theoretical premise that violence stemming from what typically are defined as trivial altercations can be explained by what is at stake in these conflicts; trivial altercations, or fights about “nothing,” actually represent symbolic contests of dominance and deference. These status contests are necessary primarily when the social relationship between opponents is symmetrical—when a dominance hierarchy is not clearly established. Data from interviews with incarcerated women in Ontario, Canada, show that relationship symmetry strongly predicts the issue of contention in their physically violent altercations. These findings suggest that, when violence erupts over trivial issues, both parties to the altercation essentially are locked in a battle for social rank.

Delinquency And The Structure Of Adolescent Peer Groups
Derek A. Kreager, Kelly Rulison And James Moody

Gangs and group-level processes were once central phenomena for criminological theory and research. By the mid-1970s, however, gang research primarily was displaced by studies of individual behavior using randomized self-report surveys, a shift that also removed groups from the theoretical foreground. In this project, we return to the group level to test competing theoretical claims about delinquent group structure. We use network-based clustering methods to identify 897 friendship groups in two ninth-grade cohorts of 27 Pennsylvania and Iowa schools. We then relate group-level measures of delinquency and drinking to network measures of group size, friendship reciprocity, transitivity, structural cohesion, stability, average popularity, and network centrality. We find significant negative correlations between group delinquency and all of our network measures, suggesting that delinquent groups are less solidary and less central to school networks than nondelinquent groups. Additional analyses, on the one hand, reveal that these correlations are explained primarily by other group characteristics, such as gender composition and socioeconomic status. Drinking behaviors, on the other hand, show net positive associations with most of the network measures, suggesting that drinking groups have a higher status and are more internally cohesive than nondrinking groups. Our findings shed light on a long-standing criminological debate by suggesting that any structural differences between delinquent and nondelinquent groups are likely attributable to other characteristics coincidental with delinquency. In contrast, drinking groups seem to provide peer contexts of greater social capital and cohesion.

A Heavy Thumb On The Scale: The Effect Of Victim Impact Evidence On Capital Decision Making
Ray Paternoster And Jerome Deise

The past several decades have seen the emergence of a movement in the criminal justice system that has called for a greater consideration for the rights of victims. One manifestation of this movement has been the “right” of victims or victims' families to speak to the sentencing body through what are called victim impact statements about the value of the victim and the full harm that the offender has created. Although victim impact statements have been a relatively noncontroversial part of regular criminal trials, their presence in capital cases has had a more contentious history. The U.S. Supreme Court overturned previous decisions and explicitly permitted victim impact testimony in capital cases in Payne v. Tennessee (1991). The dissenters in that case argued that such evidence only would arouse the emotions of jurors and bias them in favor of imposing death. A body of research in behavioral economics on the “identifiable victim effect” and the “identifiable wrongdoer effect” would have supported such a view. Using a randomized controlled experiment with a death-eligible sample of potential jurors and the videotape of an actual penalty trial in which victim impact evidence (VIE) was used, we found that these concerns about VIE are perhaps well placed. Subjects who viewed VIE testimony in the penalty phase were more likely to feel negative emotions like anger, hostility, and vengeance; were more likely to feel sympathy and empathy toward the victim; and were more likely to have favorable perceptions of the victim and victim's family as well as unfavorable perceptions of the offender. We found that these positive feelings toward the victim and family were in turn related to a heightened risk of them imposing the death penalty. We found evidence that part of the effect of VIE on the decision to impose death was mediated by emotions of sympathy and empathy. We think our findings open the door for future work to put together better the causal story that links VIE to an increased inclination to impose death as well as explore possible remedies.

Tough Love? Crime And Parental Assistance In Young Adulthood
Sonja E. Siennick

Although informal social reactions to crime are key to many criminological theories, we know little about how readily offenders’ significant others reject and withdraw support from them. I explore the limits of others’ willingness to help offenders by studying parents’ financial assistance of grown offending and nonoffending offspring. I use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health and from the 1997 cohort of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth to show that, despite their strained relationships with their parents, young adult offenders receive more parental assistance than do their nonoffending peers and even their own nonoffending siblings. This is not because offenders have fewer financial resources, but it is partly because they tend to have a variety of other life circumstances that trigger parental assistance. I suggest that parents’ reactions to offending offspring are limited by role obligations and norms of familial duty.

Reassessing Trends In Black Violent Crime, 1980–2008: Sorting Out The “Hispanic Effect” In Uniform Crime Reports Arrests, National Crime Victimization Survey Offender Estimates, And U.S. Prisoner Counts
Darrell Steffensmeier, Ben Feldmeyer, Casey T. Harris And Jeffery T. Ulmer

Recent studies suggest a decline in the relative Black effect on violent crime in recent decades and interpret this decline as resulting from greater upward mobility among African Americans during the past several decades. However, other assessments of racial stratification in American society suggest at least as much durability as change in Black social mobility since the 1980s. Our goal is to assess how patterns of racial disparity in violent crime and incarceration have changed from 1980 to 2008. We argue that prior studies showing a shrinking Black share of violent crime might be in error because of reliance on White and Black national crime statistics that are confounded with Hispanic offenders, whose numbers have been increasing rapidly and whose violence rates are higher than that of Whites but lower than that of Blacks. Using 1980–2008 California and New York arrest data to adjust for this “Hispanic effect” in national Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) and National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) data, we assess whether the observed national decline in racial disparities in violent crime is an artifact of the growth in Hispanic populations and offenders. Results suggest that little overall change has occurred in the Black share of violent offending in both UCR and NCVS estimates during the last 30 years. In addition, racial imbalances in arrest versus incarceration levels across the index violent crimes are both small and comparably sized across the study period. We conclude by discussing the consistency of these findings with trends in economic and social integration of Blacks in American society during the past 50 years.

Delinquent Peers In Context: A Longitudinal Network Analysis Of Selection And Influence Effects
Frank M. Weerman

In this article, longitudinal social network data are analyzed to get a better understanding of the interplay between delinquent peers and delinquent behavior. These data contain detailed information about the social networks of secondary school students from the same grade, their delinquent behavior, and many relevant correlates of network formation and delinquency. To distinguish selection and influence processes, a method (Simulation Investigation for Empirical Network Analyses, SIENA) is used in which network formation and changes in delinquency are simulated simultaneously within the context of other network processes and correlates of delinquency. The data and the method used make it possible to investigate an unusually wide array of effects on peer selection and delinquent behavior. The results indicate that similarity in delinquency has no significant effect on the selection of school friends when other network dynamics are taken into account. However, the average delinquency level of someone's friends in the school network does have a significant, although relatively small, effect on delinquent behavior of the respondents, beyond significant effects of changes in the level of self-control and morality. Another peer-related change, leaving or joining informal street-oriented youth groups, also appears to have a substantial effect on changes in delinquency.

Criminology, February 2011: Volume 49, Issue 1

Sociological Theory 29(1)

Toward a General Theory of Strategic Action Fields (pages 1–26)
Neil Fligstein and Doug McAdam

In recent years there has been an outpouring of work at the intersection of social movement studies and organizational theory. While we are generally in sympathy with this work, we think it implies a far more radical rethinking of structure and agency in modern society than has been realized to date. In this article, we offer a brief sketch of a general theory of strategic action fields (SAFs). We begin with a discussion of the main elements of the theory, describe the broader environment in which any SAF is embedded, consider the dynamics of stability and change in SAFs, and end with a respectful critique of other contemporary perspectives on social structure and agency.

Ubiquity and Legitimacy: Disentangling Diffusion and Institutionalization (pages 27–53)
Jeannette A. Colyvas and Stefan Jonsson

Diffusion and institutionalization are of prime sociological importance, as both processes unfold at the intersections of relations and structures, as well as persistence and change. Yet they are often confounded, leading to theoretical and methodological biases that hinder the development of generalizable arguments. We look at diffusion and institutionalization distinctively, each as both a process and an outcome in terms of three dimensions: the objects that flow or stick; the subjects who adopt or influence; and the social settings through which an innovation travels. We offer examples to flesh out these dimensions, and formulate testable propositions from our analytic framework that could lead to further theoretical refinement and progress.

Multiple Levels of Analysis and the Limitations of Methodological Individualisms (pages 54–73)
Ronald Jepperson and John W. Meyer

This article discusses relations among the multiple levels of analysis present in macro-sociological explanation—i.e., relations of individual, structural, and institutional processes. It also criticizes the doctrinal insistence upon single-level individualistic explanation found in some prominent contemporary sociological theory. For illustrative material the article returns to intellectual uses of Weber's “Protestant Ethic thesis,” showing how an artificial version has been employed as a kind of proof text for the alleged scientific necessity of individualist explanation. Our alternative exposition renders the discussion of Protestantism and capitalism in an explicitly multilevel way, distinguishing possible individual-level, social-organizational, and institutional linkages. The causal processes involved are distinct ones, with the more structural and institutional forms neither captured nor attainable by individual-level thinking. We argue more generally that “methodological individualisms” confuse issues of explanation with issues about microfoundations. This persistent intellectual conflation may be rooted in the broader folk models of liberal individualism.

Sociological Theory, March 2011: Volume 29, Issue 1

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 27(1)

Thoughtfully Reflective Decision Making and the Accumulation of Capital: Bringing Choice Back In
Ray Paternoster, Greg Pogarsky & Gregory Zimmerman

In this paper we relate a particular type of decision making, thoughtfully reflective decision making (TRDM) in adolescence, to successful and unsuccessful life outcomes in young adulthood. Those who are thoughtfully reflective in their decision making are more likely to consider possible alternative routes to goal attainment, weigh the costs and benefits of those alternatives, and critically revisit the decision once made to examine what went well and what went wrong. We also argue that what mediates the effect of TRDM on later life outcomes is the accumulation of capital. Those who use better decision making practices are more likely to recognize the resources provided by and make the necessary investments to accumulate human, social and cultural capital. These notions are theoretically linked to conceptions of criminal offenders as both rational planners and decision makers and as fully human agents. Using data from the Add Health data set, our hypotheses are largely confirmed. Those who are higher in TRDM as adolescents were more likely to have enrolled in or graduated from college, to be in better physical health, are more involved in civic and community affairs, less likely to commit criminal acts, use illegal drugs and be involved in heavy drinking as adults. TRDM is also positively related to the accumulation of human, social and cultural capital. Finally, a substantial part of the effect of TRDM on young adult outcomes was mediated by capital accumulation. The implications of these findings for future theory and research are discussed.

A New Twist on an Old Approach: A Random-Interaction Approach for Estimating Rates of Inter-Group Interaction
John R. Hipp, George E. Tita & Lyndsay N. Boggess

There are numerous instances in which researchers wish to measure the rate of intra- or inter-group interactions (whether positive or negative). When computing such measures as rates there is great uncertainty regarding the appropriate denominator: we analytically illustrate how the choice of the denominator when calculating such rates is not trivial and that some existing strategies create a built-in relationship between the computed rate and the group composition within the entity. Another strand of prior work only focused on the relative occurrence of intra- versus inter-group events, which does not account for the important theoretical possibility that both types of events might increase in certain social contexts. Our approach provides an advance over these earlier strategies as it allows one to take into account the relative frequency of interaction between members of different groups, but then translates this into per capita rates. We also provide an empirical example using data on inter- and intra-group robbery and aggravated assault events for block groups in a section of the city of Los Angeles to illustrate how our procedure works and to illustrate how other approaches can lead to dramatically different conclusions.

Something Old, Something New: Revisiting Competing Hypotheses of the Victimization-Offending Relationship Among Adolescents
Graham C. Ousey, Pamela Wilcox & Bonnie S. Fisher

This study revisits a familiar question regarding the relationship between victimization and offending. Using longitudinal data on middle- and high-school students, the study examines competing arguments regarding the relationship between victimization and offending embedded within the “dynamic causal” and “population heterogeneity” perspectives. The analysis begins with models that estimate the longitudinal relationship between victimization and offending without accounting for the influence of time-stable individual heterogeneity. Next, the victimization-offending relationship is reconsidered after the effects of time-stable sources of heterogeneity, and time-varying covariates are controlled. While the initial results without controls for population heterogeneity are in line with much prior research and indicate a positive link between victimization and offending, results from models that control for time-stable individual differences suggest something new: a negative, reciprocal relationship between victimization and offending. These latter results are most consistent with the notion that the oft-reported victimization-offending link is driven by a combination of dynamic causal and population heterogeneity factors. Implications of these findings for theory and future research focusing on the victimization-offending nexus are discussed.

The Effects of Genetics, the Environment, and Low Self-Control on Perceived Maternal and Paternal Socialization: Results from a Longitudinal Sample of Twins
Kevin M. Beaver

The association between parental socialization and antisocial behavior is central to much criminological theory and research. For the most part, criminologists view parental socialization as reflecting a purely social process, one that is not influenced by genetic factors. A growing body of behavioral genetic research, however, has cast doubt on this claim by revealing that environments are partially shaped by genetic factors. The current study used these findings as a springboard to examine the genetic and environmental underpinnings to various measures of perceived paternal and maternal parenting. Analysis of twin pairs drawn from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health revealed that between 16 and 31% of the variance in perceptions of maternal attachment, maternal involvement, maternal disengagement, and maternal negativity was the result of genetic factors. Additionally, between 46 and 63% of the variance in perceptions of paternal attachment, paternal involvement, and paternal negativity was accounted for by genetic factors. The implications that these results have for criminologists are explored.

Asymmetric Loss Functions for Forecasting in Criminal Justice Settings
Richard Berk

The statistical procedures typically used for forecasting in criminal justice settings rest on symmetric loss functions. For quantitative response variables, overestimates are treated the same as underestimates. For categorical response variables, it does not matter in which class a case is inaccurately placed. In many criminal justice settings, symmetric costs are not responsive to the needs of stakeholders. It can follow that the forecasts are not responsive either. In this paper, we consider asymmetric loss functions that can lead to forecasting procedures far more sensitive to the real consequences of forecasting errors. Theoretical points are illustrated with examples using criminal justice data of the kind that might be used for “predictive policing.”

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, March 2011: Volume 27, Issue 1

American Sociological Review 76(1)

2010 Presidential Address
Constructing Citizenship: Exclusion, Subordination, and Resistance
Evelyn Nakano Glenn

This Presidential Address develops a sociological concept of citizenship, particularly substantive citizenship, as fundamentally a matter of belonging, including recognition by other members of the community. In this conception, citizenship is not simply a fixed legal status, but a fluid status that is produced through everyday practices and struggles. Historical examples illustrate the way in which boundaries of membership are enforced and challenged in everyday interactions. The experience of undocumented immigrant college students is particularly illuminating. These students occupy a position of liminal legality, which transcends fixed categories such as legal and illegal. As they go about their daily lives, their standing is affirmed in some settings and denied in others. Furthermore, the undocumented student movement, which asserts that education is a human and social right, represents a form of insurgent citizenship, one that challenges dominant formulations and offers an alternative and more inclusive conception.

Neighborhood Immigration and Native Out-Migration
Kyle Crowder, Matthew Hall, and Stewart E. Tolnay

This study combines data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics with data from four censuses to examine the effects of foreign-born populations in the immediate and surrounding neighborhoods of residence on native-born black and white householders’ residential mobility decisions. We find that the likelihood of out-mobility for native householders is significantly and positively associated with the relative size of, and increases in, the immigrant population in a neighborhood. Consistent with theoretical arguments related to the distance dependence of mobility, large concentrations of immigrants in surrounding areas reduce native out-mobility, presumably by reducing the attractiveness of the most likely mobility destinations. A sizable share of local immigration effects can be explained by the mobility-related characteristics of native-born individuals living in immigrant-populated areas, but the racial composition of a neighborhood (for native whites) and local housing-market conditions (for native blacks) are also important mediating factors. We discuss the implications of these patterns for processes of neighborhood change and broader patterns of residential segregation.

Status Struggles: Network Centrality and Gender Segregation in Same- and Cross-Gender Aggression
Robert Faris and Diane Felmlee

Literature on aggression often suggests that individual deficiencies, such as social incompetence, psychological difficulties, or troublesome home environments, are responsible for aggressive behavior. In this article, by contrast, we examine aggression from a social network perspective, arguing that social network centrality, our primary measure of peer status, increases the capacity for aggression and that competition to gain or maintain status motivates its use. We test these arguments using a unique longitudinal dataset that enables separate consideration of same- and cross-gender aggression. We find that aggression is generally not a maladjusted reaction typical of the socially marginal; instead, aggression is intrinsic to status and escalates with increases in peer status until the pinnacle of the social hierarchy is attained. Over time, individuals at the very bottom and those at the very top of a hierarchy become the least aggressive youth. We also find that aggression is influenced not so much by individual gender differences as by relationships with the other gender and patterns of gender segregation at school. When cross-gender interactions are plentiful, aggression is diminished. Yet these factors are also jointly implicated in peer status: in schools where cross-gender interactions are rare, cross-gender friendships create status distinctions that magnify the consequences of network centrality.

Who Does More Housework: Rich or Poor?: A Comparison of 33 Countries
Jan Paul Heisig

This article studies the relationship between household income and housework time across 33 countries. In most countries, low-income individuals do more housework than their high-income counterparts; the differences are even greater for women’s domestic work time. The analysis shows that the difference between rich and poor women’s housework time falls with economic development and rises with overall economic inequality. I use a cross-national reinterpretation of arguments from the historical time-use literature to show that this is attributable to the association between economic development and the diffusion of household technologies and to the association between economic inequality and the prevalence of service consumption among high-income households. Results for a direct measure of technology diffusion provide striking evidence for the first interpretation. The findings question the widespread notion that domestic technologies have had little or no impact on women’s housework time. On a general level, I find that gender inequalities are fundamentally conditioned by economic inequalities. A full understanding of the division of housework requires social scientists to go beyond couple-level dynamics and situate households and individuals within the broader social and economic structure.

The Limit of Equality Projects: Public-Sector Expansion, Sectoral Conflicts, and Income Inequality in Postindustrial Economies
Cheol-Sung Lee, Young-Bum Kim, and Jae-Mahn Shim

In this study, we investigate how structural economic changes constrain an equality project, the public-sector expansion strategy. First, we describe a three-stage process in which a growing productivity gap between the private-manufacturing and public-service sectors disrupts traditional class solidarity. We contend that emerging conflicts between private and public sectors due to public-sector expansion and a growing inter-sectoral productivity gap eventually lead to employment and budget crises, as well as the weakening of coordinated wage-setting institutions. Furthermore, political, institutional, and economic transformations originating from sectoral cleavages and imbalance lead to increased income inequality. We test this argument using an unbalanced panel dataset on 16 advanced industrial democracies from 1971 to 2003. We find that public-sector employment has a strong negative effect on income inequality when the productivity gap between sectors is low. In such situations, public-sector employment fulfills its promise of equality and full employment. However, as the inter-sectoral productivity gap increases, the negative effect of public-sector expansion on income inequality evaporates. The findings suggest that severely uneven productivity gaps due to different degrees of technological innovations significantly weaken and limit the effectiveness of left-wing governments’ policy interventions through public-service expansion.

A Social Movement Generation: Cohort and Period Trends in Protest Attendance and Petition Signing
Neal Caren, Raj Andrew Ghoshal, and Vanesa Ribas

This project explores cohort and period trends in political participation in the United States between 1973 and 2008. We examine the extent to which protest attendance and petition signing have diffused to different kinds of actors across multiple generations; we test claims central to understanding trends in social movement participation. Using aggregated, cross-sectional survey data on political involvement from 34,241 respondents, we examine changes in the probability of ever having attended a protest or signed a petition over time periods and across cohorts using cross-classified, random-effects models. We find a strong generational effect on the probability of ever having attended a protest, which explains much of the observed change in self-reports of protest behavior. More than half of this generational effect is a result of compositional change, but we find little evidence that protest attendance diffused to new types of actors. We compare these findings with a less confrontational form of protesting, petition signing, which shows more period than cohort effects. We argue that social movement activities have not become a widespread means of civic engagement.

Protesting While Black?: The Differential Policing of American Activism, 1960 to 1990
Christian Davenport, Sarah A. Soule, and David A. Armstrong, II

How does the race of protesters affect how police respond to protest events? Drawing on the protest policing literature and on theories of race and ethnic relations, we explore the idea that police view African American protesters as especially threatening and that this threat leads to a greater probability of policing. We examine more than 15,000 protest events that took place in the United States between 1960 and 1990 and find that in many years, African American protest events are more likely than white protest events to draw police presence and that once at events, police are more likely to take action at African American protest events. Additional analyses complicate these findings by showing that they vary over time. In many years, for example, African American protest events are no more likely than white protest events to be policed. While there is support for a “Protesting While Black” phenomenon, it is not invariant across the entire period of inquiry.

American Sociological Review, February 2011: Volume 76, Issue 1

Journal of Criminal Justice 39(1)

How general is general strain theory?
Matt DeLisi

ADHD and criminality: A primer on the genetic, neurobiological, evolutionary, and treatment literature for criminologists
Catrina M. Schilling, Anthony Walsh, Ilhong Yun

Assessing the effectiveness of mental health courts: A quantitative review
Christine M. Sarteschi, Michael G. Vaughn, Kevin Kim

We used quantitative analysis to examine mental health court interventions. Eighteen published and unpublished studies were analyzed. Our findings suggest they are effective but this assertion is not definitive.

Physical health and crime among low-income urban women: An application of general strain theory
Ryan D. Schroeder, Terrence D. Hill, Stacy Hoskins Haynes, Christopher Bradley

Explores the relationship between physical health and criminal offending. Poorer physical health increases the odds of offending onset. The loss of physical health reduces the odds of decreased offending. Anxiety and depression partially mediate the impact of physical health on crime. Findings provide support for General Strain Theory. Policies that address crime must integrate public health approaches.

Correlates and consequences of pre-incarceration gang involvement among incarcerated youthful felons
Sean P. Varano, Beth M. Huebner, Timothy S. Bynum
The findings indicate that among youthful incarcerated felons, approximately two thirds report not being part of gangs at the point of incarceration.

Among the felons reporting gang involvement, half reported being involved in unorganized gangs and the remainder in organized gangs. Delinquent peers and delinquent values are significant predictors of pre-incarceration involvement in organized gangs. Pre-incarceration involvement in organized gangs is a significant predictor of serious prison misconduct net other risk factors; pre-incarceration involvement in unorganized gangs is not a significant predictor of serious prison misconduct.

Is stalking a learned phenomenon? An empirical test of social learning theory
Kathleen A. Fox, Matt R. Nobles, Ronald L. Akers

The current study is the first to examine social learning theory among stalking behavior. Results suggest that there are responses, attitudes, and behaviors that are learned, modified, or reinforced primarily through interaction with peers that predict stalking victimization and perpetration.

Understanding the relationship between violent victimization and gang membership
Charles M. Katz, Vincent J. Webb, Kate Fox, Jennifer N. Shaffer

Rival gangs in respondents’ neighborhood was associated with victimization. Current gang members were more likely to be a victim of a violent crime. After controlling for gang crime gang status was unrelated to victimization.

Developmental trajectories of nonsocial reinforcement and offending in adolescence and young adulthood: An exploratory study of an understudied part of social learning theory
George E. Higgins, Wesley G. Jennings, Catherine D. Marcum, Melissa L. Ricketts, Margaret Mahoney

Nonsocial reinforcement has three distinct groups. Nonsocial reinforcement and delinquency has a reciprocal effect. Nonsocial reinforcement complements Akers’s and Moffitt’s theories.

The effect of low self-control on perceived police legitimacy
Scott E. Wolfe

Level of self-control affects peoples’ perceptions of procedural justice and legitimacy. Procedural justice mediates the effect of self-control on perceptions of legitimacy. Self-control conditions the effect of procedural justice on perceived legitimacy. The process-based model of policing is affected by individuals’ levels of self-control.

The Severe 5%: A Latent Class Analysis of the Externalizing Behavior Spectrum in the United States
Michael G. Vaughn, Matt DeLisi, Tracy Gunter, Qiang Fu, Kevin M. Beaver, Brian E. Perron, Matthew O. Howard

Four-classes of respondents from a nationally representative study were identified. A severe (5% of sample) class was found. Results show that a small subset of individuals are extreme in their antisociality.

No change is a good change? Restrictive deterrence in illegal drug markets
Owen Gallupe, Martin Bouchard, Jonathan P. Caulkins

No prior research has assessed the effect of restrictive deterrence on survival time. Altering drug market behavior appears to place offenders at risk for rapid rearrest. Cannabis growers that change location and increase plant numbers survive longer. Subtle post-arrest behavioral changes seem to increase time to rearrest.

Toward a biosocial theory of offender rehabiltiation: Why does cognitive-behavioral therapy work?
Jamie Vaske, Kevan Galyean, Francis T. Cullen

CBT programs that promote prosocial skills may improve brain functioning. CBT programs for may improve functioning in PFC regions, ACC/PCC, insula, and the TPJ. Improvements in brain functioning may be both compensatory and normalizing.

Journal of Criminal Justice, January 2011; Volume 31, Issue 1

Theory and Society 40(1)

Associations, active citizenship, and the quality of democracy in Brazil and Mexico
Peter P. Houtzager & Arnab K. Acharya

Islamizing Egypt? Testing the limits of Gramscian counterhegemonic strategies
Hazem Kandil

The institutionalization of expertise in university licensing
Jason Owen-Smith

Relational dynamics in factional adoption of terrorist tactics: a comparative perspective
Eitan Y. Alimi

Theory and Society, January 2011: Volume 40, Issue 1

Criminology & Public Policy 10(1)

Editorial Introduction

Confronting crime with science
Thomas G. Blomberg

Executive Summary

Overview of "Imprisonment and crime: Can both be reduced?"
Steven N. Durlauf and Daniel S. Nagin

Research Article

Imprisonment and crime : Can both be reduced?
Steven N. Durlauf and Daniel S. Nagin

Policy Essays

Thoughts from Pennsylvania on “Imprisonment and crime: Can both be reduced?”
Mark H. Bergstrom

Reducing crime through prevention not incarceration
William J. Bratton

The challenges of implementing research-based policies
Marc Mauer

More police, less prison, less crime? From peel to popper : The case for more scientific policing
Peter W. Neyroud

Exploring certainty and severity : Perspectives from a federal perch
Laurie O. Robinson

Approaches to reducing both imprisonment and crime
Alfred Blumstein

Coproduction in deterring crime
Philip J. Cook

On the pitfalls of spurious prudence
Elliott Currie

Optimistic deterrence theorizing : The role of timeliness, court dysfunction, and community alienation
John S. Goldkamp

Extraordinary sentences and the proposed police surge
Marie Gottschalk

Less imprisonment is no doubt a good thing : More policing is not
Michael Tonry

Shifting crime and justice resources from prisons to police : Shifting police from people to places
David Weisburd

Comment on Durlauf and Nagin
James Q. Wilson

Uncertainty about reduced severity, concerns about increased certainty, and alternative paths to lower rates of crime and imprisonment
Eric P. Baumer

Laudable goals: Practical hurdles
Dick Thornburgh

Deterrence, Economics, and the Context of Drug Markets
Shawn D. Bushway and Peter Reuter

Afterword

Al Capone, the Sword of Damocles, and the Police–Corrections Budget Ratio : Afterword to the Special Issue
Lawrence W. Sherman

Criminology & Public Policy, February 2011: Volume 10, Issue 1

British Journal of Criminology 51(1)

Unemployment, Inequality, Poverty and Crime: Spatial Distribution Patterns of Criminal Acts in Belgium, 2001–06
Marc Hooghe, Bram Vanhoutte, Wim Hardyns, and Tuba Bircan

Previous research has indicated that various deprivation indicators have a positive impact on crime rates at the community level. In this article, we investigate the impact of deprivation indicators on crime in Belgian municipalities (n = 589) for the period 2001–06. A spatial regression analysis demonstrates that unemployment figures have a strong and significant impact on crime rates, and this effect is stronger than the effect of income levels. Income inequality has a significant positive impact on property crime rates but a negative impact on violent crime. Crime is heavily concentrated in the urban centres of Belgium, but we also observe some important regional variations. Demographic structure was not related to crime levels, while spatial analysis shows there is a spill-over effect to neighbouring communities for property crime, but not for violent crime. We close with some theoretical and policy considerations on the relation between unemployment and crime.

Youth Justice And Neuroscience: A Dual-Use Dilemma
Charlotte Walsh

Neuroscience is rapidly increasing comprehension of the human brain. This paper considers its prospective relevance to youth justice policy. In the United States, neuroscientific findings have been co-opted as a liberalizing tool. The parallel lure of these studies in the United Kingdom is foreseeable, given how they plausibly mesh with arguments in support of raising the age of criminal responsibility, along with bolstering policies of de-carceration and diversion. However, caution should be exercised: neuroscience can be used in ways that both contribute to human flourishing, along with potentially diminishing it. In science, this is a well recognized quandary, referred to as the dual-use dilemma. More problematically, neuroscience could be utilized to ‘prove’ poor parenting, to ‘predict’ future criminality.

Illusions Of Difference: Comparative Youth Justice in the Devolved United Kingdom
John Muncie

Surprisingly, there has been little or no systematic research to date that has explored the significance of UK devolution for youth justice policy and practice. This article explores the extent of differential justice in the United Kingdom, particularly as it is expressed in the myriad action plans, criminal justice reviews, frameworks for action, delivery plans and offending strategies that have surfaced since 1998. In particular, the article considers how far policy convergence and divergence are reflected through the discourses of risk, welfare, restoration and children's rights in the four administrations of England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. For comparative criminology, the United Kingdom offers a unique opportunity to explore how international and national pressures towards convergence and/or divergence can be challenged, rebranded, versioned, adapted or resisted at sub-national and local levels.

‘Doing Gender’ in Fear of Crime: The Impact of Gender Identity on Reported Levels of Fear of Crime in Adolescents and Young Adults
Diederik Cops and Stefaan Pleysier

Gender is seen as the most important factor related to different levels of fear of crime, with women consistently reporting higher levels of fear than men. Several explanations have been elaborated, which largely focus either on the irrationally high level of female fear or (from a feminist perspective) on the impact of differential socialization processes, with women being socialized as fearful subjects compared to ‘fearless’ men. However, both explanations imply a rather static interpretation of the gender–fear relation. In this paper, the ‘doing gender’ thesis (West and Zimmerman 1987) is adopted to develop a gender identity scale, using a broad range of attitudes and activities dominantly seen as masculine or feminine in a sample of Belgian adolescents and young adults. The extent to which this gender identity scale is able to explain differences in the level of fear of crime, and may therefore account for the gender gap, is discussed.

Feelings and Functions in the Fear of Crime: Applying a New Approach to Victimisation Insecurity
Emily Gray, Jonathan Jackson, and Stephen Farrall

This paper presents a new definition of fear of crime that integrates two conceptual developments in this enduring field of criminological enquiry. Our measurement strategy differentiates first between specific worries and diffuse anxieties in emotional responses to crime, and second between productive and counterproductive effects on subjective well-being and precautionary activities. Drawing on data from a representative survey of seven London neighbourhoods, these distinctions are combined into an ordinal scale that moves from the ‘unworried’, to low-level motivating emotions, to frequent and dysfunctional worry about crime. We demonstrate that different categories of ‘fear’ have different correlates and explain different levels of variation in public confidence in policing. We conclude with a call for more longitudinal research to uncover the dynamic nature of fear of crime over the life course.

Emotions and Interaction Ritual: A Micro Analysis of Restorative Justice
Meredith Rossner

Restorative justice has long been touted as an effective and popular alternative to mainstream justice. While most research on the subject measures outcomes and satisfaction after the event, this study uses a video recording of a restorative justice conference to analyse at the micro level the emotional and interactional dynamics at work in transforming an initial situation of anger and anxiety into one marked by displays of solidarity between victim and offender. It develops Collins’ theory of interaction ritual chains to code the gradual emergence of a successful interaction by analysis of facial expressions, verbal cues, gestures and interactional dynamics.

The Construction and Interpretation of Risk Management Technologies in Contemporary Probation Practice
Karen Bullock

This paper examines the governance of risk in probation practice in England and Wales. It is concerned with the construction of risk assessments and the subsequent management of those offenders determined to be ‘risky’. It is concerned especially with how notions of rehabilitation, regulation and punishment interact in contemporary risk management practice. The paper comprises, first, an examination of evidence regarding the nature and operation of risk management in probation practice. Second, it describes the findings of an empirical examination of the operation of contemporary practices. Lastly, it discusses implications for how risk management practice is understood.

Why do the Crime-reducing Effects of Marriage Vary with Age?
Delphine Theobald and David P. Farrington

The Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development is a prospective longitudinal survey of 411 South London males from age 8 to age 48. In this survey, it was previously found that men who marry relatively early reduce their offending behaviour after marriage, unlike those who marry relatively late. Further analyses confirmed that the original findings were not caused by regression to the mean. Comparisons between those who married at age 25 or older and those who married at age 18–24 on risk factors at age 8–32 suggest that the later-married men tended to be more nervous, more likely to have experienced a broken home, to be drug users and binge-drinkers, to maintain aggressive attitudes from age 18 to 32, and to continue to go out with their male friends after marriage. The later-married men tended to marry older women who had less influence than younger women on their offending behaviour. They were more likely to be long-term low-rate offenders than those who married early.

Workplace Assaults in Britain: Understanding the Influence of Individual and Workplace Characteristics
Trevor Jones, Amanda Robinson, Ralph Fevre, and Duncan Lewis

Studies based on British Crime Survey (BCS) data suggest that the overall incidence of workplace assault is relatively low. However, these data have a number of limitations. They include only assaults carried out by clients or the public, provide limited information about the individuals involved and their workplaces, and tell us little about perceived causes of violence at work. The 2008 Workplace Behaviour Survey (WBS) presents a more detailed picture than has hitherto been available about the extent and nature of interpersonal assaults at work. This paper discusses in detail the WBS findings regarding the prevalence, frequency and patterns of workplace assaults in Britain.

Convergence, Not Divergence?: Trends and Trajectories in Public Contact and Confidence in the Police
Ben Bradford

Public trust and confidence are vital to the police function. There has been much comment and debate about the apparent decline in confidence in the British police since the 1950s, most frequently evidenced by data from the British Crime Survey (BCS). Yet, there has been relatively little in-depth interrogation of the data at the heart of the discussion. Pooling data from 11 sweeps of the BCS (1984 to 2005/06), this paper shows a homogenization over time in trends in trust and confidence and experiences of encounters with the police. This pattern is found across both age and ethnicity, and can also be identified in other variables. The story that emerges therefore differs from analyses that emphasize the increasingly diffuse and variable nature of public experiences of the police.

‘Like Some Rough Beast Slouching Towards Bethlehem to be Born’: A Historical Perspective on the Institution of the Prison in South Africa, 1976–2004
Gail Super

This paper looks at official discourse on imprisonment under the apartheid and post-apartheid governments, comparing the ways that both regimes have justified the existence of the prison in South Africa. The period covered is from 1976 to 2004. The author shows how the ANC government has attempted to reinvent the prison as a means of establishing order in post-apartheid South Africa and that the demise of apartheid and advent of democracy have been accompanied by an exponential increase in long-term imprisonment. The paper tracks how the process of reform embarked on by the Nationalist Party Government from the late 1970s impacted upon prison practices. In the ‘new’ South Africa, a neo-liberal penality coexists with older disciplinary and sovereign strategies of penal governance in an unstable, contingent and erratic way. The old is very much part of the new.

British Journal of Criminology, January 2011: Volume 51, Issue 1

Journal of Marriage and Family 73(1)

Minisymposium on Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers

If Momma Ain't Happy: Explaining Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers
Jeffrey Dew and W. Bradford Wilcox

Declines in Marital Satisfaction Among New Mothers: Broad Strokes Versus Fine Details
Mari L. Clements, Sarah E. Martin, Amanda K. Cassil and Niveen N. Soliman

Social and Cultural Resources for and Constraints on New Mothers' Marriages
Melissa A. Milkie

The Transition to Parenthood and the Reasons “Momma Ain't Happy”
Maureen Perry-Jenkins and Amy Claxton

Motherhood and Marriage: A Response
W. Bradford Wilcox and Jeffrey Dew


Low-Income Families

Do Children's Behavior Problems Limit Poor Women's Labor Market Success?
Rebekah Levine Coley, David Ribar and Elizabeth Votruba-Drzal

Cohabitation and Children's Externalizing Behavior in Low-Income Latino Families
Paula Fomby and Angela Estacion

Associations of Low-Income Working Mothers' Daily Interactions With Supervisors and Mother-Child Interactions
Anna Gassman-Pines


Middle and Later Life Families

Help to Family and Friends: Are There Gender Differences at Older Ages?
Joan R. Kahn, Brittany S. McGill and Suzanne M. Bianchi

Intergenerational Exchange Between Parents and Migrant and Nonmigrant Sons in Rural China
Zhen Cong and Merril Silverstein

Short-Term Reciprocity in Late Parent-Child Relationships
Thomas Leopold and Marcel Raab

Coresidence With Elderly Parents: A Comparative Study of Southeast China and Taiwan
C. Y. Cyrus Chu, Yu Xie and Ruoh Rong Yu

Intergenerational Coresidence and Family Transitions in the United States, 1850–1880
Steven Ruggles


Children's Health and Well-Being

Chronic and Proximate Depression Among Mothers: Implications for Child Well-Being
Kristin Turney

Parental Depression and Child Outcomes: The Mediating Effects of Abuse and Neglect
Sarah A. Mustillo, Shannon Dorsey, Kate Conover and Barbara J. Burns

The Child Health Disadvantage of Parental Cohabitation
Kammi K. Schmeer

The Consequences of Parental Underestimation and Overestimation of Youth Exposure to Violence
Gregory M. Zimmerman and Greg Pogarsky

Mothers, Fathers, Peers, and Mexican-Origin Adolescents' Sexual Intentions
Sarah E. Killoren, Kimberly A. Updegraff, F. Scott Christopher and Adriana J. Umaña-Taylor

Observed Infant Reactions During Live Interparental Conflict
Tina D. Du Rocher Schudlich, Clare R. White, Emily A. Fleischhauer and Kelly A. Fitzgerald

Time Does Not Heal All Wounds: Mortality Following the Death of a Parent
Mikael Rostila and Jan M. Saarela


Of General Interest

Wives' Relative Wages, Husbands' Paid Work Hours, and Wives' Labor-Force Exit
Emily Fitzgibbons Shafer

Mothers but Not Wives: The Increasing Lag Between Nonmarital Births and Marriage
Christina Gibson-Davis

Life-Course Pathways and the Psychosocial Adjustment of Young Adult Women
Paul R. Amato and Jennifer B. Kane

Coparenting and Father Involvement in Married and Unmarried Coresident Couples
Bryndl Hohmann-Marriott


Journal of Marriage and Family, February 2011: Volume 73, Issue 1

Justice Quarterly 28(1)

Presidential Address: The Future of Justice Studies
Ronald D. Hunter

Former Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences President Ronald D. Hunter discusses the efforts of previous ACJS Presidents in advancing the discipline of criminal justice/criminology. He reviews their efforts in the ongoing development of criminology/criminal justice/justice studies as a separate discipline. Hunter argues that justice studies have come of age and are too large and too influential to be ignored. He concludes with recommendations regarding the nature of criminology/criminal justice as a discipline.

Rethinking the Interface between Mental Illness, Criminal Justice and Academia
William Wesley Johnson

Punishment and treatment don't occur within a vacuum. Responses in the justice system affect the mental health system, hospitals, clinics, and the welfare system. These systems are inextricably bound to each other. This paper, drawn from the 2009 Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences (ACJS) Presidential Address, discusses issues regarding the criminalization of mental illness, fiscal crises, and three deinstitutionalization movements. Particular attention is given to the role of academia in reshaping the criminal justice system during the current fiscal crisis.

The Election of Barack Obama and Perceptions of Criminal Injustice
James D. Unnever; Shaun L. Gabbidon; George E. Higgins

Informed by a more nuanced racial threat theory, the current study investigates the relationship between the attitudes that African Americans and whites have about the election of Barack Obama as President of the USA and whether they perceive that the police and the criminal justice system are biased against blacks. We test four hypotheses using the 2008 Gallup Minority Rights and Relations/Black-White Social Audit Poll. We first hypothesize that whites and African Americans should substantially differ in their opinions about whether the police and the criminal justice system are biased against blacks. Second, we posit that African Americans and whites should express substantially different opinions regarding the impact of Obama's election on race relations. Third, we hypothesize that the relationship between perceptions of criminal justice injustices and attitudes toward Obama's election should differ among whites. We theorize that there should be a group of whites—committed racists—who deny that the criminal justice system is biased against African Americans and believe that the election of Barack Obama will worsen race relations. Fourth, we posit that African Americans should nearly unvaryingly believe that the criminal justice system is racist. And, we hypothesize that African American opinions about Barack Obama should have a negligible impact on their perceptions of whether the criminal justice system is racist. The results support these four hypotheses.

Gender, Identity, and Accounts: How White Collar Offenders Do Gender When Making Sense of Their Crimes
Paul M. Klenowski; Heith Copes; Christopher W. Mullins

When offenders are asked to explain their crimes, they typically portray themselves as decent people despite their wrongdoings. To be effective at managing the stigma of crime, motivational accounts must be believable to the social audience. Thus, variation in patterns of accounts is likely due to the social position of the actors. Here we examine whether gender constrains the way individuals describe their crimes by analyzing the motivational accounts of male and female white collar offenders. Results show that while men and women both elicit justifications when discussing their crimes, they do differ in the frequency with which they call forth specific accounts and in the rhetorical nature of these accounts. When accounting for their crime, white collar offenders draw on gendered themes to align their actions with cultural expectations of masculinity and femininity. These findings suggest that gender does constrain the accounts that are available to white collar offenders.

Considering the Effectiveness of Drug Treatment behind Bars: Findings from the South Carolina RSAT Evaluation
J. Mitchell Miller; Holly Ventura Miller

Through funding from the national Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program, the South Carolina Department of Corrections implemented the Correctional Recovery Academy in the Turbeville Medium Security Institution to treat drug-dependent offenders. The program features a cognitive-behavioral change modality delivered in a modified therapeutic community to first time, non-violent, drug-dependent, youthful male offenders. A quasi-experimental design was employed to specify impact as indicated by recidivism, relapse, and parole revocation. While analyses revealed no statistically significant difference between treatment and control group participants on these outcome measures, implications regarding the efficacy of the treatment modality are ambiguous as implementation failure masked determination of program effects. Drug testing frequency after release, however, was found to be a significant factor precluding failure, contrary to the conventional view that increased testing identifies greater use.

Talking Heads: Crime Reporting on Cable News
Natasha A. Frost; Nickie D. Phillips

In this study, we examine the extent to which criminologists and other academics participate in newsmaking criminology as guests on cable news shows. Building on earlier examinations of print media, we explore the ways in which crime is portrayed on popular cable television news programs (airing on CNN, FOX, MSNBC). Specifically, we examine 180 segments devoted to crime on cable news that aired from June to August 2006, with an emphasis on the role of the 347 guests appearing in those segments and their perspectives on crime causation and crime control. We find that criminologists and other academic experts infrequently appear on these programs, and that guests—regardless of type—only rarely address crime causation or crime control when appearing.

Confessing their Crime: Factors Influencing the Offender’s Decision to Confess to the Police
Nadine Deslauriers-Varin; Patrick Lussier; Michel St-Yves

Confessions are crucial to successful police investigations but scholars have significantly overlooked factors that contribute to an offender's decision to confess a crime. This study aims to examine a large array of factors that play a role in the offender's decision to confess a crime to the police and potential interaction effect among them. A total of 221 adult males incarcerated in a federal Canadian penitentiary were recruited. Correctional files, police reports, and offenders' self-reported data were collected and analyzed. Controlling for sociodemographic, criminological, and contextual factors, a series of logistic regression analyses were conducted. Findings highlighted the predominant role of police evidence over and above other factors analyzed. Furthermore, sociodemographic and criminological factors played a more important role in the offender's decision to confess when police evidence was weak. Findings are discussed in light of the current scientific literature on the determinants of offenders' decision to confess their crime.

Examining the Sources of Variation in Risk for Recidivism
Beth M. Huebner; Mark T. Berg

This research explores the correlates of desistance and recidivism among a modern cohort of men released from prison. Using eight years of follow-up data, we estimate a series of multivariate models to differentiate offenders who recidivate in the short term from men who failed after an extended period or who do not return to criminal behavior at all. Consistent with research of this type, the odds of recidivism increased sharply after release and leveled off over time. In addition, younger men with more extensive criminal histories were the least likely to desist and failed early in the release period. The results also reveal heterogeneity in patterns of recidivism over the short and long term, and highlight the importance of post-release context in understanding prisoner reentry.

Policies and Imprisonment: The Impact of Structured Sentencing and Determinate Sentencing on State Incarceration Rates, 1978–2004
Don Stemen; Andres F. Rengifo

Through funding from the national Residential Substance Abuse Treatment Program, the South Carolina Department of Corrections implemented the Correctional Recovery Academy in the Turbeville Medium Security Institution to treat drug-dependent offenders. The program features a cognitive-behavioral change modality delivered in a modified therapeutic community to first time, non-violent, drug-dependent, youthful male offenders. A quasi-experimental design was employed to specify impact as indicated by recidivism, relapse, and parole revocation. While analyses revealed no statistically significant difference between treatment and control group participants on these outcome measures, implications regarding the efficacy of the treatment modality are ambiguous as implementation failure masked determination of program effects. Drug testing frequency after release, however, was found to be a significant factor precluding failure, contrary to the conventional view that increased testing identifies greater use.

Justice Quarterly, February 2011: Volume 28, Issue 1

Justice Quarterly 27(6)

The Empirical Status of Social Learning Theory: A Meta-Analysis
Authors: Travis C. Pratt; Francis T. Cullen; Christine S. Sellers; L. Thomas Winfree Jr.; Tamara D. Madensen; Leah E. Daigle; Noelle E. Fearn; Jacinta M. Gau

Social learning theory has remained one of the core criminological paradigms over the last four decades. Although a large body of scholarship has emerged testing various propositions specified by the theory, the empirical status of the theory in its entirety is still unknown. Accordingly, in the present study, we subject this body of empirical literature to a meta-analysis to assess its empirical status. Results reveal considerable variation in the magnitude and stability of effect sizes for variables specified by social learning theory across different methodological specifications. In particular, relationships of crime/deviance to measures of differential association and definitions (or antisocial attitudes) are quite strong, yet those for differential reinforcement and modeling/imitation are modest at best. Furthermore, effect sizes for differential association, definitions, and differential reinforcement all differed significantly according to variations in model specification and research designs across studies. The implications for the continued vitality of social learning in criminology are discussed.

On the Malleability of Self-Control: Theoretical and Policy Implications Regarding a General Theory of Crime
Authors: Alex R. Piquero; Wesley G. Jennings; David P. Farrington

Gottfredson and Hirschi's general theory of crime has generated significant controversy and research, such that there now exists a large knowledge base regarding the importance of self-control in regulating antisocial behavior over the life-course. Reviews of this literature indicate that self-control is an important correlate of antisocial activity. Some research has evaluated programmatic efforts designed to examine the extent to which self-control is malleable, but little empirical research on this issue has been carried out within criminology, largely because the theorists have not paid much attention to policy proscriptions. This study evaluates the extant research on the effectiveness of programs designed to improve self-control up to age 10 among children and adolescents, and assesses the effects of these programs on self-control and delinquency/crime. Meta-analytic results indicate that (1) self-control programs improve a child/adolescent's self-control, (2) these interventions also reduce delinquency, and (3) the positive effects generally hold across a number of different moderator variables and groupings as well as by outcome source (parent-, teacher-, direct observer-, self-, and clinical report). Theoretical and policy implications are also discussed.

Where the Margins Meet: A Demographic Assessment of Transgender Inmates in Men's Prisons
Authors: Lori Sexton; Valerie Jenness; Jennifer Macy Sumner

Drawing on official data and original interview data on 315 transgender inmates in California prisons for men, this research provides the first empirical portrayal of a prison population in California that is unique by virtue of being both transgender and incarcerated. Situated at the nexus of intersecting marginalities, transgender inmates fare far worse on standard demographic and health measures than their non-transgender counterparts in the US population, the California population, the US prison population, and the California prison population. With the possible exceptions of partnership status and educational attainment, these factors combine to reveal that transgender inmates are marginalized in heretofore undocumented ways. At a time in which an evidence-based approach to corrections is increasingly embraced by corrections officials in the US, this article provides the first systematic profile of transgender prisoners. It reveals they can be regarded as a special population that, from a policy point of view, raises what Minow calls “the dilemma of difference”.

Racial and Ethnic Heterogeneity, Economic Disadvantage, and Gangs: A Macro-Level Study of Gang Membership in Urban America Pages 867 - 892
Authors: David C. Pyrooz; Andrew M. Fox; Scott H. Decker

There is a lack of macro-level gang research. The present study addresses this shortcoming by providing a theoretically informed analysis of gang membership in large US cities. More specifically, our goal is to determine whether racial and ethnic heterogeneity conditions the relationship between economic disadvantage and gang membership. Three separate sources of data are used in this study: U.S. Census 2000, Law Enforcement Management and Administrative Services 2000, and National Youth Gang Survey 2002-2006. A series of weighted least-squares regression models are estimated, finding that both economic disadvantage and racial and ethnic heterogeneity exhibit independent and additive effects on gang membership. In addition, the results show that racial and ethnic heterogeneity has a conditioning relationship with economic disadvantage. Furthermore, our expanded operationalization of the Blau heterogeneity measure indicates that prior research may have underestimated the effects of heterogeneity. The authors discuss these findings in the context of existing gang research and offer directions for future research.

Community In-Reach Through Jail Reentry: Findings from a Quasi-Experimental Design
Authors: Holly Ventura Miller; J. Mitchell Miller

Offenders face a number of significant challenges upon reentry into the community, including securing employment, locating housing, and accessing adequate substance abuse and mental health treatment. These and related issues, if neglected, only bolster rising recidivism rates which have prompted renewed interest in rehabilitation initiatives such as inmate reentry. Many jurisdictions have implemented programs designed to improve offenders' success after prison, but jail reentry programs are far less common. This study examined the effectiveness of one such program, the Auglaize County (OH) Transition (ACT) Program. Using a quasiexperimental design, recidivism was measured a year after release to determine if participation in the ACT Program was predictive of successful reentry. Findings suggest that program participation is strongly related to outcome success as was criminal history. Implications for correctional policy and suggestions for additional jail reentry research are considered.

Justice Quarterly, December 2010: Volume 27, Issue 6

Social Psychology Quarterly 73(4)

Pairings
Dona Schwartz
  
Bridging Social Psychologies [each 1-5 pp.]

Bridging Social Psychologies: An Introduction
Alice Eagly and Gary Alan Fine

Bridging Identities
Kay Deaux and Peter Burke

Bridging Identities through Identity Change
Allison M. Cantwell and Sarah E. Martiny

Transcending Cognitive Individualism
Eviatar Zerubavel and Eliot R. Smith

Subcultural Influences on Person Perception
Asia Friedman and Ashley S. Waggoner

The Social Psychologies of Emotion: A Bridge That Is Not Too Far
Lynn Smith-Lovin and Piotr Winkielman

Bridging Emotion Research: From Biology to Social Structure
Kimberly B. Rogers and Liam Kavanagh

Gender: An Interdisciplinary Perspective
Wendy Wood and Cecilia L. Ridgeway

The Future of the Gender System: An Interventionist Approach
Sarah K. Harkness and Deborah L. Hall

Bridging Inequality from Both Sides Now
Susan T. Fiske and Linda D. Molm

The Future in Inequality
David Melamed and Michael S. North

Culture and Social Psychology: Converging Perspectives
Paul Dimaggio and Hazel Rose Markus

Using Culture to Explain Behavior: An Integrative Cultural Approach
Hana R. Shepherd and Nicole M. Stephens


Articles

Equity, Emotion, and Household Division of Labor Response
Kathryn J. Lively, Lala Carr Steelman, and Brian Powell

Passing as Black: Racial Identity Work among Biracial Americans
Nikki Khanna and Cathryn Johnson

Intergroup Contact and Ingroup Reappraisal: Examining the Deprovincialization Thesis
Maykel Verkuyten, Jochem Thijs, and Hidde Bekhuis

How Does Prayer Help Manage Emotions?
Shane Sharp


Social Psychology Quarterly, December 2010: Volume 73, Issue 4

American Sociological Review 75(6)

 The Temporal Structure of Scientific Consensus Formation
Uri Shwed and Peter S. Bearman

This article engages with problems that are usually opaque: What trajectories do scientific debates assume, when does a scientific community consider a proposition to be a fact, and how can we know that? We develop a strategy for evaluating the state of scientific contestation on issues. The analysis builds from Latour’s black box imagery, which we observe in scientific citation networks. We show that as consensus forms, the importance of internal divisions to the overall network structure declines. We consider substantive cases that are now considered facts, such as the carcinogenicity of smoking and the non-carcinogenicity of coffee. We then employ the same analysis to currently contested cases: the suspected carcinogenicity of cellular phones, and the relationship between vaccines and autism. Extracting meaning from the internal structure of scientific knowledge carves a niche for renewed sociological commentary on science, revealing a typology of trajectories that scientific propositions may experience en route to consensus.

Making the News: Movement Organizations, Media Attention, and the Public Agenda
Kenneth T. Andrews and Neal Caren

Increasingly, scholars have come to see the news media as playing a pivotal role in shaping whether social movements are able to bring about broader social change. By drawing attention to movements’ issues, claims, and supporters, the news media can shape the public agenda by influencing public opinion, authorities, and elites. Why are some social movement organizations more successful than others at gaining media coverage? Specifically, what organizational, tactical, and issue characteristics enhance media attention? We combine detailed organizational survey data from a representative sample of 187 local environmental organizations in North Carolina with complete news coverage of those organizations in 11 major daily newspapers in the two years following the survey (2,095 articles). Our analyses reveal that local news media favor professional and formalized groups that employ routine advocacy tactics, mobilize large numbers of people, and work on issues that overlap with newspapers’ focus on local economic growth and well-being. Groups that are confrontational, volunteer-led, or advocate on behalf of novel issues do not garner as much attention in local media outlets. These findings have important implications and challenge widely held claims about the pathways by which movement actors shape the public agenda through the news media.

Worldwide Trends in the Criminal Regulation of Sex, 1945 to 2005
David John Frank, Bayliss J. Camp, and Steven A. Boutcher

Between 1945 and 2005, nation-states around the world revised their criminal laws on sexual activities. This global reform wave—across countries and domains of sexual activity—followed from the reconstitution of world models of society around individuals rather than corporate bodies. During the post-World War II period, this process rearranged the global cultural and organizational underpinnings of sex, eroding world-level support for criminal laws aimed at protecting collective entities—especially the family and the nation—and strengthening world support for laws aimed at protecting individualized persons. To make our case, we use unique cross-national and longitudinal data on the criminal regulation of rape, adultery, sodomy, and child sexual abuse. The data reveal striking counter-directional trends in sex-law reforms, which simultaneously elaborated regulations protecting individuals and dissolved laws protecting collective entities. World-level negative-binomial regression analyses and country-level event-history analyses confirm our main propositions. The findings demonstrate a sweeping revolution in criminal-sex laws, rooted in the intensified global celebration of free-standing personhood.

Cultural Foundations of Tokenism: Evidence from the Leveraged Buyout Industry
Catherine J. Turco

Existing explanations of tokenism predict similar experiences for all numerically small, low-status groups. These explanations, however, cannot account for variation in the experiences of different low-status minority groups within the same setting. This article develops a theory of tokenism that explains such variation. Drawing on 117 interviews in the leveraged buyout industry (LBO) and a comparison of the differing experiences of female and African American male tokens in that setting, I argue that tokenism is contingent on the local cultural context in which it is embedded. Specifically, I identify two elements of an occupation’s culture—its hierarchy of cultural resources and its image of the ideal worker—that can specify some status characteristics as more relevant to and incompatible with the occupation’s work than others. In LBO, the industry values cultural resources that, on average, women lack but men possess, and the ideal worker is defined such that it directly conflicts with cultural beliefs about motherhood. Consequently, in this context, gender is a more relevant status characteristic for exclusion than is race, and female tokens are differentially disadvantaged. In addition to revising received wisdom about tokenism, this study integrates and advances social psychological and cultural theories of exclusion by deepening our understanding of the role of cultural resources and schemas in occupational inequality.

Religion, Social Networks, and Life Satisfaction
Chaeyoon Lim and Robert D. Putnam

Although the positive association between religiosity and life satisfaction is well documented, much theoretical and empirical controversy surrounds the question of how religion actually shapes life satisfaction. Using a new panel dataset, this study offers strong evidence for social and participatory mechanisms shaping religion’s impact on life satisfaction. Our findings suggest that religious people are more satisfied with their lives because they regularly attend religious services and build social networks in their congregations. The effect of within-congregation friendship is contingent, however, on the presence of a strong religious identity. We find little evidence that other private or subjective aspects of religiosity affect life satisfaction independent of attendance and congregational friendship.

Have Asian American Men Achieved Labor Market Parity with White Men?
ChangHwan Kim and Arthur Sakamoto

We use the 2003 National Survey of College Graduates to investigate earnings differentials between white and Asian American men. We extend prior literature by disaggregating Asian Americans by their immigration status in relation to the U.S. educational system, and by accounting for the effects of field of study and college type. Net of the latter variables and other demographic controls, native-born Asian American men have 8 percent lower earnings than do measurably comparable white men. Our findings show that Asian American men who were schooled entirely overseas have substantial earnings disadvantages, while Asian American men who obtained their highest degree in the United States but completed high school overseas have an intermediate earnings disadvantage. Net of the control variables, including region of residence, only 1.5-generation Asian American men appear to have reached full parity with whites. Most Asian American men lag at least slightly behind white men in terms of full equality in the labor market net of the measured covariates in our statistical models. No one theoretical approach seems able to explain our findings; instead, we suggest the relevance of several perspectives, including the racialized hierarchy view, the demographic heterogeneity approach, and assimilation theory.

Neighborhood Context and the Gender Gap in Adolescent Violent Crime
Gregory M. Zimmerman and Steven F. Messner

Research consistently demonstrates that females engage in less criminal behavior than males across the life course, but research on the variability of the gender gap across contexts is sparse. To address this issue, we examine the gender gap in self-reported violent crime among adolescents across neighborhoods. Multilevel models using data from the Project of Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) indicate that the gender gap in violent crime decreases as levels of neighborhood disadvantage increase. Furthermore, the narrowing of the gender gap is explained by gender differences in peer influence on violent offending. Neighborhood disadvantage increases exposure to peer violence for both sexes, but peer violence has a stronger impact on violent offending for females than for males; this produces the reduction in the gender gap at higher levels of disadvantage. We also find that the gender difference in the relationship between peer violence and offending is explained, in part, by (1) the tendency for females to have more intimate friendships than do males and (2) the moderating effect of peer intimacy on the relationship between peer violence and self-reported violent behavior.

American Sociological Review, December 2010: Volume 75, Issue 6

American Journal of Sociology 116(2)

The Oncomouse That Roared: Hybrid Exchange Strategies as a Source of Distinction at the Boundary of Overlapping Institutions
Fiona Murray

Conventional wisdom suggests that when institutional logics overlap, the production of hybrids signifies collapse, blending, or easy coexistence. The author provides an alternative interpretation: hybrids can maintain a distinctive boundary and can emerge from contestation, not coexistence. This alternative interpretation is grounded in an analysis of a critical moment at the academic-commercial boundary: the enforcement of patents to a key technology on academic geneticists. In their reaction to commercial encroachment, skilled actors (scientists) took the resources of the commercial logic and transformed their meaning to establish hybrid strategies that preserved the distinctive institutions. Thus, hybrids must be reconsidered as emerging from conflict and produced through boundary work to maintain the distinction and resilience of logics.

Industry Induces Academic Science to Know Less about More
James A. Evans

How does collaboration between academic research and industry shape science? This article argues that companies' relative indifference to theory nudges their academic partners toward novel, theoretically unanticipated experiments. The article then evaluates this proposition using fieldwork, archival materials, and panel models of all academic research using the popular plant model Arabidopsis thaliana and the companies that support that research. Findings suggest that industry partnerships draw high-status academics away from confirming theories and toward speculation. For the network of scientific ideas surrounding Arabidopsis, industry sponsorship weaves discoveries around the periphery into looser, more expansive knowledge. Government funding plays a complementary role, sponsoring focused scientific activity in dense hubs that facilitate scientific community and understanding.

Three Worlds of Relief: Race, Immigration, and Public and Private Social Welfare Spending in American Cities, 1929
Cybelle Fox

Using a data set of public and private relief spending for 295 cities, this article examines the racial and ethnic patterning of social welfare provision in the United States in 1929. On the eve of the Depression, cities with more blacks or Mexicans spent the least on social assistance and relied more heavily on private money to fund their programs. Cities with more European immigrants spent the most on relief and relied more heavily on public funding. Distinct political systems, labor market relations, and racial ideologies about each group’s proclivity to use relief best explain relief spending differences across cities.

A Multilevel Systemic Model of Community Attachment: Assessing the Relative Importance of the Community and Individual Levels
Jeremy Flaherty and Ralph B. Brown

To what extent does community context affect individuals’ social ties and levels of community attachment? The authors replicate Sampson’s multilevel version of Kasarda and Janowitz’s systemic model of community using data from a survey of nearly 10,000 people residing in 99 small Iowa communities. They improve on Sampson’s work by using multilevel statistical tools, better measurement of community attachment, and data from 99 actual communities. While the authors find general support for the systemic model, their results suggest that the community one lives in actually has little effect on one’s level of community attachment, calling into question many of the basic assumptions and findings of past community research.

Settling Down and Aging Out: Toward an Interactionist Theory of Desistance and the Transition to Adulthood
Michael Massoglia and Christopher Uggen

Conceptions of adulthood have changed dramatically in recent decades. Despite such changes, however, the notion that young people will eventually “settle down” and desist from delinquent behaviors is remarkably persistent. This article unites criminology with classic work on age norms and role behavior to contend that people who persist in delinquency will be less likely to make timely adult transitions. The empirical analysis supports this proposition, with both arrest and self-reported crime blocking the passage to adult status. The authors conclude that desisting from delinquency is an important part of the package of role behaviors that define adulthood.

Beyond and Below Racial Homophily: ERG Models of a Friendship Network Documented on Facebook
Andreas Wimmer and Kevin Lewis

A notable feature of U.S. social networks is their high degree of racial homogeneity, which is often attributed to racial homophily—the preference for associating with individuals of the same racial background. The authors unpack racial homogeneity using a theoretical framework that distinguishes between various tie formation mechanisms and their effects on the racial composition of networks, exponential random graph modeling that can disentangle these mechanisms empirically, and a rich new data set based on the Facebook pages of a cohort of college students. They first show that racial homogeneity results not only from racial homophily proper but also from homophily among coethnics of the same racial background and from balancing mechanisms such as the tendency to reciprocate friendships or to befriend the friends of friends, which both amplify the homogeneity effects of homophily. Then, they put the importance of racial homophily further into perspective by comparing its effects to those of other mechanisms of tie formation. Balancing, propinquity based on coresidence, and homophily regarding nonracial categories (e.g., students from “elite” backgrounds or those from particular states) all influence the tie formation process more than does racial homophily.

Commentary and Debate


Vox Regni? Underestimating the Role of the State in Radio Licensing Decisions: A Comment on Greve, Pozner, and Rao
Peter Hart-Brinson

Vox Veritatis: Reply to Hart-Brinson
Henrich Greve, Jo-Ellen Pozner, and Hayagreeva Rao


American Journal of Sociology, September 2010: Volume 116, Issue 2