American Sociological Review 76(3)

Laws of Attraction: Regulatory Arbitrage in the Face of Activism in Right-to-Work States
Hayagreeva Rao, Lori Qingyuan Yue, and Paul Ingram

Past research recognizes that firms exploit regulatory variations to their advantage but depicts such regulatory arbitrage as a dyadic process between firms and regulators. We extend this account by including a firm’s non-market rivals and suggest that firms view regulatory differences as part of a corporate political opportunity structure and exploit regulatory variations to disadvantage their rivals. Empirically, we focus on variations in right-to-work (RTW) laws that signal the pro-business climate in a state; these laws exist in 22 U.S. states. Using a spatial-regression discontinuity design, we analyze how Walmart locates new stores in the face of anti-Walmart activists and exploits regulatory discontinuities on the borders between RTW and non-RTW states. We find that Walmart is more likely to propose new stores, and to open those stores even if they are protested, at the borders of RTW states, compared with the borders of neighboring non-RTW states. We conclude with a discussion of implications for the study of regulation, social movements, and organizations.

You Can’t Always Get What You Need: Organizational Determinants of Diversity Programs
Frank Dobbin, Soohan Kim, and Alexandra Kalev

While some U.S. corporations have adopted a host of diversity management programs, many have done little or nothing. We explore the forces promoting six diversity programs in a national sample of 816 firms over 23 years. Institutional theory suggests that external pressure for innovation reinforces internal advocacy. We argue that external pressure and internal advocacy serve as alternatives, such that when external pressure is already high, increases in internal advocacy will not alter the likelihood of program adoption. Moreover, institutional theory points to functional need as a driver of innovation. We argue that in the case of innovations designed to achieve new societal goals, functional need, as defined in this case by the absence of workforce diversity or the presence of regulatory oversight, is less important than corporate culture. Our findings help explain the spotty coverage of diversity programs. Firms that lack workforce diversity are no more likely than others to adopt programs, but firms with large contingents of women managers are more likely to do so. Pro-diversity industry and corporate cultures promote diversity programs. The findings carry implications for public policy.

Targeting Lynch Victims: Social Marginality or Status Transgressions?
Amy Kate Bailey, Stewart E. Tolnay, E. M. Beck, and Jennifer D. Laird

This article presents the first evidence based on a newly-compiled database of known lynch victims. Using information from the original census enumerators’ manuscripts, we identify individual- and household-level characteristics of more than 900 black males lynched in 10 southern states between 1882 and 1929. First, we use the information for successfully linked cases to present a profile of individual- and household-level characteristics of a large sample of lynch victims. Second, we compare these characteristics with a randomly-generated sample of black men living in the counties where lynchings occurred. We use our findings from this comparative analysis to assess the empirical support for alternative theoretical perspectives on the selection of individuals as victims of southern mob violence. Third, we consider whether the individual-level risk factors for being targeted as a lynch victim varied substantially over time or across space. Our results demonstrate that victims were generally less embedded within the social and economic fabric of their communities than were other black men. This suggests that social marginality increased the likelihood of being targeted for lynching. These findings are generally consistent across decades and within different sociodemographic contexts.

Money, Moral Authority, and the Politics of Creditworthiness
Simone Polillo

This article moves beyond current controversies on the nature of money by suggesting that a general social process allows different kinds of organizations and networks—from states to banks to local communities—to produce currencies: that is, the articulation of criteria of creditworthiness, or what I call the exercise of moral authority. Bankers specialize in moral authority, but when that authority is contested, challenging groups must articulate alternative criteria of creditworthiness for their currencies to become stable and acceptable. I illustrate these processes with historical material from the postbellum United States, which I use to discuss why the federal government failed to create a stable financial system, and why local bankers engaged in a process of financial innovation that further destabilized money. I conclude with reflections on the shifting structural sources of moral authority, which have made the local level a springboard for destabilizing financial innovations.

Nonmarital Childbearing, Union History, and Women’s Health at Midlife
Kristi Williams, Sharon Sassler, Adrianne Frech, Fenaba Addo, and Elizabeth Cooksey

Despite high rates of nonmarital childbearing in the United States, little is known about the health of women who have nonmarital births. We use data from the NLSY79 to examine differences in age 40 self-assessed health between women who had a premarital birth and those whose first birth occurred within marriage. We then differentiate women with a premarital first birth according to their subsequent union histories and estimate the effect of marrying or cohabiting versus remaining never-married on midlife self-assessed health. We pay particular attention to the paternity status of a mother’s partner and the stability of marital unions. To partially address selection bias, we employ multivariate propensity score techniques. Results suggest that premarital childbearing is negatively associated with midlife health for white and black women, but not for Hispanic women. We find no evidence that the negative health consequences of nonmarital childbearing are mitigated by either marriage or cohabitation for black women. For other women, only enduring marriage to the child’s biological father is associated with better health than remaining unpartnered.

Consequences of Parental Divorce for Child Development
Hyun Sik Kim

In this article, I propose a three-stage estimation model to examine the effect of parental divorce on the development of children’s cognitive skills and noncognitive traits. Using a framework that includes pre-, in-, and post-divorce time periods, I disentangle the complex factors affecting children of divorce. I use the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study-Kindergarten Class 1998 to 1999 (ECLS-K), a multiwave longitudinal dataset, to assess the three-stage model. To evaluate the parameters of interest more rigorously, I employ a stage-specific ordinary least squares (OLS) model, a counterfactual matching estimator, and a piece-wise growth curve model. Within some combinations of developmental domains and stages, in particular from the in-divorce stage onward, I find negative effects of divorce even after accounting for selection factors that influence children’s skills and traits at or before the beginning of the dissolution process. These negative outcomes do not appear to intensify or abate in the ensuing study period.

American Sociological Review, June 2011: Volume 76, Issue 3

Criminology 49(2)

Beyond Adolescence-Limited Criminology: Choosing Our Future—The American Society Of Criminology 2010 Sutherland Address
Francis T. Cullen

For over a half century, criminology has been dominated by a paradigm—adolescence-limited criminology (ALC)—that has privileged the use of self-report surveys of adolescents to test sociological theories of criminal behavior and has embraced the view that “nothing works” to control crime. Although ALC has created knowledge, opposed injustice, and advanced scholars’ careers, it has outlived its utility. The time has come for criminologists to choose a different future. Thus, a new paradigm is needed that is rooted in life-course criminology, brings criminologists closer to offenders and to the crime event, prioritizes the organization of knowledge, and produces scientific knowledge that is capable of improving offenders’ lives and reducing crime.

Do Neighborhoods Generate Fear Of Crime? An Empirical Test Using The British Crime Survey
Ian Brunton-Smith And Patrick Sturgis

For a long time, criminologists have contended that neighborhoods are important determinants of how individuals perceive their risk of criminal victimization. Yet, despite the theoretical importance and policy relevance of these claims, the empirical evidence base is surprisingly thin and inconsistent. Drawing on data from a national probability sample of individuals, linked to independent measures of neighborhood demographic characteristics, visual signs of physical disorder, and reported crime, we test four hypotheses about the mechanisms through which neighborhoods influence fear of crime. Our large sample size, analytical approach, and the independence of our empirical measures enable us to overcome some of the limitations that have hampered much previous research into this question. We find that neighborhood structural characteristics, visual signs of disorder, and recorded crime all have direct and independent effects on individual-level fear of crime. Additionally, we demonstrate that individual differences in fear of crime are strongly moderated by neighborhood socioeconomic characteristics; between-group differences in expressed fear of crime are both exacerbated and ameliorated by the characteristics of the areas in which people live.

Supervision Regimes, Risk, And Official Reactions To Parolee Deviance
Ryken Grattet, Jeffrey Lin And Joan Petersilia

Parolee deviance has emerged as a central issue in policy debates about crime and punishment in American society as well as in scholarship on “mass incarceration.” Although the prevailing approach to studying parolees conceives of parole violations as outcomes of individual propensities toward criminal behavior (i.e., criminogenic risk), we consider how indicators of individual risk and characteristics of formal social control systems combine to account for reported parole violations. Using data on California parolees, we examine the effects of parolees’ personal characteristics, their criminal histories, and the social organization of supervision on parole violations. We advance the notion of a “supervision regime”—a legal and organizational structure that shapes the detection and reporting of parolee deviance. Three components of a supervision regime are explored: 1) the intensity of supervision, 2) the capacity of the regime to detect parolee deviance, and 3) the tolerance of parole officials for parolee deviance. We find that personal characteristics and offense histories are predictive of parole violations. However, we also find that introducing supervision factors reduces the effects of offense history variables on violation risk, suggesting that the violation risks of serious, violent, and sexual offenders are partially explainable through the heightened supervision to which they are subject. In addition, we find that supervision intensity and tolerance are generally predictive of violation risk. Capacity effects are present but weak. We conclude with a discussion of how the supervision regimes concept illuminates the gap between macro- and micro-analyses of social control.

Ethnic Threat And Social Control: Examining Public Support For Judicial Use Of Ethnicity In Punishment
Brian D. Johnson, Eric A. Stewart, Justin Pickett And Marc Gertz

Research on social inequality in punishment has focused for a long time on the complex relationship among race, ethnicity, and criminal sentencing, with a particular interest in the theoretical importance that group threat plays in the exercise of social control in society. Prior research typically relies on aggregate measures of group threat and focuses on racial rather than on ethnic group composition. The current study uses data from a nationally representative sample of U.S. residents to investigate the influence of more proximate and diverse measures of ethnic group threat, examining public support for the judicial use of ethnic considerations in sentencing. Findings indicate that both aggregate and perceptual measures of threat influence popular support for ethnic disparity in punishment and that individual perceptions of criminal and economic threat are particularly important. Moreover, we find that perceived threat is conditioned by aggregate group threat contexts. Findings are discussed in relation to the growing Hispanic population in the rapidly changing demographic structure of U.S. society.

Legal Cynicism, Collective Efficacy, And The Ecology Of Arrest
David S. Kirk And Mauri Matsuda

Ethnographic evidence reveals that many crimes in poor minority neighborhoods evade criminal justice sanctioning, thus leading to a negative association between the proportion of minority residents in a neighborhood and the arrest rate. To explain this finding, we extend recent theoretical explications of the concept of legal cynicism. Legal cynicism refers to a cultural orientation in which the law and the agents of its enforcement are viewed as illegitimate, unresponsive, and ill equipped to ensure public safety. Crime might flourish in neighborhoods characterized by legal cynicism because individuals who view the law as illegitimate are less likely to comply with it; yet because of legal cynicism, these crimes might go unreported and therefore unsanctioned. This study draws on data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to test the importance of legal cynicism for understanding geographic variation in the probability of arrest. We find that, in neighborhoods characterized by high levels of legal cynicism, crimes are much less likely to lead to an arrest than in neighborhoods where citizens view the police more favorably. Findings also reveal that residents of highly cynical neighborhoods are less likely to engage in collective efficacy and that collective efficacy mediates the association between legal cynicism and the probability of arrest.

Effect Of Suspect Race On Officers’ Arrest Decisions
Tammy Rinehart Kochel, David B. Wilson And Stephen D. Mastrofski

Many respondents to opinion surveys say that the citizen's race influences how police officers treat the public, yet recent expert social-science panels have declared that research findings are too contradictory to form a conclusion on whether American police are biased against racial minorities. We perform a meta-analysis of quantitative research that estimates the effect of race on the police decision to arrest. Screening nearly 4,500 potential sources, we analyze the results based on 27 independent data sets that generated 40 research reports (both published and unpublished) that permitted an estimate of the effect size of the suspect's race on the probability of arrest. The meta-analysis shows with strong consistency that minority suspects are more likely to be arrested than White suspects. Depending on the method of estimation, the effect size of race varied between 1.32 and 1.52. Converting the race effect size to probabilities shows that compared with the average probability in these studies of a White being arrested (.20), the average probability for a non-White was calculated at .26. The significant race effect persists when taking into account the studies’ variations in research methods and the nature of explanatory models used in the studies. Implications for future research are presented.

Gang Membership As A Turning Point In The Life Course
Chris Melde And Finn-Aage Esbensen

Gang-involved youth are disproportionately involved in criminal behavior, especially violence. The processes accounting for this enhanced illegal activity, however, remain speculative. Employing a life-course perspective, we propose that gang membership can be conceptualized as a turning point in the lives of youth and is thus associated with changes in emotions, attitudes, and routine activities, which, in turn, increase illegal activity. Using prospective data from a multisite sample of more than 1,400 youth, the findings suggest that the onset of gang membership is associated with a substantial change in emotions, attitudes, and social controls conducive to delinquency and partially mediate the impact of gang membership on delinquent activity. Desistance from gangs, however, was not associated with similar systematic changes in these constructs, including delinquent involvement.

Learning To Be Bad: Adverse Social Conditions, Social Schemas, And Crime
Ronald L. Simons And Callie Harbin Burt

In this article, we develop and test a new approach to explain the link between social factors and individual offending. We argue that seemingly disparate family, peer, and community conditions lead to crime because the lessons communicated by these events are similar and promote social schemas involving a hostile view of people and relationships, a preference for immediate rewards, and a cynical view of conventional norms. Furthermore, we posit that these three schemas are interconnected and combine to form a criminogenic knowledge structure that results in situational interpretations legitimating criminal behavior. Structural equation modeling with a sample of roughly 700 African American teens provided strong support for the model. The findings indicated that persistent exposure to adverse conditions such as community crime, discrimination, harsh parenting, deviant peers, and low neighborhood collective efficacy increased commitment to the three social schemas. The three schemas were highly intercorrelated and combined to form a latent construct that strongly predicted increases in crime. Furthermore, in large measure, the effect of the various adverse conditions on increases in crime was indirect through their impact on this latent construct. We discuss the extent to which the social-schematic model presented in this article might be used to integrate concepts and findings from several major theories of criminal behavior.

Assessing And Explaining Misperceptions Of Peer Delinquency
Jacob T. N. Young, J. C. Barnes, Ryan C. Meldrum And Frank M. Weerman

Peer delinquency is a robust correlate of delinquent and criminal behavior. However, debate continues to surround the proper measurement of peer delinquency. Recent research suggests that some respondents are likely to misrepresent their peers’ involvement in delinquency when asked in survey questionnaires, drawing into question the traditional (i.e., perceptual) measurement of peer delinquency. Research also has shown that direct measures of peer delinquency (e.g., measures obtained via networking methods such as Add Health), as compared with perceptual measures, differentially correlate with key theoretical variables (e.g., respondent delinquency and respondent self-control), raising the question of whether misperception of peer delinquency is systematic and can be predicted. Almost no research, however, has focused on this issue. This study, therefore, provides detailed information on respondents’ misperceptions of peer behavior and investigates whether individual characteristics, the amount of time spent with peers, and peer network properties predict these misperceptions. Findings indicated that 1) some individuals—to varying degrees—misperceived the delinquent behavior of their peers; 2) self-control and self-reported delinquency predicted misperception; 3) respondents occupying densely populated peer networks were less likely to misperceive their peers’ delinquent involvement; and 4) peers who occupy networks in which individuals spend a lot of time together were more likely to misperceive peer delinquency. Implications are discussed.

Criminology, May 2011: Volume 49, Issue 2

Critical Criminology 19(2)

Restorative Justice and “Empowerment”: Producing and Governing Active Subjects through “Empowering” Practices
Kelly Richards

During the last quarter-century, restorative justice has emerged as a widely-utilised response to crime in Western nations. This article, which stems from a Foucauldian genealogy of restorative justice, argues that its embeddedness within the discourse of “empowerment” renders restorative justice a politically acceptable response to crime. “Empowerment”, it is argued, is one of many conditions of emergence of restorative justice. The discourse of “empowerment” underpins restorative justice in tangible ways, and has informed legislation and policy in Western jurisdictions. This article seeks to problematise the taken-for-granted nature of this discourse. It argues that the discourse of “empowerment” produces restorative justice subjects who are increasingly governed and governable. As “empowering” restorative practices are targeted towards “disempowered” individuals and communities, concerns are raised about the potential of restorative justice to disproportionately impact upon socially marginalised populations and to increase social exclusion.

The Death Penalty: An Unusual Punishment America is Inflicting Upon Itself
Stephanie Boys

The United States is the only Western, industrialized nation still executing criminal offenders. The Constitutional provision that is most often used to call the appropriateness of capital punishment in the United States into question is the 8th Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. Opponents of capital punishment have often argued various reasons why the death penalty is a cruel punishment, but the Supreme Court of the United States has not agreed. A new approach to abolition advocacy is needed. Since the death penalty has not been determined cruel, I submit a new legal argument based on the unusual nature of capital punishment. Utilizing systems theory, I posit the death penalty is an unusual criminal punishment due to the extraordinary range of persons beyond merely the defendant who are negatively impacted by executions.

Demythelogizing Personal Loyalty to Superiors
Sam S. Souryal

This article examines the practice of personal loyalty to superiors, in general, and in criminal justice agencies, in particular. While practitioners are taught that their primarily loyalty is to the United States Constitution, State laws, departmental rules and regulations, they are organizationally taught that personal loyalty to superiors is paramount if they wanted their career to continue and prosper. As a result many practitioners are rightfully confused (even exhibiting paranoia) over who or what to be primarily loyal to, and at what price or risk. This unwarranted fear has been behind numerous acts of malfeasance and misfeasance; it can lower the workers’ morale, confuses the practitioners, and destabilizes the agency’s equilibrium. This article examines three types of workplace loyalties, and suggests, as an attempt toward reform, the use of a more sensible duty-based paradigm. Such a paradigm can be based on four practical propositions: (1) seriously examining why personal loyalty to superiors is deemed essential, if at all, especially since it is never mentioned in the agency’s rules and regulations; (2) taking the fear out of the language of “loyalty-disloyalty” by perhaps replacing the term with more benign and rather measurable terms such as “performance and collaboration;” (3) strengthening dutiful supervision; and (4) maximizing professional accountability.

Family Leave and Law Enforcement: A Survey of Parents in U.S. Police Departments
Corina Schulze

The women of United States police departments challenge traditional gender role expectations by exhibiting equal competence in a job with a masculine identity. Women also modify police culture in a myriad of ways, one of which is through the special work-related needs that accompany motherhood. Results from a survey of police officers suggest that gendered perceptions regarding work and family persist indicating that a value shift within police departments has occurred. Findings derived from qualitative responses suggest that women’s entry in policing, along with shifting societal attitudes about work and family, could transform the institution’s “hegemonic masculinity,” an enduring characteristic of many police departments.

High Policing Theory and the Question of ‘What is to be Done?’
Warwick Tie

Within the field of high policing theory it has become increasingly difficult to pose the question of ‘What is to be done?’ in ways that do not result in a pragmatic accommodation of existing political arrangements. This essay proposes a way of reanimating the normative impulse of earlier high policing theory such that this outcome is exceeded. It does so by drawing upon Fredric Jameson’s distinction between representation and representation in motion, such that the emergent state of normativity takes the form of normativity as a representation of itself in motion. This form of normativity draws upon the performative character of the power that is particular to the practices associated with high policing. The proposition is illustrated with normative responses made to instances of political policing within the New Zealand context.

Critical Criminology, May 2011: Volume 19, Issue 2

Law & Society Review 45(2)

Exploring the Limits of the Judicialization of Urban Land Disputes in Vietnam
John Gillespie

Economic and legal reforms have triggered waves of conflict over property rights and access to urban land in Vietnam. In this article I develop four epistemic case studies to explore the main precepts and practices that courts must negotiate to extend their authority over land disputes. Courts face a dilemma: Do they apply state laws that disregard community regulatory practices and risk losing social relevance, or apply community notions of situational justice that undermine rule formalism? I conclude that reforms designed to increase rule formalism in the courts may have the unintended consequence of reducing the capacity for judges to find lasting solutions to land disputes.

Seeing Like a City: The Dialectic of Modern and Premodern Ways of Seeing in Urban Governance
Mariana Valverde

Studies of urban governance, as well as the overlapping literature on law and space, have been heavily influenced by critical analyses of how spatial techniques helped constitute modern disciplinary powers and knowledges. The rise of land-use control and land-use planning seem at first sight to be perfect examples of the disciplining of populations through space by the kind of governmental gaze dubbed by Scott (1998) as “seeing like a state.” But a detailed genealogical study that puts the emergence of the notion of “land use” in the broader context of urban governance technologies reveals that modernist techniques of land use planning, such as North American zoning, are more flexible, contradictory, and fragile than critical urbanists assume. Legal tools of premodern origin that target nonquantifiable offensiveness and thus construct an embodied and relational form of urban subjectivity keep reappearing in the present day. When cities attempt to govern conflicts about the use of space through objective rules, these rules often undermine themselves in a dialectical process that results in the return to older notions of offensiveness. This article argues that the dialectical process by which modernist “seeing like a state” techniques give way to older ways of seeing (e.g., the logic of nuisance) plays a central role in the epistemologically hybrid approach to governing space that is here called “seeing like a city.”

Socially Responsible Private Regulation: World-Culture or World-Capitalism?
Ronen Shamir

This article analyzes the phenomenon of “corporate social responsibility” (CSR; specifically: social private regulation) in light of two sociological paradigms of globalization: “world-culture” and “world-capitalism.” The study treats three analytically distinct features of CSR: the political contestation over its meaning, the role of business studies in transforming it into a managerial model, and its consolidation as a market of authorities. The study finds that (1) while CSR may be theorized as a emergent “world cultural” model, the culture paradigm does not take sufficient account of the role of corporations in shaping it, and (2) while both paradigms recognize the transition from political contestations over the character of CSR to its deployment by means of private regulation, the world-capitalism paradigm offers stronger tools for theorizing the mechanisms of change that mediate between political agency and institutionalized regulatory outcomes.

Legal Consciousness of Undocumented Latinos: Fear and Stigma as Barriers to Claims-Making for First- and 1.5-Generation Immigrants
Leisy J. Abrego

This article examines the legal consciousness and incorporation experiences of undocumented immigrants in the United States. Although this population may be disaggregated along several axes, one central distinction among them is their age at migration. Those who migrated as adults live out their daily lives in different social contexts than those who migrated as children. Therefore, although all undocumented immigrants are legally banned, their identities, sense of belonging, and interpretation of their status vary. Based on ethnographic observations and in-depth interviews of Latino undocumented immigrants from 2001 to 2010, I examine how illegality is experienced differently by social position. The findings suggest that the role of life-stage at migration and work-versus-school contexts importantly inform immigrants' legal consciousness. Fear predominates in the legal consciousness of first-generation undocumented immigrants, while the legal consciousness of the 1.5 generation is more heavily infused with stigma. Fear and stigma are both barriers to claims-making, but they may affect undocumented immigrants' potential for collective mobilization in different ways.

Short-Term Effects of Sanctioning Reform on Parole Officers' Revocation Decisions
Benjamin Steiner, Lawrence F. Travis III, Matthew D. Makarios and Benjamin Meade

Parole officials have traditionally been afforded considerable discretion when making sanctioning decisions to be able to tailor sanctions according to substantively rational concerns such as individuals' unique needs and situations. However, the application of substantive rationality in sanctioning can also generate unwanted disparities because sanctioning decisions may be based on extralegal factors that parole officials consider relevant. Concerns regarding disparate treatment of offender groups have prompted a number of states to consider adopting administrative violation response policies that emphasize formal rationality and uniformity by restricting parole officers' discretion and structuring sanctioning decisions according to legally relevant criteria. By emphasizing formal rationality in sanctioning, structured sanction policies present a dilemma for parole officers—uniformity versus individualized treatment. In 2005, the state of Ohio implemented an administrative violation response policy designed to reduce parole officers' reliance on revocation hearings and promote uniformity in sanctioning decisions. This study involved an examination of whether Ohio's shift to structured sanctioning coincided with differences in legal and extralegal effects on parole officers' decisions to pursue revocation hearings. Analyses of data collected before and after the implementation of the policy revealed a reduction in the number of revocation hearings officers pursued. Only modest increases in uniformity were observed, however, because there was little disparity resulting from officers' hearing decisions before the policy was put in place. These findings are discussed within perspectives on justice system actors' decision making.

Does the Controversy Matter? Comparing the Causal Determinants of the Adoption of Controversial and Noncontroversial Rape Law Reforms
Jennifer McMahon-Howard

Do the causal determinants of legal change differ for controversial and noncontroversial laws? Using rape law reforms as an example of legal change, I answer this question via a longitudinal examination of the intrastate characteristics and interstate processes that affect the adoption of both controversial and noncontroversial rape law reforms. The results show that the adoption of partial reforms significantly decreases a state's likelihood of passing a stronger version of the reform only for controversial rape law reforms. Other factors, such as women's economic power and the interstate process of diffusion similarly affect both controversial and noncontroversial reforms. Thus, contrary to the idea that the process of diffusion operates differently for controversial reforms, the results indicate that spatial proximity negatively affects the adoption of both controversial and noncontroversial rape law reforms. These findings have important implications for theoretical explanations of legal change, research on rape law reforms, and social movement research and activism.

Toward a Theory of Compliance in State-Regulated Livelihoods: A Comparative Study of Compliance Motivations in Developed and Developing World Fisheries
Stig S. Gezelius and Maria Hauck

This article addresses the question of how states can best promote citizens' compliance with laws that regulate livelihoods. Based on ethnographic data from fishing communities in three countries—Norway, Canada, and South Africa—the article compares compliance motivations that exist under different socioeconomic and political conditions. The comparisons give rise to a typology of three compliance motivations: deterrence, moral support for the law's content, and the legislator's authority. This article then identifies three governable preconditions—enforcement, empowerment of citizens, and civic identity—that respectively explain these motivations. The article argues that the compliance discourse in a given type of state must be framed such that it includes at least the governable preconditions for compliance that have not been met in that state. Consequently, a functional compliance strategy would vary between different state types. The article thus questions the transferability of the developed world's compliance discourses to the developing world.

Tactical Balancing: High Court Decision Making on Politically Crucial Cases
Diana Kapiszewski

This article advances a new account of judicial behavior: the thesis of tactical balancing. Building on existing models of judicial decision making, the thesis posits that high court justices balance a discrete set of considerations—justices' ideologies, their institutional interests, the potential consequences of their rulings, public opinion, elected leaders' preferences, and law—as they decide important cases. Variation in a high court's balancing of those considerations as it decides different cases leads it to alternate between challenging and endorsing the exercise of government power. The way in which high courts carry out this “tactical balancing” reflects their broader strategy for prioritizing the different roles they can play in a polity, and thus has significant implications for the rule of law and regime stability in developing democracies. The thesis is illustrated through a detailed analysis of the Brazilian high court's rulings on cases concerning crucial economic policies (1985–2004).

Law & Society Review, June 2011: Volume 45, Issue 2

Sociological Theory 29(2)

Populist Mobilization: A New Theoretical Approach to Populism
Robert S. Jansen

Sociology has long shied away from the problem of populism. This may be due to suspicion about the concept or uncertainty about how to fit populist cases into broader comparative matrices. Such caution is warranted: the existing interdisciplinary literature has been plagued by conceptual confusion and disagreement. But given the recent resurgence of populist politics in Latin America and elsewhere, sociology can no longer afford to sidestep such analytical challenges. This article moves toward a political sociology of populism by identifying past theoretical deficiencies and proposing a new, practice-based approach that is not beholden to pejorative common sense understandings. This approach conceptualizes populism as a mode of political practice—as populist mobilization. Its utility is demonstrated through an application to mid-twentieth-century Latin American politics. The article concludes by sketching an agenda for future research on populist mobilization in Latin America and beyond.

Typecasting, Legitimation, and Form Emergence: A Formal Theory
Greta Hsu, Michael T. Hannan and László Pólos

We propose a formal theory of multiple category memberships. This theory has the potential to unify two seemingly unconnected theories: typecasting and identity-based form emergence. Typecasting, a producer-level theory, considers the consequences of specializing versus spanning across category boundaries. Identity-based form emergence considers the evolution of categories and how the attributes of producers entering a category shape its likelihood of gaining legitimacy among relevant audiences. Both theory fragments treat the processes by which audience members assign category memberships to producers. This article develops this common foundation and outlines the arguments that lead to central implications of each theory. The arguments are formalized using modal expressions to represent key categorization processes according to the theory-building framework developed by Hannan et al. (2007).

An Actor-Network Theory of Cosmopolitanism
Hiro Saito

A major problem with the emerging sociological literature on cosmopolitanism is that it has not adequately theorized mechanisms that mediate the presumed causal relationship between globalization and the development of cosmopolitan orientations. To solve this problem, I draw on Bruno Latour's actor-network theory (ANT) to theorize the development of three key elements of cosmopolitanism: cultural omnivorousness, ethnic tolerance, and cosmopolitics. ANT illuminates how humans and nonhumans of multiple nationalities develop attachments with one another to create network structures that sustain cosmopolitanism. ANT also helps the sociology of cosmopolitanism become more reflexive and critical of its implicit normative claims.

Sociological Theory, June 2011: Volume 29, Issue 2

Journal of Marriage and Family 73(3)

Methodological Innovation

Modeling Repeatable Events Using Discrete-Time Data: Predicting Marital Dissolution
Jay Teachman

Family Structure and Family Stability

Effects of Family Structure Type and Stability on Children's Academic Performance Trajectories
Yongmin Sun and Yuanzhang Li

The Effects of Family Structure on African American Adolescents' Marijuana Use
Jelani Mandara, Sheba Y. Rogers and Richard E. Zinbarg

Multipartnered Fertility and Depression Among Fragile Families
Kristin Turney and Marcia J. Carlson

Parents and Children

Paternal Work Stress and Latent Profiles of Father–Infant Parenting Quality
W. Benjamin Goodman, Ann C. Crouter, Stephanie T. Lanza, Martha J. Cox and Lynne Vernon-Feagans, The Family Life Project Key Investigators

Maternal Mental Health, Neighborhood Characteristics, and Time Investments in Children
Adrianne Frech and Rachel Tolbert Kimbro

Parental Strains and Rewards Among Mothers: The Role of Education
Kei M. Nomaguchi and Susan L. Brown

Coparenting and Relationship Quality Effects on Father Engagement: Variations by Residence, Romance
Jay Fagan and Rob Palkovitz

Of General Interest

Breakup of New Orleans Households After Hurricane Katrina
Michael S. Rendall

Individualized Marriage and the Integration of Resources
Sean R. Lauer and Carrie Yodanis

Journal of Marriage and Family, June 2011: Volume 73, Issue 3

Theoretical Criminology 15(2)

Crime and time: The temporal patterning of causal variables
Robert Agnew

Criminologists tend to assume that most of the variables that cause crime are stable over long periods, with some variables having a brief, episodic existence in the lives of individuals. This article challenges that assumption and instead argues that variables are best described in terms of three temporal levels: baseline levels or long-term averages; short-term deviations around these baseline levels, with such deviations lasting from hours to days; and situational deviations, lasting from seconds to minutes. Criminologists can more accurately describe the standing of individuals on the causes of crime using these levels, thereby improving the ability to explain crime.

Reconstructing Leviathan: Emerging contours of the security state
Simon Hallsworth and John Lea

This article develops an account of the current emergence of the security state as successor to the liberal welfare state. It is argued that the security state heralds a new type of authoritarianism which, beginning at the periphery and pre-occupied with the management of the marginalized and socially excluded, is gradually infecting the core social institutions, the criminal justice system in particular. The article considers three areas in which the security state is emerging—the transition from welfare to workfare and risk management; new measures to combat terrorism and organized crime; and the blurring of warfare and crime control. The article concludes by stressing the mutually reinforcing effect of these developments.

The cultural politics of justice: Bakhtin, stand-up comedy and post-9/11 securitization
Elaine Campbell

For Rabelais,‘folk humour’ and its boundless forms are not frivolous, inconsequential aspects of the human condition but, rather, are central to modes of critique and the formation of discourses which seek radical cultural transformation by evading, exposing, resisting, scandalizing and mocking ‘official culture’. Taking its cue from Bakhtin’s exposition of the grotesque realism of the Rabelaisian novel, this article explores the abstract notion of ‘justice’ through the lens of ‘folk humour’—specifically, stand-up comedy which references securitization in the post-9/11 period. In so doing, it calls into question Habermasian discourse ethics, proposing instead a model of ‘doing justice’ predicated on Bakhtinian dialogism.

Reframing criminal victimization: Finding a place for vulnerability and resilience
Sandra Walklate

The purpose of this article is to examine the ways in which studies of criminal victimization have contributed to this presumption of human vulnerability, and to examine the potential in understandings of resilience for overcoming this presumption. In order to do this the argument falls into three parts. In the first part I shall consider the different ways in which victimization and vulnerability have been linked together. In the second I shall examine the concept of resilience and its relationship, if any, with vulnerability and victimization. Throughout this discussion I shall draw on feminist informed work as a way of suggesting a differently oriented approach to both of these concepts: presented here as thinking otherwise. In the final and concluding part of this article the implications of contemporary understandings of these concepts will be situated within the broader policy context characterized by Aradau (2004) as informed by a ‘politics of pity’.

Pedophile crime films as popular criminology: A problem of justice?
Steven A. Kohm and Pauline Greenhill

This article responds to Nicole Rafter’s recent call to develop a popular criminology using cultural representations of crime and criminal justice to supplement and extend mainstream criminological knowledge. Using representations of child sexual abuse in film, we begin to build a popular criminology of the pedophile. In cinema, this figure opens up a cultural space to interrogate key criminological dilemmas about the nature and shape of justice. Pedophile crime films work through concepts by making emotion central to understanding and by using child sexual abuse as a moral context for otherwise abstract dilemmas. Because of their form as well as their content, recent examples of the subgenre hold the potential to challenge popular conceptions of justice in ways that mainstream academic discourse cannot.

Review Symposium:
Pat O’ Malley, Crime and Risk, London: SAGE, 2010.

Introduction to the review symposium
Nicole Rafter

Review Symposium: The risks of risk
Jeff Ferrell

Review Symposium: The politics of risk, the risk of politics
Sandra Walklate

Review Symposium: Il miglior fabbro (the finer craftsman)
Jonathan Simon

Review Symposium: Risk for prevention
Brandon C. Welsh

Theoretical Criminology, May 2011: Volume 15, Issue 2

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 27(2)

Reciprocal Effects of Victimization and Routine Activities
Margit Averdijk

Although there is much research on the relationship between routine activities and victimization, we have little knowledge about the reciprocal effects of victimization and routine activities. The current paper is framed within the Once Bitten Twice Shy perspective proposed by Hindelang et al. (Victims of personal crime: an empirical foundation for a theory of personal victimization. Ballinger, Cambridge, 1978) which argues that victimization decreases risky routine activities and that this in turn decreases the risk of victimization. The current paper tests these propositions by using longitudinal data from the National Crime Victimization Survey, which allows us to tease out victimization and routine activities over time. Both violent and household victimization are examined. Variables pertaining to how often respondents go out for shopping, how often they go away at night and whether they have household devices are used as indicators for routine activities. Results indicate that the reciprocal effects of victimization and routine activities are limited. Consequences for routine activities theory are discussed.

Reliability and Validity of Prisoner Self-Reports Gathered Using the Life Event Calendar Method
James E. Sutton, Paul E. Bellair, Brian R. Kowalski, Ryan Light & Donald T. Hutcherson

Data collection using the life event calendar method is growing, but reliability is not well established. We examine test–retest reliability of monthly self-reports of criminal behavior collected using a life event calendar from a random sample of minimum and medium security prisoners. Tabular analysis indicates substantial agreement between self-reports of drug dealing, property, and violent crime during a baseline interview (test) and a follow-up (retest) approximately 3 weeks later. Hierarchical analysis reveals that criminal activity reported during the initial test is strongly associated with responses given in the retest, and that the relationship varies only by the lag in days between the initial interview and the retest. Analysis of validity reveals that self-reported incarceration history is strongly predictive of official incarceration history although we were unable to address whether subjects could correctly identify the months they were incarcerated. African Americans and older subjects provide more valid responses but in practical terms the differences in validity are not large.

A Longitudinal Study of Escalation in Crime Seriousness
Jiayi Liu, Brian Francis & Keith Soothill

Escalation in crime seriousness over the criminal lifecourse continues to be an important issue to study in criminal careers. Quantitative research in this area has not yet been well developed owing to the difficulty of measuring crime seriousness and the complexity of escalation trajectories. In this paper we suggest that there are two types of escalation process—escalation associated with experience of the criminal justice process, and escalation associated with age and maturation. Using the 1953 birth cohort from the England and Wales Offenders Index followed up to 1999, and a recently developed seriousness scale of offenses, we constructed the individual sequences of seriousness scores from conviction to conviction. These individual sequences were then analyzed using a variety of longitudinal mixed models, with age, number of conviction occasions, sex and number of offenses used as covariates. The results suggest that ageing is associated with de-escalation whereas the number of conviction occasions are associated with escalation, with the two processes pulling in different directions. This conceptual framework helps to disentangle previously contradictory results in the escalation literature.

One Bad Apple May Not Spoil the Whole Bunch: Best Friends and Adolescent Delinquency
Carter Rees & Greg Pogarsky

This study compared the association of adolescent delinquency with that of their best friend and remaining social network. Findings are reported from The National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, a multi-wave nationally representative panel study of adolescents who were in grades 7–12 in 1994. Four delinquent outcomes were examined: Smoking, getting drunk, fighting, and a variety index of general delinquency. All analyses were replicated for three distinct criteria for identifying a “best friend.” We also examined several moderating factors and potential interrelationships between the best friend and remaining friendship group. Relative to the influence of the best friend, the influence of the remaining friendship group increased with group size, and with larger absolute disparities in delinquency levels between best and remaining friends. Our findings extend knowledge on the influence of best friends, and further underscore the importance of whether peer behaviors are measured directly (from the peers themselves) or indirectly (when focal respondents estimate the delinquent behavior of their peers).

Criminal Contemplation, National Context, and Deterrence
Charles R. Tittle, Ekaterina V. Botchkovar & Olena Antonaccio

Using random samples of adults from three European countries rarely surveyed about crime-related issues, this study seeks to identify, with more extensive indicators than is typical, individuals who are likely to contemplate the commission of criminal acts. Then, it assesses the contextual universality of deterrence claims by estimating the deterrent effectiveness of perceived formal and informal sanctions for theft and violence among crime contemplators in Greece, Russia, and Ukraine. With criminal contemplation taken into account, our findings confirm the patterns established in past research. Whereas the threat of formal punishment shows little deterrent effect, perceptions of informal sanctions appear to influence projected crime. However, supportive findings hold only in Russia and Ukraine. Overall, it appears that the deterrent effectiveness of sanctions may be to some extent contingent on cultural or contextual characteristics.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, June 2011: Volume 27, Issue 2

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 48(2)

The Crime Drop and the Security Hypothesis
Graham Farrell, Andromachi Tseloni, Jen Mailley, and Nick Tilley

Major crime drops were experienced in the United States and most other industrialized countries for a decade from the early to mid-1990s. Yet there is little agreement over explanation or lessons for policy. Here it is proposed that change in the quantity and quality of security was a key driver of the crime drop. From evidence relating to vehicle theft in two countries, it is concluded that electronic immobilizers and central locking were particularly effective. It is suggested that reduced car theft may have induced drops in other crime including violence. From this platform, a broader security hypothesis, linked to routine activity and opportunity theory, is outlined.

Low-Skill Employment Opportunity and African American-White Difference in Recidivism
Paul E. Bellair and Brian R. Kowalski

Previous contextual analyses of recidivism are limited by a focus on traditional disadvantage indicators. The authors examine whether those indicators, including poverty, family composition, high school dropout, and unemployment explain disproportionate involvement in serious criminal recidivism among African American relative to White ex-prisoners. Given the fundamental necessity of finding employment after release, the authors move beyond traditional measures and investigate the availability of low-skill employment opportunity in the industries that prior research suggests are most likely to hire ex-prisoners (retail and manufacturing). To address the issue, the authors collected and geo-coded data for a representative sample of 1,568 Ohio ex-prisoners released on community supervision during the first six months of 1999. Contextual analysis reveals that race difference in serious recidivism is explained by low-skill employment opportunity in manufacturing and that it is contingent on levels of neighborhood disadvantage and unemployment.

Getting into the Script of Adult Child Sex Offenders and Mapping out Situational Prevention Measures
Benoit Leclerc, Richard Wortley, and Stephen Smallbone

The current study describes and examines the crime-commission process followed in child sex offending. There are two major aims in this study. The first aim is to propose a script model in child sex offending. The second aim is to show the relevance of completing crime scripts to identify situational crime prevention measures. One of the weaknesses in the current crime script literature is the absence of proposed prevention measures. Besides Cornish, only Clarke and Newman have used crime scripts for its main purpose, which is to offer a way to develop situational crime prevention techniques. In this study, situational prevention measures are mapped onto the crime-commission process in child sex offending.

Racial/Ethnic Threat and Federal Sentencing
Ben Feldmeyer and Jeffery T. Ulmer

This study examines whether federal sentencing decisions are influenced by the racial/ethnic composition of federal court districts. Multilevel models of individual cases within federal judicial districts show that Black defendants receive moderately longer sentences than Whites, and that Hispanics and Whites receive similar sentences. These race/ethnicity effects on sentence length are found to vary across federal districts but not as predicted by racial threat theory. In contrast to racial threat predictions, Black sentence lengths are not significantly conditioned by the district Black population. Contrary to racial threat predictions, Hispanic defendants receive the harshest sentences when they account for the smallest share of the population (1 to 3 percent) and the most lenient sentences when they make up more sizable shares of district populations (more than 27 percent). Our results indicate that racial threat theory provides an inadequate explanation of how social contexts influence the federal sentencing of Blacks and Hispanics.

Networks of Collaborating Criminals: Assessing the Structural Vulnerability of Drug Markets
Aili Malm and Gisela Bichler

Uncovering the resiliency of ties between individuals involved in criminal enterprise will contribute to our understanding of how illicit markets function. To examine activities along the entire drug market commodity chain, this study extracted information about individuals involved or associated with trafficking (1,998 people) from police intelligence reports generated from 2004 to 2006. Significant differences were found for centrality and cohesion across market niches. Results show that the highest fragmentation potential lies with individuals who are involved with smuggling, supply, and financing, particularly when these individuals are also involved in other niches. Variability in small-world and scale-free properties suggest that interdiction strategies must be tailored to niche characteristics.

Ecological Origins of Shared Perceptions of Troublesome Teen Groups: Implications for the Basic Systemic Model of Crime, the Incivilities Thesis, and Political Economy
Ralph B. Taylor, Phillip W. Harris, Peter R. Jones, R. Marie Garcia, and Eric S. McCord

This work investigates how community variation in perceptions of troublesome teen groups are shaped by delinquency, violent crime, and community socioeconomic status (SES). Experts consider this outcome the key indicator of impaired local supervisory control, and past work has confirmed its critical role in linking community structure to crime and victimization outcomes. The investigation responds to recent calls to learn more about impacts of crime on key community processes. Analyses of Philadelphia survey, census, violent crime, and delinquency data find strong impacts of SES. Impacts of crime and delinquency are significant but depend on how they are separated from SES. Influences of the spatially lagged outcome and partialled SES highlight connections between public and parochial control dynamics. These deserve closer theoretical scrutiny in both the basic systemic model of crime and the incivilities thesis.

Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, May 2011: Volume 48, Issue 2

Justice Quarterly 28(3)

Street Youths and the Proximate and Contingent Causes of Instrumental Crime: Untangling Anomie Theory
Stephen W. Baron

Utilizing a sample of 300 homeless street youths, the research examines the individual-level sub-model of Baumer's interpretation of Merton's anomie theory. The paper explores the role the interaction between monetary goals and weak commitment to legitimate means plays in the generation of instrumental crime and the manner in which this interaction is itself moderated by blocked opportunities, monetary dissatisfaction, social modeling, cultural support, and the perceived risk of punishment. The findings reveal that a weak commitment to legitimate means, but not monetary goals, has a lower order impact on the willingness to commit instrumental crime. These two variables, however, do not interact to predict intentions to offend. Instead the findings reveal that blocked opportunities and higher levels of monetary dissatisfaction moderate the relationship between the monetary goals and weak commitment to legitimate means interaction and the willingness to offend. Findings are discussed and suggestions for further research are offered.

How Much is the Public Willing to Pay to be Protected from Identity Theft?
Nicole Leeper Piquero; Mark A. Cohen; Alex R. Piquero

Identity theft has become one of the most ubiquitous crimes in the USA with estimates of the number of households being victimized annually ranging between 5% and 25%, resulting in direct losses totaling hundreds of billions of dollars over the past few years. Government efforts to combat identity theft have included legislation criminalizing and increasing penalties as well as regulatory efforts designed to protect individual identifying information held by financial and other business organizations. At the same time, individuals are taking their own preventive actions and purchasing private protection such as credit monitoring and identity theft insurance services. We use data from a large sample of residents from four states (Illinois, Louisiana, Pennsylvania, and Washington) in order to assess the public's willingness to pay (WTP) for a government program designed to reduce identify theft under two separate conditions, one promising a 25% reduction in identity theft and the other promising a 75% reduction in identity theft. Results indicate that: (1) between 40% and 66% of the public is willing to pay an additional tax for identity theft prevention, more so when the promise of a reduction is highest (75% compared to 25%) with an average WTP of $87, and (2) WTP is highest among individuals who carry many credit cards, who subscribe to an identity theft protection service, and who take active steps in preventing fraud by shredding bills and paying with cash, but is lowest among individuals who believe that taxes are too high. Converted into a “per crime” cost and combined with the portion of identity theft costs that are borne directly by business, we estimate the average cost per identity theft to range from approximately $2,800 to $5,100.

Juvenile Justice Decision-Making Before and After the Implementation of the Disproportionate Minority Contact (DMC) Mandate
Michael Leiber; Donna Bishop; Mitchell B. Chamlin

The disproportionate minority confinement (DMC) mandate was included in the reauthorization of the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act in 1988 and required states to assess the extent DMC was evident and to develop strategies to address the issue. The DMC mandate was designed to achieve equal treatment of youth within the juvenile justice system. In the present study, we analyzed the predictors of juvenile justice decision-making before and after the mandate to determine the impact of possible changes in the relative influence of legal criteria and extralegal considerations, especially race, on case outcomes in one juvenile court. The findings indicate that the factors impacting decision-making, for the most part, did not change in significance or relative impact though some unanticipated race effects were found at judicial disposition following the mandate.

Looking Inside the Black Box of Drug Courts: A Meta-Analytic Review
Deborah Koetzle Shaffer

There has been a rapid proliferation of drug courts over the past two decades. Empirical research examining the effectiveness of the model has generally demonstrated reduced rates of recidivism among program participants. However, relatively little is known about the structure and processes associated with effective drug courts. The current study seeks to address the issues by exploring the moderating influence of programmatic and non-programmatic characteristics on effectiveness. The methodology goes beyond previous meta-analyses by supplementing published (and unpublished) findings with a survey of drug court administrators. Consistent with previous research, the results revealed drug courts reduce recidivism by 9% on average. Further analyses indicated target population, program leverage and intensity, and staff characteristics explain the most variability in drug court effectiveness. These findings are discussed within the context of therapeutic jurisprudence and effective interventions.

Broken Windows or Window Breakers: The Influence of Physical and Social Disorder on Quality of Life
Allison T. Chappell; Elizabeth Monk-Turner; Brian K. Payne

The relationship between neighborhood disorder and fear of crime is well established. According to Wilson and Kelling's broken windows theory, physical and social disorder lead to fear and cause citizens to retreat into their homes. This breaks down informal social control mechanisms and may lead to more serious crime. Insofar as fear is related to quality of life, an implication of broken windows theory is that disorder may impact quality of life, but that relationship has not yet been examined in the research literature. The present study seeks to fill a void in the literature by investigating the relationship between neighborhood disorder and quality of life. Results indicate that disorder is related to quality of life. In particular, physical disorder is negatively associated with quality of life, but social disorder loses significance when controlling for physical disorder. Policy implications of the findings and direction for future research are discussed.

Justice Quarterly, June 2011: Volume 28, Issue 3

The Annals of the AAPSS 635

Young Disadvantaged Men: Fathers, Families, Poverty, and Policy
Timothy M. Smeeding, Irwin Garfinkel, and Ronald B. Mincy

No Country for Young Men: Deteriorating Labor Market Prospects for Low-Skilled Men in the United States
Andrew Sum, Ishwar Khatiwada, Joseph McLaughlin, and Sheila Palma

Young Disadvantaged Men as Fathers
Lawrence M. Berger and Callie E. Langton

The Relationship Contexts of Young Disadvantaged Men
Laura Tach and Kathryn Edin

Low-Income Fathers’ Influence on Children
Marcia J. Carlson and Katherine A. Magnuson

Comment: Reactions from the Perspective of Culture and Low-Income Fatherhood
Alford A. Young, Jr

Comment: Young Disadvantaged Men: Reactions from the Perspective of Race
Devah Pager

Comment: How Do Low-Income Men and Fathers Matter for Children and Family Life?
Frank F. Furstenberg, Jr

Child Support: Responsible Fatherhood and the Quid Pro Quo
Maria Cancian, Daniel R. Meyer, and Eunhee Han

Improving Education and Employment for Disadvantaged Young Men: Proven and Promising Strategies
Carolyn J. Heinrich and Harry J. Holzer

Incarceration and Prisoner Reentry in the United States
Steven Raphael

Policies That Strengthen Fatherhood and Family Relationships: What Do We Know and What Do We Need to Know?
Virginia Knox, Philip A. Cowan, Carolyn Pape Cowan, and Elana Bildner

Income Support Policies for Low-Income Men and Noncustodial Fathers: Tax and Transfer Programs
Ronald B. Mincy, Serena Klempin, and Heather Schmidt


The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, May 2011: Volume 635

British Journal of Criminology 51(3)

Human Evolution, History and Violence: An Introduction
Manuel Eisner

This special issue brings together original contributions by scholars from various disciplines that examine how evolutionary and historical research can advance our understanding of violence. In combining archaeological, anthropological, biological, sociological, and historical research the papers outline a perspective that transcends the conventional boundaries of criminology. Its core feature is the idea that we need a better understanding of the interaction between the evolutionary forces that shape the universal mechanisms associated with violence, and the ways in which social institutions, beliefs and structures of daily life control or amplify the potential for violent action.

A Change of Perspective: Integrating Evolutionary Psychology into the Historiography of Violence
John Carter Wood

Despite lively debates in many related fields about whether biological and evolutionary approaches can contribute to social and cultural investigations of human behaviour, historians have rarely confronted this issue directly. The historiography of violence is a partial exception, but there has been relatively little interdisciplinary exchange on topics central to both historical and natural-science analyses. Nevertheless, historians of violence have relied upon two concepts—‘social roles’ and ‘social construction’—that have been subject to constructive critique and revision from Darwinian perspectives. This article concludes by arguing that greater incorporation of evolutionary psychological perspectives and approaches into social and cultural analyses of violence (whether historical or contemporary) has much to contribute to a better understanding of the phenomenon of physical aggression.

Violence and Society in the Deep Human Past
Ian Armit

The past two decades have seen important changes in the ways in which archaeologists perceive interpersonal violence in the past. Prehistoric archaeology in particular provides a unique long-term perspective on the development and institutionalization of violence in human societies, adding a further dimension to the work of cultural anthropologists studying more recent non-state societies. Evidence can be drawn from a range of sources, including material culture, settlement patterning, iconography and (crucially) patterns of trauma in human remains. The interpretation of such evidence remains inseparable from wider contextual understandings of prehistoric social forms and practices. This paper considers the specific role of archaeological evidence in establishing a broader historical context for the study of violence.

Retaliatory Violence in Human Prehistory
Christopher Boehm

Homicide often spurs lethal retaliation through self-help and this response is widespread among human foragers because brothers are often co-resident in mobile bands. The roots of this behaviour can be traced back to the shared ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, which had strong tendencies to form social dominance hierarchies and to fight, and strong tendencies for alpha peacemakers to stop fights. As well-armed humans were becoming culturally modern, they were living in mobile egalitarian hunting bands that lacked such strong peace makers and lethal retaliation had free play. This continued with tribal agriculturalists who were equally egalitarian, but they tended to live in patrilineal communities, with the males staying put at marriage, and people with such fraternal interest groups developed elaborate rules for feuding. State formation finally brought centralized social control sufficient to put an end to feuding, but self-help killing still continues in certain contexts in modern society.

Biology and the Deep History of Homicide
Randolph Roth

Social science historians are discovering deep patterns in the history of homicide rates. Murders of children by parents or caregivers correlate inversely with fertility rates and appear to be a function of the cost of children relative to parental resources and to parental ambitions for themselves and their children. Murders among unrelated adults correlate with feelings towards government and society. These patterns may represent facultative adaptations to variable or unstable habitats (including social habitats) that may favour the nurture or neglect of children in the first instance, or cooperation or aggression among unrelated adults in the second. Human neural and endocrine systems may have evolved to facilitate such shifts in behaviour.

Killing Kings: Patterns of Regicide in Europe, AD 600–1800
Manuel Eisner

This paper examines the frequency of violent death and regicide amongst 1,513 monarchs in 45 monarchies across Europe between AD 600 and 1800. The analyses reveal that all types of violence combined account for about 22 per cent of all deaths. Murder is by far the most important violent cause of death, accounting for about 15 per cent of all deaths and corresponding to a homicide rate of about 1,000 per 100,000 ruler-years. Analyses of trends over time reveal a significant decline in the frequency of both battle deaths and homicide between the Early Middle Ages and the end of the eighteenth century. A significant part of the drop occurred during the first half of the period, suggesting that the civilizing processes assumed by Norbert Elias started between the seventh and the twelfth centuries. Finally, preliminary analyses suggest that regicide has a significant ‘autoregressive’ component in that the murder of the predecessor and the pre-predecessor increases the risk of homicide for the current monarch. It is suggested that such bundles of regicide may be interpreted as part of extended periods of civil wars and feuding that accompanied the state-building process. The paper concludes by suggesting several individual and contextual risk factors that may be involved in the risk of regicide.

Violence in Non-State Societies: A Review
Amy E. Nivette

Anthropological sources on non-state, tribal societies offer a wealth of evidence on violence that can expand the spatial and temporal gaze of criminological research. Reviewing this literature allows for a more comparative analysis of patterns of violence and challenges contemporary notions of social change and order. This paper provides an overview of the most relevant anthropological evidence on patterns of violence in non-state societies. Specifically, trends and overall levels of violence, age and sex patterns as well as social and environmental factors are reviewed in order to determine whether contemporary concepts and patterns of violence are universal or culturally specific. The findings presented here indicate that violence in non-state societies is a ubiquitous but culturally varying phenomenon used by males and may be related to interdependent social organizations and networks of exchange.

Criminal Justice, Coercion and Consent In ‘Totalitarian’ Society: The Case of National Socialist Germany
Eric A. Johnson

Scholars and layman alike have long assumed that the Nazi regime kept the German people in line by employing heavy doses of coercion involving arbitrary justice and lethal repression meted out by dreaded organizations of the Nazi criminal justice system such as the Gestapo and so-called Special Courts. Between the late 1980s and early 2000s, this view was challenged by a number of scholars who gained access to and analysed previously unavailable archival evidence and who became convinced that the Nazis did not rule primarily through coercion; rather, the Nazi regime was popular with most Germans who gave the regime their voluntary consent. Most recently, however, new proponents of the original view of Nazi support based more on coercion than consent have become popular again. This article employs an unprecedented combination of different types of empirical evidence to determine which view best characterizes the support for the Nazi movement during the Third Reich. The main types of evidence employed are quantitative analyses of thousands of archival files generated by policing and court bodies in three Rhineland cities and thousands of written questionnaires involving Jewish and non-Jewish German people who had resided in cities and smaller communities across the Third Reich.

British Journal of Criminology, May 2011: Volume 51, Issue 3

Theory and Society 40(3)

Jurisdiction, inscription, and state formation: administrative modernism and knowledge regimes
Chandra Mukerji

Culture in the transitions to modernity: seven pillars of a new research agenda
Isaac Ariail Reed & Julia Adams

Where do classifications come from? The DSM-III, the transformation of American psychiatry, and the problem of origins in the sociology of knowledge
Michael Strand

A structural hermeneutics of The O’Reilly Factor
Matthew Norton

Theory and Society, May 2011: Volume 40, Issue 3

Crime & Delinquency 57(3)

Reconsidering Hispanic Gang Membership and Acculturation in a Multivariate Context
Holly Ventura Miller, J.C. Barnes, and Richard D. Hartley

Previous qualitative research has suggested that Hispanic gang membership is linked to the process of acculturation. Specifically, studies have indicated that those who are less assimilated into mainstream American or “Anglo” society are at greater risk for joining gangs. Building on these observations, this study examines the relationship between acculturation and gang membership within a theoretically and empirically informed multivariate framework. Based on a sample of Hispanic adolescents residing in the American Southwest, results largely supported previous qualitative studies that have suggested that a number of factors, including acculturation, are necessary to an understanding of gang membership within this demographic. Findings from logistic regression analyses indicated that respondents’ grade in school, neighborhood drug availability, level of ethnic marginalization, and level of acculturation were all significantly associated with self-reported gang membership. Results also suggested that marginalization may partially mediate the effects of acculturation.

Perceptions of Police Disrespect During Vehicle Stops: A Race-Based Analysis
Patricia Y. Warren

Blacks and Whites perceive American social institutions in very different terms, and views of the police are no exception. Prior research has consistently demonstrated that race is one of the most salient predictors of attitudes toward the police, with African Americans expressing more dissatisfaction than Whites. The purpose of this research is to evaluate this issue by examining the relative influence of vicarious experience and more general trust in social institutions on Black-White differences in perceptions of disrespect by the police. Using survey data from the North Carolina Highway Traffic Study, the results suggest that vicarious experience and more long-standing trust in social institutions influence the likelihood that respondents will perceive police as disrespectful.

Neighborhood Variation in Gang Member Concentrations
Charles M. Katz and Stephen M. Schnebly

This study examines the relationship between neighborhood structure, violent crime, and concentrations of gang members at the neighborhood level. We rely on official police gang list data, police crime data, and two waves of decennial census data characterizing the socioeconomic and demographic conditions of 93 neighborhoods in Mesa, Arizona. Although we find positive linear associations between gang member concentrations and indicators of economic deprivation and social and familial disadvantage, the results of nonlinear models reveal that at extreme levels of disadvantage, the magnitudes of these positive associations are substantially reduced. In addition, although we find that neighborhood crime has no influence on concentrations of gang members net of other neighborhood characteristics, our results reveal that neighborhood instability is a key component for understanding variability in the gang phenomenon. More specifically, our results suggest that gang membership is less likely in social contexts characterized by either a residentially unstable population or rapidly changing structural conditions.

The Gendered Nature of Drug Acquisition Behavior Within Marijuana and Crack Drug Markets
Marie L. Griffin and Nancy Rodriguez

Previous studies examining how gender structures women’s opportunities to engage in the street-level drug economy have provided insight into the changing nature of illicit drug markets and women’s roles within this illegitimate economy. Using national data from the Arrestee Drug Abuse Monitoring program, this study adds to the existing body of research by examining drug market acquisition behaviors and how such drug activity differs by gender. The findings indicate that male and female arrestees use different strategies when obtaining drugs. Specifically, women appear to rely on a more limited array of social contacts than men when acquiring drugs. The results also reveal that the effect of gender on efforts to obtain drugs is not constant across drug types. This study suggests that the strategies used by women when obtaining drugs may very well reflect the gendered culture of street-level drug markets and the influence of personal relationships on women’s involvement in criminal activity.

Urban Inequality and Racial Differences in Risk for Violent Victimization
Toya Z. Like

Past research has shown that racial inequality in urban areas—Black and White residential segregation and economic inequality—is associated with increased levels of homicide offending and that victimization among Blacks yet serves as a protection mechanism against such violence among Whites. However, few studies have considered alternative measures of violence, namely nonfatal violent victimization in the study of racial inequality in urban areas. This oversight is problematic, given that although some scholars suggest that homicide is a reliable indicator of all forms of violence in general, victimization reports often point to qualitative differences in lethal and nonlethal forms of violence. Consequently, this research examines the link between city-level White and Black residential segregation and economic inequality and individual risks for nonfatal violent victimization net of individual-level factors that have also been associated with such risks. The data are disaggregated by race, because White and Black residential segregation and economic inequality are believed to have disparate effects on non-Hispanic Whites’ and non-Hispanic Blacks’ risks. Overall, the findings indicate that both forms of racial inequality function to protect Whites from nonfatal violent victimization but concomitantly increase such risks among Blacks. The implications of these findings and areas of future research are also discussed.

Predictors of School Victimization: Individual, Familial, and School Factors
Susan L. Wynne and Hee-Jong Joo

Recent deadly school crime incidents have caused great concern regarding school safety. From criminal acts to bullying and verbal abuse, school disorder compromises student safety and the learning environment. Using a series of logistic regression analyses and data from the National Crime Victimization Survey’s School Crime Supplement of 2003, this research seeks to identify a combination of individual, family, and school characteristics that can be used to predict student victimization at school. Results indicate that school victimization can be predicted from knowledge of student academic performance, prior victimization experiences, family characteristics, presence of gangs and drugs in the school, and certainty of punishment for school rule breaking. Findings support the need to adopt a multifaceted approach to provide a safer school environment, reduce juvenile offending, and facilitate learning.

Crime & Delinquency, April 2011: Volume 57, Issue 3

Criminology & Public Policy 10(2)

VOLLMER AWARD ADDRESS

Socially responsible Criminology: Quality relevant research with targeted, effective dissemination
Howard N. Snyder

This address argues that some members of the criminology community must take upon themselves the responsibility of communicating the knowledge developed by the field to practitioners and decision makers. It is reasoned that only with such targeted dissemination will the full potential benefits from our work be realized.

VOLLMER AWARD COMMENTARY

The magic and power of data: A tribute to Howard Snyder
Shay Bilchik

Howard N. Snyder
David P. Farrington

IMPACTS OF SEX OFFENDER NOTIFICATION ON COMMUNITY BEHAVIOR

Measuring the impact of sex offender notification on community adoption of protective behaviors 
Rachel Bandy

Editorial Introduction: Sex offender policies in an era of zero tolerance
Jill S. Levenson

The need to debate the fate of sex offender community notification laws
Lisa L. Sample

What is smart sex offender policy?
Karen J. Terry

DECARCERATION IN CALIFORNIA

The past as prologue? 
Rosemary Gartner, Anthony N. Doob and Franklin E. Zimring

Editorial Introduction: Decarceration
Vanessa Barker

So policy makers drive incarceration– Now what?
Shawn D. Bushway

Penal moderation in the United States?
Mary Bosworth

IMPLICATIONS OF RESIDENCE RESTRICTIONS ON SEX OFFENDER HOUSING

The policy implications of residence restrictions on sex offender housing in Upstate NY 
Kelly M. Socia

Editorial Introduction: Policy implications of sex offender residence restrictions laws
Richard Tewksbury

Residence restriction buffer zones and the banishment of sex offenders
Kristen M. Zgoba

Place a moratorium on the passage of sex offender residence restriction laws
J. C. Barnes

Residence restrictions
Keri B. Burchfield

The contexts and politics of evidence-based sex offender policy
Chrysanthi Leon

INVESTIGATING THE SOCIAL ECOLOGY OF PAYDAY LENDING

Does fringe banking exacerbate neighborhood crime rates?
Charis E. Kubrin, Gregory D. Squires, Steven M. Graves and Graham C. Ousey

Editorial Introduction: Does fringe banking exacerbate neighborhood crime rates?
Steven F. Messner

Crime, local institutions, and structural inequality
Eric A. Stewart

Criminology of the unpopular
Pamela Wilcox and John E. Eck

Criminology & Public Policy, May 2011: Volume 10, Issue 2

American Sociological Review 76(2)

Cultural Anchors and the Organization of Differences: A Multi-method Analysis of LGBT Marches on Washington
Amin Ghaziani and Delia Baldassarri

Social scientists describe culture as either coherent or incoherent and political dissent as either unifying or divisive. This article moves beyond such dichotomies. Content, historical, and network analyses of public debates on how to organize four lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Washington marches provide evidence for an integrative position. Rather than just describe consistencies or contradictions, we contend that the key analytic challenge is to explain the organization of differences. We propose one way of doing this using the mechanism of a cultural anchor. Within and across marches, a small collection of ideas remains fixed in the national conversation, yet in a way that allows activists to address their internal diversity and respond to unfolding historical events. These results suggest that activists do not simply organize around their similarities but, through cultural anchors, they use their commonalities to build a thinly coherent foundation that can also support their differences. Situated at the nexus of culture, social movements, sexualities, and networks, this article demonstrates how the anchoring mechanism works in the context of LGBT political organizing.

Culture, Cognition, and Collaborative Networks in Organizations
Sameer B. Srivastava and Mahzarin R. Banaji

This article examines the interplay of culture, cognition, and social networks in organizations with norms that emphasize cross-boundary collaboration. In such settings, social desirability concerns can induce a disparity between how people view themselves in conscious (i.e., deliberative) versus less conscious (i.e., automatic) cognition. These differences have implications for the resulting pattern of intra-organizational collaborative ties. Based on a laboratory study and field data from a biotechnology firm, we find that (1) people consciously report more positive views of themselves as collaborative actors than they appear to hold in less conscious cognition; (2) less conscious collaborative–independent self-views are associated with the choice to enlist organizationally distant colleagues in collaboration; and (3) these self-views are also associated with a person’s likelihood of being successfully enlisted by organizationally distant colleagues (i.e., of supporting these colleagues in collaboration). By contrast, consciously reported collaborative–independent self-views are not associated with these choices. This study contributes to our understanding of how culture is internalized in individual cognition and how self-related cognition is linked to social structure through collaboration. It also demonstrates the limits of self-reports in settings with strong normative pressures and represents a novel integration of methods from cognitive psychology and network analysis.

Courtesy Stigma and Monetary Sanctions: Toward a Socio-Cultural Theory of Punishment
Alexes Harris, Heather Evans, and Katherine Beckett

Recent research suggests that the use of monetary sanctions as a supplementary penalty in state and federal criminal courts is expanding, and that their imposition creates substantial and deleterious legal debt. Little is known, however, about the factors that influence the discretionary imposition of these penalties. This study offers a comprehensive account of the role socio-cultural factors, especially race and ethnicity, have in this institutional sanctioning process. We rely on multilevel statistical analysis of the imposition of monetary sanctions in Washington State courts to test our theory. The theoretical framework emphasizes the need to treat race and ethnicity as complex cultural categories, the meaning and institutional effects of which may vary across time and space. Findings indicate that racialized crime scripts, such as the association of Latinos with drugs, affect defendants whose wrong-doing is stereotype congruent. Moreover, all individuals accused of committing racially and ethnically stigmatized offenses in racialized contexts may experience the courtesy stigma that flows from racialization. We find that race and ethnicity are not just individual attributes but cultural categories that shape the distribution of stigma and the institutional consequences that flow from it.

Changing Workplaces to Reduce Work-Family Conflict: Schedule Control in a White-Collar Organization
Erin L. Kelly, Phyllis Moen, and Eric Tranby

Work-family conflicts are common and consequential for employees, their families, and work organizations. Can workplaces be changed to reduce work-family conflict? Previous research has not been able to assess whether workplace policies or initiatives succeed in reducing work-family conflict or increasing work-family fit. Using longitudinal data collected from 608 employees of a white-collar organization before and after a workplace initiative was implemented, we investigate whether the initiative affects work-family conflict and fit, whether schedule control mediates these effects, and whether work demands, including long hours, moderate the initiative’s effects on work-family outcomes. Analyses clearly demonstrate that the workplace initiative positively affects the work-family interface, primarily by increasing employees’ schedule control. This study points to the importance of schedule control for our understanding of job quality and for management policies and practices.

The Initial Assignment Effect: Local Employer Practices and Positive Career Outcomes for Work-Family Program Users
Forrest Briscoe and Katherine C. Kellogg

One of the great paradoxes of inequality in organizations is that even when organizations introduce new programs designed to help employees in traditionally disadvantaged groups succeed, employees who use these programs often suffer negative career consequences. This study helps to fill a significant gap in the literature by investigating how local employer practices can enable employees to successfully use the programs designed to benefit them. Using a research approach that controls for regulatory environment and program design, we analyze unique longitudinal personnel data from a large law firm to demonstrate that assignment to powerful supervisors upon organization entry improves career outcomes for individuals who later use a reduced-hours program. Additionally, we find that initial assignment to powerful supervisors is more important to positive career outcomes—that is, employee retention and performance-based pay—than are factors such as supervisor assignment at the time of program use. Initial assignment affects career outcomes for later program users through the mechanism of improved access to reputation-building work opportunities. These findings have implications for research on work-family programs and other employee-rights programs and for the role of social capital in careers.

Socioeconomic Status and the Increased Prevalence of Autism in California
Marissa D. King and Peter S. Bearman

The prevalence of autism has increased precipitously—roughly 10-fold in the past 40 years—yet no one knows exactly what caused this dramatic rise. Using a large and representative dataset that spans the California birth cohorts from 1992 through 2000, we examine individual and community resources associated with the likelihood of an autism diagnosis over time. This allows us to identify key social factors that have contributed to increased autism prevalence. While individual-level factors, such as birth weight and parental education, have had a fairly constant effect on likelihood of diagnosis over time, we find that community-level resources drive increased prevalence. This study suggests that neighborhoods dynamically interact with the people living in them in different ways at different times to shape health outcomes. By treating neighborhoods as dynamic, we can better understand the changing socioeconomic gradient of autism and the increase in prevalence.

Comment and Reply

Misclassification by Whom?: A Comment on Campbell and Troyer (2007)
Simon Cheng and Brian Powell

Further Data on Misclassification: A Reply to Cheng and Powell
Mary E. Campbell and Lisa Troyer

American Sociological Review, April 2011: Volume 76, Issue 2

Journal of Criminal Justice 39(2)

Self-control theory: The Tyrannosaurus rex of criminology is poised to devour criminal justice  
Matt DeLisi

Judicial scrutiny of gender-based employment practices in the criminal justice system
Claire Angelique R.I. Nolasco, Michael S. Vaughn

Research Highlights: This study examines sex discrimination claims against criminal justice agencies. Employment practices are tested using two theories: disparate impact and disparate treatment. Each theory uses distinct burden shifting procedures and applies different employment practices. Policy implications are described for criminal justice agencies to ensure their legality.

Moving beyond the socialization hypothesis: The effects of maternal smoking during pregnancy on the development of self-control
Michael G. Turner, Crista M. Livecchi, Kevin M. Beaver, Jeb Booth

Research Highlights: The development of self-control. Neuropsychological deficits and self-control. Self-control varies across neighborhood context and race.

Compstat in Australia: An analysis of the spatial and temporal impact
Lorraine Mazerolle, James McBroom, Sacha Rombouts

Research Highlights: Empirical evaluation of crime control impact for Australian version of COMPSTAT (OPRs). Mixed model approach assessing OPRs’ role in explaining crime variation (spatial and temporal). Major differences between 29 police districts (for assault, robbery, unlawful entry). Select few police districts driving statewide crime reductions. Police districts to be called-upon during maturation of OPRs to facilitate crime reduction.

First-time DWI offenders are at risk of recidivating regardless of sanctions imposed
Eileen M. Ahlin, Paul L. Zador, William J. Rauch, Jan M. Howard, G. Doug Duncan

Research Highlights: Deterrence among first-time DWI offenders not affected by sanction type First-time DWI offenders have high rate of recidivism First-time DWI offenders more likely to recidivate than drivers with no prior DWI

Serious assaults on prison staff: A descriptive analysis
Jon R. Sorensen, Mark D. Cunningham, Mark P. Vigen, S.O. Woods

Research Highlights: Serious assaults on prison staff are quite infrequent. Staff assaults causing life-threatening injury are extremely rare. Almost all staff assaults involved lone assailants. Black and female correctional officers were underrepresented. Younger, Black, gang member, or violence-convicted assailants were over-represented.

Violent criminals locked up: Examining the effect of incarceration on behavioral continuity
Jon Sorensen, Jaya Davis

Research Highlights: Nearly 15% of inmates were involved in a “dangerous rule violation”. Inmates convicted of robbery and assault committed more violations. Inmates convicted of homicide committed an average number of violations. Inmates convicted of sexual assault committed fewer violations. Findings provide mixed support for the behavioral continuity thesis.

Procedural justice during police-citizen encounters: The effects of process-based policing on citizen compliance and demeanor
Mengyan Dai, James Frank, Ivan Sun

Research Highlights: Procedural justice factors have limited and inconsistent effects on citizen behavior. Officers’ demeanor has significant effects on citizen disrespect. Officers’ consideration of citizen voice could significantly reduce citizen noncompliance. Citizen disrespect and citizen noncompliance do not share common antecedents.

Does victimization reduce self-control? A longitudinal analysis
Robert Agnew, Heather Scheuerman, Jessica Grosholz, Deena Isom, Lesley Watson, Sherod Thaxton

Research Highlights: The effect of victimization on self-control is examined using longitudinal data. Victimization reduces subsequent self-control in the near term. Results support general strain theory.

Examining GPS monitoring alerts triggered by sex offenders: The divergence of legislative goals and practical application in community corrections
Gaylene S. Armstrong, Beth C. Freeman

Research Highlights: GPS legislation assumes monitoring controls high risk offender movements. A high number of offender “alerts” or “triggers” result from GPS equipment limitations. Most GPS monitored sex offenders do not enter “restricted” zones when wearing monitoring equipment Offender absconding though equipment removal cannot be entirely controlled.

Can financial incentives reduce juvenile confinement levels? An evaluation of the Redeploy Illinois program
Gaylene S. Armstrong, Todd A. Armstrong, Vince J. Webb, Cassandra A. Atkin

Research Highlights: Counties in Illinois can easily acquire confinement and evaluation services at state funded facilities and as a result much needed local community based alternatives are non-existent. Legislation was adopted that mandated a reduction of juveniles set to state funded residential facilities. Financial incentives to counties were effective in alleviating over reliance on state funded juvenile residential facilities for evaluation and confinement purposes. Changes in placements were primarily attributable to a decrease in placement for evaluation purposes which kept juveniles in their home communities as a result.

Black–white differences in positive outcome expectancies for crime: A study of male federal prison inmates
Glenn D. Walters

Research Highlights: Positive outcome expectancies for crime were compared for black and white inmates. Black inmates had higher positive outcome expectancies for crime than white inmates. Outcome expectancy differences not the result of demographics or criminal thinking. Anticipation of social benefits of crime particularly salient for black inmates. Achievement motivation important in explaining black–white differences in crime.

Is teen court the best fit? Assessing the predictive validity of the Teen Court Peer Influence Scale
Kenneth S. Smith, Ashley G. Blackburn

Research Highlights: The predictive validity of the Teen Court Peer Influence Scale was tested. 404 teen court participants in Florida completed the TCPIS from 2006-2007. TCPIS scores explained significant variance among delinquency measures. The TCPIS may be useful in deciding who is best suited for teen court.

 Journal of Criminal Justice, March 2011: Volume 39, Issue 2