Sunday, August 21, 2011

Resuming Regular Updates

Now that summer is over, I'll be providing more timely updates. Thanks for your patience.

Theory and Society 40(5)

States, regimes, and decisions: why Jews were expelled from Medieval England and France
Karen Barkey and Ira Katznelson

Science and neoliberal globalization: a political sociological approach
Kelly Moore, Daniel Lee Kleinman, David Hess and Scott Frickel

Towards a more pragmatic sociology of markets
Christine Overdevest

Beyond dialogue and antagonism: a Bakhtinian perspective on the controversy in political theory
Leszek Koczanowicz

Clientelism and conceptual stretching: differentiating among concepts and among analytical levels
Tina Hilgers

Theory and Society, September 2011: Volume 40, Issue 5

British Journal of Criminology 51(5)

Poverty Matters: A Reassessment of the Inequality–Homicide Relationship in Cross-National Studies
William Alex Pridemore
Dozens of cross-national studies of homicide have been published. Virtually all have reported an association between inequality and homicide, leading scholars to draw strong conclusions about this relationship. Unfortunately, each of these studies failed to control for poverty, even though poverty is the most consistent predictor of area homicide rates in the US empirical literature and a main confounder of the inequality–homicide association. The cross-national findings are also incongruent with US studies, which have yielded inconsistent results for the inequality–homicide association. In the present study, I replicated two prior studies in which a significant inequality–homicide association was found. After the original results were replicated, models that included a measure of poverty were estimated to see whether its inclusion had an impact on the inequality–homicide association. When effects for poverty and inequality were estimated in the same model, there was a positive and significant poverty–homicide association, while the inequality–homicide association disappeared in two of three models. These findings were consistent across different samples, data years, measures of inequality, dependent variables (overall and sex-specific homicide rates) and estimation procedures. The new results are congruent with what we know about poverty, inequality and homicide from the US empirical literature and suggest that the strong conclusions drawn about the inequality–homicide association may need to be reassessed, as the association may be a spurious result of model misspecification.

‘The Best Drivers in the World’: Drink-Driving and Risk Assessment
Lars Fynbo and Margaretha Järvinen
The paper analyses risk behaviour as described by a group of convicted drink-drivers. Risk assessment is seen as a part of a complicated process reflecting moral values in specific socio-cultural settings and within a specific framework of time. The respondents’ retrospective accounts of their drink-driving are interpreted as part of moral identity negotiations, focusing on four dimensions: drink-driving as non-voluntary behaviour, drink-driving as strategic behaviour, drink-driving and control, and drink-driving and ‘normalcy’. Central to these negotiations is the fact that many respondents come from social environments (be that friend groups or workmate groups) where drink-driving is common and that they therefore do not regard—or did not regard—drink-driving as deviant behaviour.

The Specific Deterrent Effect of Higher Fines on Drink-Driving Offenders
Don Weatherburn and Steve Moffatt
Fines are an extremely common sanction in most Western countries and, in some countries, have become an important source of government revenue. Despite this, the deterrent effectiveness of high fines has received little research attention. This article reports the results of a two-stage least-squares analysis of the specific deterrent effect of high fines on drink-driving offenders in NSW, Australia, in which judicial severity served as the instrumental variable. Despite substantial variation in the fines imposed by magistrates on drink-drivers, no significant deterrent effect from higher fines was found. Various explanations for the failure to observe a deterrent effect are discussed.

A Soundtrack to (illegal) Entrepreneurship: Pirated CD/DVD Selling in a Greek Provincial City
Georgios A. Antonopoulos, Dick Hobbs, and Rob Hornsby
This paper—by using the pirated CD/DVD market in a provincial city in Greece as a case study—will attempt to show how alien conspiracy theory has permeated the understanding of ‘organized crime’ and how the concept serves to enforce racism and, in particular, the treatment of diasporic communities. The paper will then proceed to interrogate the concept in the context of the local operation of this market in tandem with various legitimate interests and how, despite the exhortations of powerful commercial forces, it is tolerated.

Homicide Through A Different Lens
Patrice K. Morris and Adam Graycar
Homicide rates vary across modern societies, yet most scholarly works on homicide are based on studies in developed countries, although, in less developed countries, homicide rates are higher. Homicide is multidimensional and its related social causes and prevalence differ across cultures. In low-homicide countries, most homicides occur as a result of either criminal activity or personal relationship difficulties. This paper highlights that, in one developing country—Jamaica—a different pattern is more common. High homicide rates are connected with partisan politics and neighbourhood social organization. The argument is that neighbourhood social and political factors drive high homicide rates in urban Jamaica.

Exploring the Impact of Arson-Reduction Strategies: Panel Data Evidence from England
Rhys Andrews
In 2001, the UK government funded the introduction of a series of targeted situational preventive schemes and multi-agency partnerships to reduce deliberate fire-setting in vehicles. This paper explores the impact of these alternative arson-reduction strategies on vehicle arson in the areas served by fire authorities in England utilizing panel data for an eight-year period (1999–2006). The statistical results suggest that both forms of intervention have been successful in reducing vehicle arson, and that higher input intensity is also responsible for better outcomes. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings are discussed.

Escaping the Family Tradition: A Multi-Generation Study of Occupational Status and Criminal Behaviour
Anke A.T. Ramakers, Catrien Bijleveld, and Stijn Ruiter
This paper investigates the intersection of two types of reproduction over generations: the transmission of offending and of occupational status. According to Farrington's (2002) risk factor mechanism, the effect of parental offending on offspring offending should decrease when the intergenerational transmission of occupational status is taken into account. To test this mechanism, we use a longitudinal prospective multi-generation research design, containing data from the Netherlands on offending and occupational status during the twentieth century. Results show that a substantial part of the intergenerational association in offending is indeed mediated by risk factors such as low occupational status and, especially, low educational attainment.

British Journal of Criminology, September 2011: Volume 51, Issue 5

Theoretical Criminology 15(3)

Theorizing surveillance in crime control
Kevin D. Haggerty, Dean Wilson, and Gavin J.D. Smith
Surveillance is conventionally perceived as a key component of the crime control apparatus. This editors’ introduction to a Special Issue of Theoretical Criminology on ‘Theorizing Surveillance in Crime Control’ outlines both the need for new theorizing on surveillance and some of the difficulties in doing so. It also introduces the seven pieces in the Special Issue.

Surveillance and violence from afar: The politics of drones and liminal security-scapes
Tyler Wall and Torin Monahan
As surveillance and military devices, drones—or ‘unmanned aerial vehicles’—offer a prism for theorizing the technological politics of warfare and governance. This prism reveals some violent articulations of US imperialism and nationalism, the dehumanizing translation of bodies into ‘targets’ for remote monitoring and destruction, and the insidious application of militarized systems and rationalities to domestic territories and populations. In this article, we analyze the deployment of drones within warzones in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan and borderzones and urban areas in the USA. What we call ‘the drone stare’ is a type of surveillance that abstracts people from contexts, thereby reducing variation, difference, and noise that may impede action or introduce moral ambiguity. Through these processes, drones further normalize the ongoing subjugation of those marked as Other.

The benevolent watch: Therapeutic surveillance in drug treatment court
Dawn Moore
This article offers an alternative to the traditional, technocentric and control oriented focus of surveillance studies. Drawing on field work in drug treatment courts (DTCs), I theorize the notion of ‘therapeutic surveillance’ as a seemingly benevolent form of monitoring which also troubles the ‘care/control’ dichotomy familiar to surveillance studies and social theory more generally. I look specifically at the roles of judges, treatment workers and DTC participants in constituting a surveillant assemblage which relies on personal relationships, intimate knowledge and pastoral care. I suggest that surveillance studies can move beyond the panopticon by recognizing the varied ways in which surveillance takes place. These strategies can include benevolent acts and intentions alongside (and sometimes coterminous with) coercive manoeuvres.

Hijackers and humble servants: Individuals as camwitnesses in contemporary controlwork
Hille Koskela
This article examines the relationships between the authorities of surveillance and the public. Four ‘modalities of surveillance’ are used as a contextual framework to describe different relationships and to demonstrate that they can be bidirectional as well as unidirectional. In contemporary surveillance there is a dialogue between traditional surveillance and counter-surveillance which is targeted against the authorities. Yet, surveillance also contains performative practices and incidental witnessing in which the authorities play no role. The latest development involves responsibilizing the public, as citizens are encouraged to participate in gathering evidence for crime control. The article shows how the mutual correlations between surveillance, crime and evidence are constantly transforming.

Revisiting the synopticon: Reconsidering Mathiesen’s ‘The Viewer Society’ in the age of Web 2.0
Aaron Doyle
Thomas Mathiesen’s ‘The Viewer Society’ has been widely influential. Mathiesen posited, alongside the panopticon, a reciprocal system of control, the synopticon, in which ‘the many’ watch ‘the few’. I point to the value of Mathiesen’s arguments but also suggest a reconsideration. I consider where recent challenges to theorizing surveillance as panoptic leave the synopticon. The synopticon is tied to a top—down, instrumental way of theorizing the media. It neglects resistance, alternative currents in media production and reception, the role of culture and the increasing centrality of the internet. Mathiesen’s piece is most useful in a narrower way, in highlighting how surveillance and the mass media interact, rather than in thinking about the role of the media in control more generally.

Counterveillance: How Foucault and the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons reversed the optics
Michael Welch
The analysis herein considers the dynamics of panopticism by developing further the concept of counter-surveillance—or counterveillance—whereby prison officials rather than the prisoners become the target of unwanted attention. While maintaining an interest in panoptic as well as synoptic theory, the article describes two counterveillant tactics deployed by Foucault and the Groupe d’Information sur les Prisons (GIP) in France during the 1970s. First, the GIP turned the prison inside out, in a manner of speaking, so as to publicly expose the harsh conditions of confinement. Second, the group set out to watch the watchers in an effort to hold certain prison administrators accountable for their unjust policies and practices. Implications of optical activism aimed at improving transparency in penal operations also are discussed alongside the limits of such protest.

The use of surveillance cameras in a Riyadh shopping mall: Protecting profits or protecting morality?
Ibrahim Alhadar and Michael McCahill
The rise of mass private property means that people increasingly spend their time in publicly accessible spaces controlled by private interests. Unlike public policing, which is reactive and morally toned, the policing that takes place in mass private property tends to be proactive and instrumental and utilizes new surveillance technologies (such as surveillance cameras) not to punish deviants, but to create and sustain the flow of profit. However, much of the literature on this topic has focused on the emergence of private policing in western industrial societies. In contrast, this study draws upon interviews and observational research conducted in the surveillance camera control room of a shopping mall in Riyadh (the capital City of Saudi Arabia) to show how private policing and the use of new surveillance technologies are shaped by existing social relations and cultural traditions. In this setting we argue that new surveillance technologies are used not only to protect profit, but to protect public morality. We discuss the significance of our empirical findings for broader theoretical debates on surveillance, gender and resistance.

‘Crimmigrant’ bodies and bona fide travelers: Surveillance, citizenship and global governance
Katja Franko Aas
The article explores the nature of surveillance and crime control as they enter the sphere of global governance. Taking the European Union (EU) as a point of departure, it examines the relationship between surveillance and sovereignty, and looks more broadly at the role that transnational surveillance and crime control play in constructing a particular type of globally divided polity. Transnational surveillance practices are increasingly addressing a public which is no longer defined exclusively as the citizenry of the nation state, nor are all European citizens entitled to the privileges of such citizenship. Through the notions of bona fide global citizens and ‘crimmigrant’ others the article details how the seeming universality of citizenship is punctuated by novel categories of globally included and excluded populations, thus revealing the inadequacy of the traditional liberal language of citizenship as the springboard for articulating a critical discourse of rights.

Theoretical Criminology, August 2011: Volume 15, Issue 3

Critical Criminology 19(3)

Structuration Theory and Wrongful Imprisonment: From ‘Victimhood’ to ‘Survivorship’?
Gabe Tan
Building on existing research from a zemiological approach, this article seeks to contribute to a more ontological understanding of the production and reproduction of harms associated with wrongful imprisonment in England and Wales. Drawing from Anthony Giddens’s theory of structuration, it is argued that whilst the harms of wrongful imprisonment are both complex and devastating, victims need not be perceived as entirely passive. Rather, victims of wrongful imprisonment can be viewed as knowledgeable agents with the intrinsic capacity and agency to strategically cope with and even survive the harms that they experience. The article concludes with personal accounts by victims of wrongful imprisonment that form an identifiable ‘survivor’ discourse to highlight some of the key critical factors that are vital in helping victims of wrongful imprisonment to re-structure their lives after release.

Cultural Criminology: An Invitation… to What?
Dale Spencer
Since the mid 1990s, a strand of criminology emerged that is concerned with the co-constitution of crime and culture under the general rubric of ‘cultural criminology’. In the titles Cultural Criminology Unleashed and Cultural Criminology: An Invitation, criminologists spearheading this brand of criminology make claims for its originality and its status as a subversive alternative to conventional criminological approaches to studies of crime and deviance. The basis for the ‘new’ cultural criminology is its ostensible ability to account for the culture and subcultures of crime, the criminalization of cultural and subcultural activities, and the politics of criminalization. This paper offers a comparison of cultural criminology to 1960s and 1970s labeling theory to assess whether or not cultural criminology has developed a grammar of critique capable of resolving fundamental contradictions that haunt critical criminology and contesting contemporary administrative criminology. Points of comparison are made through ontological categories of power and criminal identity and a consideration of the epistemological categories of the respective bodies of literature.

OxyContin and a Regulation Deficiency of the Pharmaceutical Industry: Rethinking State-Corporate Crime
O. Hayden Griffin & Bryan Lee Miller
On May 10, 2007, three executives of the pharmaceutical company Purdue Pharma pled guilty in federal court to misleading doctors and patients about the risk of addiction and potential for abuse of OxyContin. Additionally, Purdue Pharma paid over $600 million in fines and other payments to the United States government and the Commonwealth of Virginia. The drug OxyContin was first introduced to the market in December of 1995. Warning signs of the drug’s potential for abuse were almost immediate, and there were reports of copious amounts of the drug being diverted into the black market for recreational use. In some cases, criminologists have argued that if the government fails to protect its citizens from the harm of a corporation then such behavior should be considered state-corporate crime. We critically evaluate the case of OxyContin to see if it falls under the state-corporate crime paradigm. Further, we argue the state-corporate crime paradigm can benefit from an increased focus on the organizational structures of regulation agencies.

How an Elite-Engineered Moral Panic Led to the U.S. War on Iraq
Scott A. Bonn
Critics argue that the G.W. Bush administration deliberately misled the U.S. public about an Iraqi threat after 9/11 but empirical evidence that presidential deception influenced public support for war has been lacking. An examination of presidential rhetoric concerning Iraq in the U.S. media revealed that it changed in tone after 9/11, consistent with moral panic processes. Logistic regression analysis of public opinion leading up to the war revealed that shifts in support for invasion directly mirrored presidential rhetoric. The findings of this study suggest that the Bush administration engineered a moral panic over Iraq with the support of the media.

Criminology and Human-Animal Violence Research: The Contribution and the Challenge
Nik Taylor
Using theories concerning human-animal abuse links this paper assesses the role(s) that criminology can play in understanding human-animal relationships. That this is not a one-way process of knowledge transferral is acknowledged with analysis of the contribution that human-animal studies can offer in return. Following a brief outline of human-animal abuse theses the contributions that criminology can play in furthering understandings of, and informing responses to, this phenomenon are discussed. A critique of mainstream approaches towards human-animal abuse links, namely, their conceptualization of animals as tools, is then outlined. The argument that anthropocentric approaches to the study of interhuman violence actually reinforce the forms of oppression which create and maintain such forms of violence in the first place, is then developed. The author concludes that the incorporation of human-animal relationships into criminology offers something in return, i.e. an opportunity to re-think the modernist foundations upon which (traditional) criminology is built.

Critical Criminology, September 2011: Volume 19, Issue 3

Crime & Delinquency 57(5)

How Justice System Officials View Wrongful Convictions
Brad Smith, Marvin Zalman, and Angie Kiger
The wrongful conviction of factually innocent people is a growing concern within the United States. Reforms generated by this concern are predicated in part on the views of justice system participants. The authors surveyed judges, police officials, prosecutors, and defense lawyers in Michigan regarding their views of why wrongful convictions occur. The findings reveal that all groups acknowledge error and inaccuracy among justice system participants. In general, police and prosecutors believe that error levels are lowest, judges estimate higher error levels, and defense attorneys rank errors higher than other respondents. A majority of police, prosecutors, and judges believe that wrongful convictions do not occur with sufficient frequency to warrant system reforms, whereas a majority of defense attorneys believe that procedural changes are warranted. The findings reveal distinct occupational perspectives in respondents’ attitudes concerning wrongful conviction.

Parole? Nope, Not for Me: Voluntarily Maxing Out of Prison
Michael Ostermann
This study addresses the phenomenon of inmates voluntarily forgoing parole supervision and opting to remain in prison until the maximum expiration of their sentence. The research was conducted to inform public policy makers about the potential repercussions of this decision-making process and to help guide future policy and legislative proposals that would target this group of inmates. Bivariate and multivariate analyses are used to explore characteristics of this population with regard to postrelease recidivism and prerelease indicators of recidivism. A 2005 group of voluntary max outs are contrasted with those who are forced to max out due to continual parole denial as well as those who are released to parole supervision. All offenders were released in the state of New Jersey. Although several between-group differences were apparent between both max out groups and the parole group at a bivariate level, differences between the two max out groups were far less pronounced. Multivariate Cox regression models indicated that, after controlling for pertinent predictor variables, the likelihood of experiencing a new arrest and/or incarceration after release did not significantly differ according to group membership. Findings suggest that parole boards that make decisions in discretionary release systems should more closely analyze the release opportunities that already present themselves to their agencies but are not capitalized on. Because those who are forced to max through continual denial of parole demonstrated such similar prerelease characteristics to the voluntary max out group, it is unlikely that many who would have otherwise voluntarily maxed their sentence would be paroled if the ability to make this decision were taken away.

Institutional Misconduct, Delinquent Background, and Rearrest Frequency Among Serious and Violent Delinquent Offenders
Chad R. Trulson, Matt DeLisi, and James W. Marquart
This study examines the relationship of institutional misconduct to postrelease rearrest, controlling for a battery of preincarceration variables typically found to influence recidivism among institutionalized delinquent offenders. Based on data from 1,804 serious and violent male delinquents released from a large southern juvenile correctional system, this research found limited support for institutional misconduct as a determinant of recidivism. Of all measures of misconduct, only the rate of total misconduct infractions was related to postrelease rearrest, and this effect was generally small and found only in the rearrest frequency model, not the dichotomous rearrest model. Implications for research and practice are explored.

Repeat Offending and Repeat Victimization: Assessing Similarities and Differences in Psychosocial Risk Factors
Abigail A. Fagan and Paul Mazerolle
The overlap between victims and offenders is increasingly being recognized, with mounting evidence that victims and offenders have similar demographic characteristics, that victimization increases the likelihood of offending, and that offenders are at high risk for becoming victims of crime. Despite this evidence, there is limited research regarding the extent to which repeat victims are likely to be repeat offenders, and few studies have assessed whether predictors of repeat victimization and repeat offending are similar. Using data from a longitudinal study of young people in Brisbane, Australia, this study demonstrates that despite some overlap, there are some important differences in predictors of repeat offenders and repeat victims.

Disregarding Graduated Treatment: Why Transfer Aggravates Recidivism
Kristin Johnson, Lonn Lanza-Kaduce, and Jennifer Woolard
These data merge correctional histories with official state and courthouse information for a sample of teenage offenders, some of whom had been transferred to the adult system. Previous research indicated that transfer aggravates recidivism after the age of 18. The correctional data allow the examination of the relationship between sanctions and recidivism for repeat offenders. The authors explored whether repeat offenders who received graduated sanctions had lower recidivism after age 18 than those who leapfrogged over graduated sanctions. Transfer often involves leapfrogging over treatment options; sometimes it leads to secure placement in adult facilities but sometimes it results in adult probation. Within the juvenile justice system, some repeat offenders jump over intermediate interventions to deep-end placements. Graduated sanctions lead to less recidivism. When measures of graduated sanctions are included in multivariate analyses, transfer no longer predicts recidivism.

How Long After? A Natural Experiment Assessing the Impact of the Length of Aftercare Service Delivery on Recidivism
Megan C. Kurlychek, Andrew P. Wheeler, Leigh A. Tinik, and Cynthia A. Kempinen
Although aftercare programs have been gaining popularity as a mechanism for helping offenders readjust to society, evaluations of their success remain varied. This is most likely due to the diversity of programs labeled as aftercare and the inability of research to isolate specific program components. The current study capitalizes on a natural experiment to examine the impact of one particular component, length of service delivery, on recidivism. The study employs survival analysis techniques on a population of inmates graduating from a motivational boot camp who either received no aftercare, 30 days of aftercare, or 90 days of aftercare (depending on the existing policy on their graduation date). Findings show that those receiving 30 days of aftercare services are indistinguishable from those receiving no aftercare services in terms of recidivism. Also, we find that although those receiving 90 days of aftercare did recidivate substantially less than those receiving 0 or 30 days of aftercare, after accounting for sample attrition, however, these findings also lacked statistical significance.

Confronting Delinquency: Probations Officers’ Use of Coercion and Client-Centered Tactics to Foster Youth Compliance
Craig S. Schwalbe and Tina Maschi
Youthful compliance with juvenile court mandates is a cornerstone of effective probation practice. Despite this, research has not examined probation strategies for encouraging and enforcing youthful compliance with probation conditions. This study describes the use of confrontational tactics and client-centered approaches reported by probation officers in their supervision of delinquent youths. The study was conducted with data from a Web-based survey of probation (N = 308). Results indicate that officers balanced confrontational approaches with client-centered approaches. Officers employed confrontational tactics more frequently than client-centered strategies for youths with substance use problems, with younger youths, and with African American females. Alternatively, officers reported more client-centered approaches with females who had higher histories of prior service utilization and with youths who were perceived by officers to be honest. These findings open new avenues for research on the effectiveness of confrontation and client-centered approaches toward an evidence base for effective probation practice.

Crime & Delinquency, September 2011: Volume 57, Issue 5

Criminology 49(3)

Spreading The Wealth: The Effect Of The Distribution Of Income And Race/Ethnicity Across Households And Neighborhoods On City Crime Trajectories
John R. Hipp
This study tests the effect of the composition and distribution of economic resources and race/ethnicity in cities, as well as how they are geographically distributed within these cities, on crime rates during a 30-year period. Using data on 352 cities from 1970 to 2000 in metropolitan areas that experienced a large growth in population after World War II, this study theorizes that the effect of racial/ethnic or economic segregation on crime is stronger in cities in which race/ethnicity or income are more salient (because of greater heterogeneity or inequality). We test and find that higher levels of segregation in cities with high levels of racial/ethnic heterogeneity lead to particularly high overall levels of the types of crime studied here (aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries, and motor vehicle thefts). Similarly, higher levels of economic segregation lead to much higher levels of crime in cities with higher levels of inequality.

Testing A Bayesian Learning Theory Of Deterrence Among Serious Juvenile Offenders
Shamena Anwar and Thomas A. Loughran
The effect of criminal experience on risk perceptions is of central importance to deterrence theory but has been vastly understudied. This article develops a realistic Bayesian learning model of how individuals will update their risk perceptions over time in response to the signals they receive during their offending experiences. This model implies a simple function that we estimate to determine the deterrent effect of an arrest. We find that an individual who commits one crime and is arrested will increase his or her perceived probability of being caught by 6.3 percent compared with if he or she had not been arrested. We also find evidence that the more informative the signal received by an individual is, the more he or she will respond to it, which is consistent with more experienced offenders responding less to an arrest than less experienced offenders do. Parsing our results out by type of crime indicates that an individual who is arrested for an aggressive crime will increase both his or her aggressive crime risk perception as well as his or her income-generating crime risk perception, although the magnitude of the former may be slightly larger. This implies that risk perception updating, and thus potentially deterrence, may be partially, although not completely, crime specific.

The Cultural Context Of Adolescent Drinking And Violence In 30 European Countries
Richard B. Felson, Jukka Savolainen, Thoroddur Bjarnason, Amy L. Anderson and I. Tusty Zohra
Cross-national variation in the effect of alcohol on adolescent violence is examined with survey data from 30 European countries. The data are analyzed using a method that makes it possible to isolate the nonspurious portion of the alcohol–violence relationship in different countries. In addition, multilevel models are used to estimate the effects of region and contextual measures of adolescent drinking on the alcohol–violence relationship. The evidence suggests that drinking has a strong effect on adolescent violence in the Nordic and Eastern European countries but has little or no effect in the Mediterranean countries. In the Mediterranean countries, where adolescents drink frequently but in moderation, the relationship between alcohol use and violence is almost entirely spurious. Findings suggest that the observed pattern is due to regional differences in the tendency for adolescents and their peers to drink to intoxication, as well as in their tendency to become intoxicated in settings where adult guardianship is absent.

Informal Control And Illicit Drug Trade
Scott Jacques and Richard Wright
Antidrug legislation and enforcement are meant to reduce the trade in illegal drugs by increasing their price. Yet the unintended consequence is an increase in informal control—including retaliation, negotiation, avoidance, and toleration—among drug users and dealers. Little existing theory or research has explored the connections between informal control and drug trading. This article uses the rational choice and opportunity perspectives to explore the question: How and why does the frequency and seriousness of popular justice—as a whole or for each form—affect the price and rate of drug sales? The proposed theory is grounded on and illustrated with qualitative data obtained from drug dealers. This article concludes by discussing the scholarly and policy implications.

Predicting The Violent Offender:The Discriminant Validity Of The Subculture Of Violence
Jean Marie Mcgloin, Christopher J. Schreck, Eric A. Stewart and Graham C. Ousey
This study tests the extent to which an adherence to the subculture of violence uniquely predicts a tendency to favor violence or instead predicts a more generalized offending repertoire, of which violence is part. Specifically, we use a unique analytic technique that provides the opportunity to distinguish empirically between the “violent offender” and/or the “frequent offender.” The results suggest that holding values favorable toward violence consistently predicts general offending but do not identify youth who systematically favor violence over nonviolence. This discussion considers the impact of these findings for the continued utility of the subculture of violence perspective.

The Philadelphia Foot Patrol Experiment: A Randomized Controlled Trial Of Police Patrol Effectiveness In Violent Crime Hotspots
Jerry H. Ratcliffe, Travis Taniguchi, Elizabeth R. Groff and Jennifer D. Wood
Originating with the Newark, NJ, foot patrol experiment, research has found police foot patrols improve community perception of the police and reduce fear of crime, but they are generally unable to reduce the incidence of crime. Previous tests of foot patrol have, however, suffered from statistical and measurement issues and have not fully explored the potential dynamics of deterrence within microspatial settings. In this article, we report on the efforts of more than 200 foot patrol officers during the summer of 2009 in Philadelphia. Geographic information systems (GIS) analysis was the basis for a randomized controlled trial of police effectiveness across 60 violent crime hotspots. The results identified a significant reduction in the level of treatment area violent crime after 12 weeks. A linear regression model with separate slopes fitted for treatment and control groups clarified the relationship even more. Even after accounting for natural regression to the mean, target areas in the top 40 percent on pretreatment violent crime counts had significantly less violent crime during the operational period. Target areas outperformed the control sites by 23 percent, resulting in a total net effect (once displacement was considered) of 53 violent crimes prevented. The results suggest that targeted foot patrols in violent crime hotspots can significantly reduce violent crime levels as long as a threshold level of violence exists initially. The findings contribute to a growing body of evidence on the contribution of hotspots and place-based policing to the reduction of crime, and especially violent crime, which is a significant public health threat in the United States. We suggest that intensive foot patrol efforts in violent hotspots may achieve deterrence at a microspatial level, primarily by increasing the certainty of disruption, apprehension, and arrest. The theoretical and practical implications for violence reduction are discussed.

A Longitudinal Test Of Social Disorganization Theory: Feedback Effects Among Cohesion, Social Control, And Disorder
Wouter Steenbeek and John R. Hipp
Social disorganization theory holds that neighborhoods with greater residential stability, higher socioeconomic status, and more ethnic homogeneity experience less disorder because these neighborhoods have higher social cohesion and exercise more social control. Recent extensions of the theory argue that disorder in turn affects these structural characteristics and mechanisms. Using a data set on 74 neighborhoods in the city of Utrecht in the Netherlands spanning 10 years, we tested the extended theory, which to date only a few studies have been able to do because of the unavailability of neighborhood-level longitudinal data. We also improve on previous studies by distinguishing between the potential for social control (feelings of responsibility) and the actual social control behavior. Cross-sectional analyses replicate earlier findings, but the results of longitudinal cross-lagged models suggest that disorder has large consequences for subsequent levels of social control and residential instability, thus leading to more disorder. This is in contrast to most previous studies, which assume disorder to be more a consequence than a cause. This study underlines the importance of longitudinal data, allowing for simultaneously testing the causes and consequences of disorder, as well as the importance of breaking down social control into the two dimensions of the potential for social control and the actual social control behavior.

Neighborhood Context And Nonlinear Peer Effects On Adolescent Violent Crime
Gregory M. Zimmerman and Steven F. Messner
Although evidence of the strong correlation between deviant behavior and exposure to deviant peers is overwhelming, researchers have yet to investigate whether a nonlinear functional form better captures this relationship than does a linear form. Researchers also have yet to examine the extent to which peer effects vary as a function of the neighborhood context. To address these issues, we use data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods (PHDCN) to examine 1) the functional form of the relationship between peer violence exposure and self-reported violent crime and 2) the extent to which the effect of exposure to violent peers on violence is ecologically structured. Estimates from logistic hierarchical models indicate that the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime decreases at higher values of peer violence, as reflected in a nonlinear relationship (expressed in terms of log-odds). Furthermore, exposure to violent peers increases along with neighborhood disadvantage, and the effect of peer violence exposure on violent crime is attenuated as neighborhood disadvantage increases, which is reflected in a cross-level peer violence/disadvantage interaction.

Research Note: The Utility Of The Deviant Case In The Development Of Criminological Theory
Christopher J. Sullivan
This article asserts that the deviant case method offers a potential avenue for enhancing theory directed at explaining crime by using more available information to better connect the process of analyzing cases with that of explanatory refinement and elaboration. This approach has facilitated theoretical development in other social sciences and has proven useful where applied in criminological inquiry. Extant research is reviewed, and an empirical example is presented to demonstrate how this approach might be operationalized in criminological inquiry using quantitative methods. Conclusions relevant to future research are considered.

Criminology, August 2011: Volume 49, Issue 3

Journal of Quantitative Criminology 27(3)

How Do They ‘End Up Together’? A Social Network Analysis of Self-Control, Homophily, and Adolescent Relationships
Jacob T. N. Young
Self-control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990) argues that individuals with similar attributes tend to ‘end up together’ (i.e., homophily) because of the tendency to select friends based on self-control. Studies documenting homophily in peer groups interpret the correlation between self-control, peer delinquency, and self-reported delinquency as evidence that self-control is an influential factor in friendship formation. However, past studies are limited because they do not directly test the hypothesis that self-control influences friendship selection, nor do they account for other mechanisms that may influence decisions. As a result, it is unclear whether the correlation between individual and peer behavior is the result of selection based on self-control or alternative mechanisms. To address this gap in the literature this study employs exponential random graph modeling to test hypotheses derived from self-control theory using approximately 63,000 respondents from 59 schools from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). In contrast to the predictions made by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), and the conclusions drawn from prior research, there is little evidence that self-control influences friendship selection. The findings are embedded in past work on the relationship between self-control and peer relationships, and implications for future research are discussed.

The Distribution of Police Protection
David Thacher
This paper investigates the distribution of police protection in the United States by race and class. By examining police employment and demographic data for every general-service police jurisdiction in the US, I find that poor and heavily-nonwhite jurisdictions employ far fewer officers per crime than wealthy and white jurisdictions do. That finding contrasts with an older body of literature on the distribution of police protection, which examined the distribution of police resources across neighborhoods within individual cities and found little inequality. I also find that inequality in police protection has grown since 1970—a finding that contrasts with the increasingly equal distribution of resources for education, the other major claim on local government revenues—largely because criminal victimization became more concentrated in disadvantaged communities. (In the process, I find that contrary to widespread impressions, the crime rate fell very little in the most disadvantaged jurisdictions from 1980 to 2000, and violent crime actually increased). Finally, by examining data about federal grant programs, I find that the rise of federal contributions to local policing in the 1990s slowed the growth of inequality somewhat, suggesting that revenue-sharing has a real but modest role to play in reducing inequality in police protection. Together these findings highlight a neglected aspect of equality in criminal justice.

Are US Crime Rates Really Unit Root Processes?
Jemma Cook and Steve Cook
Existing research has uncovered little evidence against the hypothesis of US crime rates being unit root processes, despite the uncomfortable implications of this assumption. In light of this, the present paper draws upon noted changes in the temporal patterns of US crime rates since 1960 to undertake an informed approach to testing of the unit root hypothesis which incorporates two potential points of structural change. The results obtained show the unit root hypothesis to be rejected for all classifications of criminal activity examined over the period 1960 to 2007. In addition, the dates of the detected breakpoints are supported by a variety of arguments available in the existing criminology literature concerning alternative determinants of crime and their movements. Interestingly, a difference is observed in the nature of the breaks detected for violent and property crimes. However, potential explanations for this are again found in theoretical arguments available in the criminology literature. Finally, the implications of the current findings for the properties of crime, its subsequent statistical analysis and past and future research are discussed.

The Relationship Between Crime and Electronic Gaming Expenditure: Evidence from Victoria, Australia
Sarah A. Wheeler, David K. Round and John K. Wilson
Gambling in Australia is a significant economic activity. Expenditure on its many forms is sizeable and has undergone sustained periods of expansion. At the same time, the structure of the gambling industry has undergone substantial change, with the use of gaming facilities in local hotels and licensed clubs now representing one of the most predominant forms of gambling. Despite this, and the extensive international literature on the relationships between gambling and crime, there have been relatively few studies which examine the local area effects of gaming establishments on crime in Australia. This study uses a unique set of data from the Australian state of Victoria, a region in which local area expansion of gaming networks has been considerable since 1991, to investigate the relationship between gaming machine expenditure and various types of crime in 1996, 2001 and 2006. One particular focus is that of income-generating crime, defined here as theft, fraud, breaking and entering, forgery, false pretences, larceny and robbery. After controlling for a host of statistical issues, our results indicate a consistent positive and significant relationship between gaming and crime rates, especially income-generating crime rates, at the local level.

Risk Clusters, Hotspots, and Spatial Intelligence: Risk Terrain Modeling as an Algorithm for Police Resource Allocation Strategies
Leslie W. Kennedy, Joel M. Caplan and Eric Piza
The study reported here follows the suggestion by Caplan et al. (Justice Q, 2010) that risk terrain modeling (RTM) be developed by doing more work to elaborate, operationalize, and test variables that would provide added value to its application in police operations. Building on the ideas presented by Caplan et al., we address three important issues related to RTM that sets it apart from current approaches to spatial crime analysis. First, we address the selection criteria used in determining which risk layers to include in risk terrain models. Second, we compare the “best model” risk terrain derived from our analysis to the traditional hotspot density mapping technique by considering both the statistical power and overall usefulness of each approach. Third, we test for “risk clusters” in risk terrain maps to determine how they can be used to target police resources in a way that improves upon the current practice of using density maps of past crime in determining future locations of crime occurrence. This paper concludes with an in depth exploration of how one might develop strategies for incorporating risk terrains into police decision-making. RTM can be developed to the point where it may be more readily adopted by police crime analysts and enable police to be more effectively proactive and identify areas with the greatest probability of becoming locations for crime in the future. The targeting of police interventions that emerges would be based on a sound understanding of geographic attributes and qualities of space that connect to crime outcomes and would not be the result of identifying individuals from specific groups or characteristics of people as likely candidates for crime, a tactic that has led police agencies to be accused of profiling. In addition, place-based interventions may offer a more efficient method of impacting crime than efforts focused on individuals.

How do Visitors Affect Crime?
Earl L. Grinols, David B. Mustard and Melissa Staha
This paper, which uses data on National Park visitors between 1979 and 1998 and every county in the United States, is the most exhaustive examination to date of how visitors affect crime. After controlling for many other factors that influence crime, the county-level regressions consistently indicate that national park visitors have no effect on either property or violent crime. These results are true for a variety of different measures of park visitors, for different empirical specifications, and for different regression formats. We therefore conclude that some visitor types have no impact on crime. This conclusion sheds light on the empirical issue of whether only some types of recreational visitors increase crime or whether visitors, regardless of their type, necessarily increase crime.

The Series Hazard Model: An Alternative to Time Series for Event Data
Laura Dugan
An important pursuit by a body of criminological research is its endeavor to determine whether interventions or policy changes effectively achieve their intended goals. Because theories predict that interventions could either improve or worsen outcomes, estimators designed to improve the accuracy of identifying program or policy effects are in demand. This article introduces the series hazard model as an alternative to interrupted time series when testing for the effects of an intervention on event-based outcomes. It compares the two approaches through an example that examines the effects of two interventions on aerial hijacking. While series hazard modeling may not be appropriate for all event-based time series data or every context, it is a robust alternative that allows for greater flexibility in many contexts.

Journal of Quantitative Criminology, September 2011: Volume 27, Issue 3

American Sociological Review 76(4)

Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality
Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld
From 1973 to 2007, private sector union membership in the United States declined from 34 to 8 percent for men and from 16 to 6 percent for women. During this period, inequality in hourly wages increased by over 40 percent. We report a decomposition, relating rising inequality to the union wage distribution’s shrinking weight. We argue that unions helped institutionalize norms of equity, reducing the dispersion of nonunion wages in highly unionized regions and industries. Accounting for unions’ effect on union and nonunion wages suggests that the decline of organized labor explains a fifth to a third of the growth in inequality—an effect comparable to the growing stratification of wages by education.

Income Dynamics, Economic Rents, and the Financialization of the U.S. Economy
Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Ken-Hou Lin
The 2008 collapse of the world financial system, while proximately linked to the housing bubble and risk-laden mortgage backed securities, was a consequence of the financialization of the U.S. economy since the 1970s. This article examines the institutional and income dynamics associated with the financialization of the U.S. economy, advancing a sociological explanation of income shifts into the finance sector. Complementary developments include banking deregulation, finance industry concentration, increased size and scope of institutional investors, the shareholder value movement, and dominance of the neoliberal policy model. As a result, we estimate that between 5.8 and 6.6 trillion dollars were transferred to the finance sector since 1980. We conclude that understanding inequality dynamics requires attention to market institutions and politics.

Cohesion, Cooperation, and the Value of Doing Things Together: How Economic Exchange Creates Relational Bonds
Ko Kuwabara
A recent debate in sociological exchange theory concerns which form of exchange is likely to promote cohesion in exchange relations. One side maintains that bilateral exchange, often associated with economic transactions, entails joint action to share mutual benefits, contributing more to feelings of cohesion than do independent acts of unilateral giving from one person to another, typical of social exchange. The other side argues that bilateral exchange requires dividing resources under binding terms of exchange, which strains relationships by underscoring competitive aspects of exchange. The present study reconciles these divergent claims by testing a new model of exchange that combines key propositions from past theories to specify when bilateral exchange promotes or undermines cohesion. Results from two laboratory experiments provide support for the model’s core claim that cooperative forms of bilateral exchange can reinforce cohesion more than unilateral exchange does, contrary to the enduring assumption that economic exchange undermines relational bonds.

Schools for Democracy: Labor Union Participation and Latino Immigrant Parents’ School-Based Civic Engagement
Veronica Terriquez
Scholars have long argued that civic organizations play a vital role in developing members’ civic capacity. Yet few empirical studies examine how and the extent to which civic skills transfer across distinct and separate civic contexts. Focusing on Latino immigrant members of a Los Angeles janitors’ labor union, this article fills a void by investigating union members’ involvement in an independent civic arena—their children’s schools. Analyses of random sample survey and semi-structured interview data demonstrate that labor union experience does not simply lead to more civic engagement, as previous research might suggest. Rather, conceptual distinctions must be made between active and inactive union members and between different types of civic engagement. Results show that active union members are not particularly involved in plug-in types of involvement, which are typically defined and dictated by school personnel. Instead, active union members tend to become involved in critical forms of engagement that allow them to voice their interests and exercise leadership. Furthermore, findings suggest that the problem solving, advocacy, and organizing skills acquired through union participation do not uniformly influence members’ civic engagement. Experience in a social movement union serves as a catalyst for civic engagement for some, while it enhances the leadership capacity of others.

Learning to Be Illegal: Undocumented Youth and Shifting Legal Contexts in the Transition to Adulthood
Roberto G. Gonzales
This article examines the transition to adulthood among 1.5-generation undocumented Latino young adults. For them, the transition to adulthood involves exiting the legally protected status of K to 12 students and entering into adult roles that require legal status as the basis for participation. This collision among contexts makes for a turbulent transition and has profound implications for identity formation, friendship patterns, aspirations and expectations, and social and economic mobility. Undocumented children move from protected to unprotected, from inclusion to exclusion, from de facto legal to illegal. In the process, they must learn to be illegal, a transformation that involves the almost complete retooling of daily routines, survival skills, aspirations, and social patterns. These findings have important implications for studies of the 1.5- and second-generations and the specific and complex ways in which legal status intervenes in their coming of age. The article draws on 150 interviews with undocumented 1.5-generation young adult Latinos in Southern California.

Toward a Theory of Cultural Appropriation: Buddhism, the Vietnam War, and the Field of U.S. Poetry
Baris Büyükokutan
Culture and politics have a close relationship, but how exactly does the cultural become the political? This article builds a theoretical framework for this question by examining Vietnam-era U.S. poets’ politicization of Buddhism at the expense of more effective or more easily controllable discursive resources. I find, first, that outcomes depend on whether would-be appropriators and legitimate owners of the appropriated resource can strike a mutually beneficial bargain. Second, whether two such distinct parties emerge depends on how tightly contexts of the appropriation process are linked. Consequently, appropriation is best understood as reciprocal exchange.

American Sociological Review, August 2011: Volume 76, Issue 4

Journal of Criminal Justice 39(4)

New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000–2011: A state-of-the-art review
Matt DeLisi, Alex R. Piquero
Criminal careers research is increasingly aligning with self-control theory, psychopathy, the developmental taxonomy, and biosocial criminology. Criminal careers research is poised to combine with developmental psychopathology research to offer a full life-course understanding of crime. Career criminals are analogous to allied constructs in clinical psychology that point to pathological and extreme antisocial conduct for a small subset of criminal offenders.

Life domains and crime: A test of Agnew's general theory of crime and delinquency
Fawn T. Ngo, Raymond Paternoster, Francis T. Cullen, Doris Layton Mackenzie
We conduct a preliminary test of Agnew's general theory of crime and delinquency. Whether each of the five life domain variables is related to recidivism. Whether there is a non-linear relationship between the life domains and recidivism. Whether the five life domains interact in causing recidivism. Only two life domains are significant and none of the interactions are significant.

The effect of perceived risk and victimization on plans to purchase a gun for self-protection
Gary Kleck, Tomislav Kovandzic, Mark Saber, Will Hauser
We studied the impact of prior victimization and perceived risk on gun ownership. The main problem is that gun ownership can affect crime risk, victimization. We solved this problem by relating plans to get guns to risk and victimization. Crime risk, prior victimization have significant positive effects on gun ownership.

What works (or doesn't) in a DUI court? An example of expedited case processing
Jeffrey A. Bouffard, Leana A. Bouffard
The expedited case processing docket for DUI significantly reduced the number of DUI case filings. There was no effect of the DUI court docket on the number of alcohol-involved collisions. The expedited court docket reduced case processing time as intended. Certainty did not change, and severity declined during the time period.

Personality, antisocial behavior, and aggression: A meta-analytic review
Shayne E. Jones, Joshua D. Miller, Donald R. Lynam

Sustaining families, dissuading crime: The effectiveness of a family preservation program with male delinquents
Brie Diamond, Robert G. Morris, Jonathan W. Caudill
Deficits in family functioning have been linked with delinquent behavior. Family Preservation aims to reduce recidivism by addressing family problems. This study analyzes the effectiveness of FP with male juvenile delinquents. The results fails to provide support for the use of FP with male delinquents. Results highlight the importance of treatment fidelity in CJ programs.

Population heterogeneity, state dependence and sexual offender recidivism: The aging process and the lost predictive impact of prior criminal charges over time
Joanna Amirault, Patrick Lussier
Population heterogeneity and state dependent models were explored with sex offenders Prior offending in early adulthood loses its predictive value with the passage of time Most recent offenses in the period considered were most predictive of recidivism Offender age at release and educational achievement were associated with recidivism Risk assessment should consider both the age and the passage of time to assess risk of reoffending

Incarceration, education and transition from delinquency
Thomas G. Blomberg, William D. Bales, Karen Mann, Alex R. Piquero, Richard A. Berk
Much of what is known regarding the transition away from crime is limited to young adulthood, specific life events and general population samples. This study assesses the links between educational achievement, post-release schooling, and re-arrest for a cohort of incarcerated youths from Florida juvenile institutions and followed for two years post-release. Results indicate that youths with higher educational achievement are more likely to return to school after release, and those youths who returned to and attended school regularly were less likely to be rearrested. Among youths who were rearrested, those youth who attended school regularly following release were arrested for significantly less serious offenses compared to youths who did not attend school or attended less regularly. The study highlight educational achievement as an important turning point for juvenile offenders as they transition into young adulthood.

Journal of Criminal Justice, July 2011: Volume 39, Issue 4

The ANNALS of the AAPSS 637

Race, Religion, and Late Democracy

Introduction: Democracy’s Anxious Returns
David Kyuman Kim and John L. Jackson, Jr.

"Look, Baby, We Got Jesus on Our Flag": Robust Democracy and Religious Debate from the Era of Slavery to the Age of Obama
Edward J. Blum

Forerunner: The Campaigns and Career of Edward Brooke
Jason Sokol

Iran’s French Revolution: Religion, Philosophy, and Crowds
Roxanne Varzi

Democracy’s New Song: Black Reconstruction in America, 1860–1880 and the Melodramatic Imagination
Marina Bilbija

Habits of the Heart: Youth Religious Participation as Progress, Peril, or Change?
Monica R. Miller and Ezekiel J. Dixon-Roman

Populism and Late Liberalism: A Special Affinity?
Jean Comroff

Chadors, Feminists, Terror: The Racial Politics of U.S. Media Representations of the 1979 Iranian Women’s Movement
Sylvia Chan-Malik

The End of Neoliberalism?: What Is Left of the Left
John Comaroff

Religion as Race, Recognition as Democracy: Lemba "Black Jews" in South Africa
Noah Tamarkin

The Race toward Caraqueño Citizenship: Negotiating Race, Class, and Participatory Democracy
Giles Harrison-Conwill

The Racialization of Islam in American Law
Neil Gotanda

The ANNALS of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, September 2011: Volume 637