Peer Group Delinquency and Sexual Victimization: Does Popularity Matter?

Though a large body of research has found that peer social network characteristics influence both offending and victimization, relatively little is known about the influence of social network characteristics on adolescent sexual victimization. Attractiveness and sociability largely indicate popularity for teenage females, which in turn leads to earlier onset of dating, greater dating options, and potential risk of sexual victimization—an observation not tested in the criminological and criminal justice literature. We suggest and evaluate 2 competing hypotheses: that popularity within a network insulates females from sexual victimization and that popularity may increase exposure to delinquent others and facilitate sexual victimization. Results suggest that popularity does not have a consistent effect but instead that its role is conditioned by the deviance of the network. Popularity is associated with an increase in the likelihood of victimization when peer deviance is high but with a decrease when peer deviance is low. We further demonstrate that an interaction between a female's own drinking and the proportion of her friends that are male strongly affects her likelihood of sexual victimization. Implications for policy and future research are explored.     

A Hunter’s Moon: the Effect of Moon Illumination on Outdoor Crime

We use National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) data and an AutoRegressive Integrative Moving Average (ARIMA) study design to investigate the effect of moon illumination on reported crime occurring outdoors between the hours of 10 pm to 2 am in 13 U.S. states and the District of Columbia. Prior research analyzed a confounded dependent variable that amalgamated indoor and outdoor crimes. This situation is problematic in that there is little reason to speculate a relationship between moon illumination and indoor crime because artificial illumination is used within dwellings. Findings show that while moon illumination has little influence on total crime and indoor crime, the intensity of moonlight does have a substantive positive effect on outdoor criminal activity. As moon illumination intensifies, outdoor crime increases markedly. Plausible explanations for this relationship are discussed.     

Judicial Murder‐Suicides in Van Diemen's Land

On the morning of December 17, 1827, nine convicts were executed by public hanging in Hobart Town, the capital of the British colony of Van Diemen's Land (now the Australian state of Tasmania). Two months previously they had drowned senior Constable George Rex on Small Island, which was part of the penal settlement at Macquarie Harbor, in front of five bound and gagged witnesses. They offered no defence at their trial. Examination of the Tasmanian colonial convict records shows that “suicide by lottery” involved convicts choosing two men, one to die and the other to kill him. The witnesses would earn a respite when taken away for the trial, and the murderer would be executed. “Death by gallows” could be considered a nineteenth‐century version of an orchestrated suicide reminiscent of more modern “death by cop.” This category of “judicial” murder‐suicide expands the range of contemporary classifications of dyadic deaths.     

Criminal records and college admissions: A modified experimental audit

In this article, we consider the effect of criminal records on college admissions. Nearly 72 percent of colleges require criminal history information during their application processes, which indicates that an applicant's criminal history could be a significant impediment to achieving the benefits associated with higher education. We conducted a modified experimental audit to learn whether and to what extent criminal records affect admissions decisions. Matched same-race pairs of tester applications were sent to a national sample of nonelite 4-year colleges, with both testers applying as either Black or White. Within each pair, one application signaled a prior low-level felony conviction only when required by the application. Consistent with the findings of research on employment, we find the rejection rate for applicants with felony convictions was nearly 2.5 times the rate of our control testers. Relative to the large racial differences observed in previous studies of hiring decisions, we find smaller racial differences in admissions decisions. Nevertheless, Black applicants with criminal records were particularly penalized when disclosing a felony record at colleges with high campus crime rates. We address implications for reentry, racial progress, and the college “Ban the Box” movement. We suggest colleges consider narrowing the scope of such inquiries or removing the question altogether – particularly when it conflicts with the goals of these institutions, including reducing the underrepresentation of students of color.”     

The centrality of labor time in South African gold mining since 1886

Labor time, as a dimension of South African mining labor history, has been ignored, both conceptually and historically. This article remedies this yawning gap by presenting primary and secondary evidence which demonstrates the centrality of labor time in South African gold mines since the discovery of gold in 1886. To this end, labor time is traced in two ways. Part I tracks industrial working time by tracing the length of the working day and week. Part II tracks the ever-increasing length of the African migrant labor contract. While industrial working hours remain remarkably stable for almost a century, the migrant labor contract systematically increases over a similar period. These two measures of labor time eventually coincide when the migrant labor system dissolves and black African workers take annual leave together with their compatriots across the racial divide. The explanation for the mining industry’s long struggle to both maintain relatively long working hours and increasingly maximize the length of the migrant labor contract is construed as completing the received wisdom of Harold Wolpe's much celebrated and criticized `cheap- labor' thesis. (Wolpe, “Capitalism and Cheap Labor Power.”)     

An Era of Continuing Change: Reflections on Local Government in England 1974–2014

Abstract

This article sets the current position of local government in a longer historical perspective. It begins with a discussion of the 1974 local government reorganisation and argues that many of the principles and assumptions determining the ways of working of local authorities remained unchanged after this reorganisation. However, the next 40 years were ones of continuing change, much of it imposed by central government, and the article discusses the often piecemeal implementation of individual changes and the resulting atmosphere of uncertainty and instability. This is followed by an analysis of the cumulative impact of the changes and identifying key problems, and the article concludes by drawing on this analysis to set out the challenges that have to be met if the full potential of the local government is to be realised in the future.