Gender, Ethnicity, and Offending over the Life Course: Women’s Pathways to Prison in the Aloha State

This paper develops what some researchers are now calling the ‘pathways’ approach to understanding women’s criminality. This perspective argues that women’s offending is an outgrowth of histories of violence, trauma, and addiction – conditioned by race, culture, gender inequality, and class. This paper expands the perspective on crime across the life course for females, providing a more nuanced analysis of the nature of intimate relationships and developmental turning points for women. Whereas men’s assumption of adult responsibilities such as marriage and childrearing may be turning points away from delinquency and crime, the matter is far more complex and may even be the inverse for some women. The paper also finds that women of Native Hawaiian ancestry have more negative experiences with education, employment, and poorer outcomes on parole compared to women without Hawaiian ancestry, thus contributing to the literature on the relationship between ethnicity, structure, and offending over the life course.     

“Fair and Balanced?” Justice Issues on Political Talk Shows

Like their news program predecessors, many political talk shows focus a considerable amount of their coverage on justice issues. Although numerous past studies have examined justice issue presentation in news programs, infotainment, and crime drama, to date only one forthcoming study has examined crime and justice coverage on political talk shows. Political talk shows often present issues in a debate format, as well as emphasize the balanced nature of the content in advertising, with one program even using the slogan “fair and balanced.” Building upon the format of previous media studies, we analyzed a composite month of videotaped footage of three popular political talk shows appearing on cable networks: CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, MSNBC’s Hardball with Chris Mathews, and The O’Reilly Factor from the Fox News Channel. Using content analysis techniques, this study examines balance in the form and content of these programs in terms of presentation of justice issues, political party identification of hosts and guests and realistic presentations of race and gender in the context of crime and justice. Results indicate that these programs tend to adopt an advocacy tone rather than an objectivist one. Furthermore, we demonstrate that racial and gender portrayals of crime and justice on these shows are significantly distorted from reality, with a priority afforded to white female victims of violent crime and minority male offenders.     

Talking Heads and Bleeding Hearts: Newsmaking, Emotion and Public Criminology in the Wake of a Sexual Assault

Using our own experiences in attempting to ‘do’ public criminology in the wake of a violent sexual assault on our campus, we offer a critique of the emerging public criminology framework. Focusing specifically on tensions between fact and emotion and representations of expertise in the news media, we argue for a greater respect for emotional responses to crime in moving the public criminology agenda forward. We suggest that if public criminology sets as its goal educating the public about crime with an eye towards injecting a counter/critical discourse into ‘get tough’ crime control policies, then public criminologists need to recognize and take seriously the public’s emotions rather than negate them. Drawing on the work of Ahmed (The cultural politics of emotion. Routledge, London, 2004), we suggest that the role of the expert is not to simply inform citizens of the ‘facts’ about crime, but to establish—through emotions—the relationship between themselves and the imagined criminal Other (Young in Imagining crime: Textual outlaws and criminal conversations. Sage Publications, London, 1996). Thus, alongside trying to convince the public to be more ‘rational’ when it comes to crime, critical criminologists must start to accept people’s fear and anger as legitimate reactions and try to redirect these emotions toward more productive ends.     

Why a Criminal Prohibition on Sex Selective Abortions Amounts to a Thought Crime

In a sex selective abortion, a woman aborts a fetus simply on account of the fetus’ sex. Her motivation or underlying reason for doing so may very well be sexist. She could be disposed to thinking that a female child is inferior to a male one. In a hate crime, an individual commits a crime on account of a victim’s sex, race, sexual orientation or the like. The individual may be sexist or racist in picking his victim. He or she could be disposed to thinking that one race or sex is inferior to another. I argue that while a prohibition on sex selective abortions is anomalous in a liberal, criminal legal framework, hate crime legislation may not be. The former but not the latter constitutes a thought crime. I define a thought crime as one where an agent’s motivation is not just relevant but sufficient to take an act from the domain of the non-punishable to the domain of the punishable. Ignoring a woman’s sexist motivation in procuring an abortion suddenly renders her act of abortion legal. On the other hand, discounting an agent’s bias in committing a hate motivated assault or murder does not transform the act from a punishable one to a non-punishable one. Assaulting or murdering is already a crime.     

Pretend It Doesn'T Work: The ‘Anti-Social’ Bias In The Maryland Scientific Methods Scale

The social constructs and methodological principles embodied in the Maryland Scientific Methods Scale (SMS), comprising part of the Campbell Collaboration in Crime and Justice assessment protocol, induce a series of biases in the evaluation of evidence of crime prevention policy interventions that focus on collective social phenomena, such as communities. Applying these principles leads to negative conclusions about effectiveness; yet their inherent ‘anti-social’ bias may induce Type II error with regard to the desirability of ‘social’ interventions to reduce crime. Policy-making is poorly served as a result. This point is illustrated, first, through a scrutiny of the social constructs used, including those that typify treatments, institutional settings and units of analysis. These are seen as being constructed in a way that is congenial to the underlying methodological issue of ‘control’ but that constitute nevertheless a distorted definition of the governance issues involved in crime reduction in community settings. A model more appropriate for evaluating voluntaristic action in civil society is needed. Second, it is suggested that this methodological bias arises particularly in policy interventions and change programmes that address issues concerning the ‘collective efficacy’ of local communities in reducing crime. An empirical exemplification of these arguments is presented with reference to a completed evaluation research study (Foster and Hope, 1993).     

From Safety to Danger: Constructions of Crime in a Women’s Magazine

This study examines how the print media constructs signifiers of safety and danger for women. We analyze 155 news articles regarding crime and criminal justice from 1970 to 1990 in Chatelaine magazine, a Canadian women’s periodical. Both content and textual analyses are deployed to evaluate the media representations of crime and their role in facilitating images of fear and safety. We show that the meanings associated with women’s danger and safety in news narratives are socially constructed through claims, sources, content and culture. We find that news reporting did not initially incorporate signifiers of fear. However, crime messages increasingly included images of fear in the later reporting period. We argue that the transformations surrounding these images and texts are influenced by the rise in neoliberal thought in the 1980s. Our results indicate that ideological struggles external to the media are crucial to the representation of crime, which ultimately influence signifiers of danger and safety for women.     

Public attitudes toward prison capacity expansion in Mississippi

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study designed to identify and determine the effects of social and economic factors on Mississippians’ attitudes toward prison expansion strategies. Data were obtained from a statewide survey, utilizing a random digit dialing telephone sampling procedure. The study sample consists of 606 respondents. Favorable attitudes toward correctional facilities were hypothesized to be explained by fear of crime, presence of an existing facility, perceived economic impact of prisons, gender, race, age, and income. The results of the regression analysis revealed that the presence of an existing prison facility, perceived economic benefits, race, and education were significant predictors of attitudes toward prison expansion strategies among Mississippians. Possible explanations for the findings and directions for future research are discussed. This research was supported by grant #30401903821 from the Department of Public Safety, Division of Public Safety Planning of the Governor’s Office, Jackson, Mississippi. Please send all correspondence to: Craig Robertson, Dept. of Sociology, Montana State University, Bozeman, MT. 59717.     

Risk calculation and precautionary uncertainty: two configurations within crime assessment

This paper explores two configurations of thinking about crime amongst law enforcement agencies and private sector security managers: ‘risk calculation’ (concerned with everyday, calculable probabilities and impacts and their management) and ‘precautionary uncertainty’ (concerned with events that might be incapacitating, yet are not calculable by probability assessments). The paper explores their respective constituent concepts and fields of application in crime assessment, drawing upon qualitative research-in-progress in Belgium. Risk calculation, as applied to crime, starts with past data on routines that link perpetrators with targets that lack capable guardians. Precautionary uncertainty focuses on potential impacts that are highly disabling and potentially wide-spreading (contagion, knock-on effects), asking how such impacts can be contained and recovered from. Risk and uncertainty are shown to be related to ‘rational-instrumental’ and ‘deliberative-constitutive’ approaches as developed by Fisher’s work in the field of law, which offers a meta-narrative in relation to which they can be positioned. Finally, the paper asks if these two crime assessment methods should be seen as distinct or as merging. On the basis of criteria of conceptual sharpness, openness to public debate and justiciability, the authors champion the maintenance of a clear distinction between risk and uncertainty.     

DOING GENDER: SORTING OUT THE CASTE AND CRIME CONUNDRUM*

Theories that examine the relationship between inequality and crime typically privilege one system of stratification over others. In criminology, the system most often assumed to be primary is social class, but other approaches may emphasize gender or racial oppression to account for observed differences in offending patterns. Few, however, systematically link gender and race oppression as moderating etiological variables in the study of crime. From the theoretical and empirical literature on this subject, we discuss (1) how “hegemonic” masculinities and femininities are framed within social institutions such as work, the family, peer group, and schools; (2) how “doing gender” within these sites is modified by race; and (3) anticipated relationships among social structure, social action, and delinquency. Self-report data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth are used to test research hypotheses. Chow interaction tests and comparisons of slope coefficients reveal that gender and race modify independent-variable effects on property and violent delinquency.     

Youth, Police Legitimacy and Informal Contact

This paper explores the under-researched topic of young people’s attitudes towards police in two studies using structural equation modelling. The first study examines the influence of police legitimacy on the willingness of young people to assist police. The second study examines the impact of informal contact with police during a community policing project on young people’s willingness to assist police. Findings show that young people who view police as legitimate are more willing to assist police. Participation in the community policing project had a significant and positive influence on young people’s willingness to assist police independent of young people’s attitudes about police legitimacy.

Restoring the Victim: Emotional Reactions, Justice Beliefs, and Support for Reparation and Punishment

Psychological responses to criminal wrongdoing have primarily focused on the offender, particularly on how (and why) offender punishment satisfies people’s need for justice. However, the restoration of the victim presents another way in which the “psychological itch” that injustice creates can be addressed. In the present article, I discuss two lay theories of how crime victims can be restored: a belief that the harm caused to crime victims should be directly repaired (a restorative justice approach) versus a belief that victim harm should be addressed via the punishment of the offender (a retributive justice approach). These two lay theories are discussed with regard to their emotional and ideological determinants, as well as situational and chronic factors that can affect whether people adopt a reparative or punitive “justice mindset” in dealing with victim concerns (and crime in general).     

Race,masculinity, and boot camp failure

Black men, especially those in the lower-class are stereotyped as hypermasculine. Such stereotypes may affect placement in criminal justice programs as well as whether offenders successfully complete programming given placement. This article considers whether the intersection of class and race affect boot camp failure. Using data from MacKenzie’s evaluation of correctional boot camps, results show that neither race, nor the interaction of race with indicators of orientation towards decent or street behavior has any effect on dropping out of boot camp. What is significant in predicting boot camp completion is the offender’s belief prior to beginning the program that he is “tough enough” to handle the institution. However, this result is opposite of expected for black men. The implications of this result and future directions are considered.

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Young Adult Offending: Intersectionality of Gender and Race

It is an accepted criminological fact that gender and race affect involvement in crime. What has been examined less frequently is the effect of intersectionality of gender and race across the early life course. This research uses Delinquency in a Birth Cohort II: Philadelphia, 1958 to examine the longer term effects on crime of intersectionality during the adolescent and young adult portions of the life course. Findings indicate that intersectionality of gender and race is fundamental for young adults. It is argued that multiracial feminism can best explain why intersectionality must be taken into consideration when looking at offending across the early life course.     

Youth offending and youth transitions: the power of capital in influencing change

Neither the literature on offending nor that on desistance adequately explains the short-term nature of youth offending, young people’s propensity to desist from offending as they reach early adulthood and the importance of youth transitions in helping or hindering young people’s access to legitimate and conventional opportunities and responsibilities. It is suggested in this article that the three phases of offending—onset, maintenance and desistance—run parallel courses with the three phases of youth transitions—childhood, youth and adulthood and that both these processes are influenced by discrepancies in levels of capital for young people at each stage. In a recent Scottish study of desistance, Bourdieu’s concepts of capital are used to demonstrate the commonalities between youth offending and youth transitions and to better understand young people’s search for integration and recognition—whether this be through offending or conventionality. The article concludes that the concepts of capital and youth transitions could both be employed more usefully in the field of criminology to explain the transient nature of offending in youth and the greater likelihood of desistance once legitimate and sustainable opportunities are found to spend as well as to accumulate capital in early adulthood.

Constitutional issues in reality-based police television programs: Media ride-alongs

Reality-based police television programs have been criticized extensively on the grounds that they overestimate the prevalence of violent crime, misrepresent the percentage of criminals who are minorities, and perpetuate myths about the effectiveness of law enforcement. However, few critiques have examined the constitutional issues behind reality-based police television programs. This paper examines constitutional issues arising from Section 1983 litigation against both the police and the media for media presence during the execution of warrants. It concludes that media presence has important implications for analyses regarding people’s right to privacy, color of law, qualified immunity, and Fourth Amendment reasonableness.     

Is it Important to Examine Crime Trends at a Local “Micro” Level?: A Longitudinal Analysis of Street to Street Variability in Crime Trajectories

Over the last 40 years, the question of how crime varies across places has gotten greater attention. At the same time, as data and computing power have increased, the definition of a ‘place’ has shifted farther down the geographic cone of resolution. This has led many researchers to consider places as small as single addresses, group of addresses, face blocks or street blocks. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal studies of the spatial distribution of crime have consistently found crime is strongly concentrated at a small group of ‘micro’ places. Recent longitudinal studies have also revealed crime concentration across micro places is relatively stable over time. A major question that has not been answered in prior research is the degree of block to block variability at this local ‘micro’ level for all crime. To answer this question, we examine both temporal and spatial variation in crime across street blocks in the city of Seattle Washington. This is accomplished by applying trajectory analysis to establish groups of places that follow similar crime trajectories over 16 years. Then, using quantitative spatial statistics, we establish whether streets having the same temporal trajectory are collocated spatially or whether there is street to street variation in the temporal patterns of crime. In a surprising number of cases we find that individual street segments have trajectories which are unrelated to their immediately adjacent streets. This finding of heterogeneity suggests it may be particularly important to examine crime trends at very local geographic levels. At a policy level, our research reinforces the importance of initiatives like ‘hot spots policing’ which address specific streets within relatively small areas.     

The Hate Crime Canon and Beyond: A Critical Assessment

Although it remains an empirical question whether the U.S. is experiencing greater levels of hate-motivated-conduct than in the past, it is beyond dispute that the concept of ‘hate crime’ has been institutionalized in social, political, and legal discourse in the U.S. From the introduction and politicization of the term hate crime in the late 1970s to the continued enforcement of hate crime law at the beginning of the twenty-first century, social movements have constructed the problem of bias-motivated violence in particular ways, while politicians at both the federal and state level have made legislation that defines the parameters of hate crime. Accordingly, this article identifies and examines the parameters of a hate crime canon in the U.S., which can first and foremost be described as a body of law that 1) provides anew state policy action, by either creating anew criminal category, altering an existing law, or enhancing penalties for select extant crimes when they are committed for bias reasons; 2) contains an intent standard, which refers to the subjective intention of the perpetrator rather than relying solely on the basis of objective behavior; and 3) specifies a list of protected social statuses, such as race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, disabilities, etc. Arguing that these features constitute the core parameters of the hate crime canon and attendant discourse in the U.S., this article offers a critical assessment of the emergence, institutionalization, and arguable consequences of ‘hate crime’ as a recently developed social fact - in the Durkheimian sense of the word - that is consequential for the politics of victimization in the modern era and the social control of violence against minorities more particularly. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Race and Women’s Imprisonment: Poverty, African American Presence, and Social Welfare

Female imprisonment rates have increased proportionately more than male imprisonment rates over recent decades. There are substantial race differences in women’s rates, as is the case for men. Yet, there has been little quantitative research on the correlates of women’s imprisonment using data over time, or on potential race differences in those correlates. The present research analyzes data on black and nonblack female imprisonment rates in the 50 states for the period 1981–2003. The analyses are guided substantively by existing research on race, social threat and criminal punishment, and theory and research on the penal-welfare hypothesis. The study uses bivariate-response multilevel modeling to simultaneously examine the factors associated with black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates. The results show that black female imprisonment rates increase when the concentration of African Americans in metropolitan areas and poverty rates grow, whereas nonblack female imprisonment rates are unaffected by poverty rates and actually decrease when African American populations become more concentrated in metro areas. Both black and nonblack women’s imprisonment rates increase when welfare spending declines. The results are consistent with social threat perspectives and the penal-welfare hypotheses.     

A left realist approach to antifeminist fathers’ rights groups

Despite earlier critiques of left realists’ failure to adequately address feminist concerns, recent left realist theorizing and empirical research have made valuable contributions to the understanding of woman abuse and other forms of gendered violence. Left realism has further potential to contribute to the criminological understanding of woman abuse and its contributing socioeconomic and cultural contexts. This article describes left realists’ early efforts to include gender in analyses of crime. It then summarizes feminist critiques of left realism and reviews the work that has responded to them. Drawing upon two prominent strands of feminist left realist theorizing about violence and gender, the paper proposes a preliminary left realist theory of antifeminist fathers’ rights group activism. It then outlines a provisional research agenda on antifeminist fathers’ rights groups, and proposes short and long term policies and practices to enhance the safety of abused mothers and their children following divorce or separation.     

Enemies and Citizens of the State: Die Boeremag as the Face of Postapartheid Otherness

This examination is a case study analysis of the Mail & Guardian’s news coverage surrounding the ongoing trial of members of the separatist group, die Boeremag. The 22 defendants stand accused of treason and 41 other criminal charges for the 2002 bombings of Soweto and conspiring to establish an independent Boer state. Utilizing a race critical lens, this analysis looks at these news representations of Afrikaner nationalists to glean insight into how law, race and racism can imbricate public understandings crime, specifically, in this case, domestic terrorism. It draws attention to the ways in which this fundamentalist group emerges as a repugnant Other and interrogates their roles within the “imagined” postapartheid South African community, the newspaper’s target audience. After explicating these dynamics, the paper concludes with a discussion of how this case study relates to practical dilemmas that stem from the utopian ideologies of reconciliation and nonracialism.