Intersectional Criminology: Interrogating Identity and Power in Criminological Research and Theory

Intersectional criminology is a theoretical approach that necessitates a critical reflection on the impact of interconnected identities and statuses of individuals and groups in relation to their experiences with crime, the social control of crime, and any crime-related issues. This approach is grounded in intersectionality, a concept developed from the tenets of women of color feminist theory and activism. To demonstrate how intersectionality is useful in criminology, this article reviews a sampling of feminist and critical research conducted on Black girls’ and women’s experiences with crime, victimization, and criminal legal system processes. This research demonstrates the interlaced social impacts of race, gender, femininity/masculinity ideals, sexuality, and socioeconomic class. This article also provides a basis for widely deploying an intersectional approach throughout the field of criminology across all social identities and statuses.     

Qualitative Research and Intersectionality

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

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.     

RACE AND GENDER EFFECTS ON FEAR OF CRIME: AN INTERACTIVE MODEL WITH AGE*

While the literature on fear of crime is not wholly consistent, results generally indicate that blacks, women, and the elderly are the groups most fearful. In those instances where race, gender, and age have been simultaneously taken into account, studies have generally assumed that the relationships are additive. However, the gerontological literature suggests that age ofen interacts with other status characteristics in producing quality of life differences. Multiple regression techniques are used on survey data from eight Chicago neighborhoods to assess whether or not the effects of age, race, and gender on fear of crime are interactive. Findings indicate that significant interactions are present, and the relevance of these findings are discussed in terms of actual and perceived risks of victimization and of subcultural interpretations of crime and fear of crime.     

Low self-control,gender, race,and offending in late life

Self-control theory has been one of the most scrutinized general frameworks of crime for over 20 years. A majority of evidence pertaining to the theory, however, is derived from samples of teenagers and young adults. Relatively little information exists regarding whether self-control explains offending among people in late adulthood. As such, the generality of the framework has yet to be fully examined. This study uses a representative sample of people aged 60 years and older from interviews conducted in Arizona and Florida. The current study tests two key propositions regarding the generality of the theory: (1) the extent to which self-control accounts for the relationship between demographic variables and criminal offending, and (2) the invariance thesis which stipulates that self-control will have a uniform effect on offending across social groups. The analyses reveal two findings regarding theoretical generality: (1) low self-control explains late-life criminal behavior but does not account for the relationship between offending and gender, and (2) low self-control has an invariant effect on offending across gender and race when measured behaviorally. Taken together, the analyses address important elements of the supposed generality of self-control theory and extend the framework's scope to the explanation of offending in late life.     

An Examination of First and Second Generation Immigrant Offending Trajectories

The myth of the criminal immigrant has permeated public and political debate for much of this nation's history and persists despite growing evidence to the contrary. Crime concerns are increasingly aimed at the indirect impact of immigration on crime highlighting the criminal pursuits of the children of immigrants. Adding to extant knowledge on the immigration-crime nexus, this research asks whether immigrants are differentially involved in crime by examining immigrant offending histories (prevalence, frequency, seriousness, persistence, and desistance) from early adolescence to young adulthood. Particular attention is afforded to the influence of various sources of heterogeneity including: generational and nativity status, and crime type. Results suggest that the myth remains; trajectory analyses reveal that immigrants are no more crime-prone than the native-born. Foreign-born individuals exhibit remarkably low levels of involvement in crime across their life course. Moreover, it appears that by the second generation, immigrants have simply caught up to their native-born counterparts in respect to their offending. Implications of the findings for theory and future research are discussed.     

Teaching Race and Crime

Abstract

This paper examines the experiences of a select group of faculty (N = 37) from across the country who teach courses related to race and crime. Using survey methodology, the researchers solicited the faculty members' views on the course as well as their experience in teaching the course. The research was also designed to determine the receptivity of students to the course, as well as the nature of the evaluation scores of instructors who teach these courses. Most instructors reported having had a good teaching experience and felt the course should be required. Respondents also indicated that their teaching evaluation scores for race and crime courses were generally in line with their scores for other courses. The research found very minimal differences between the teaching evaluation scores of white and nonwhite race and crime instructors. Students were perceived to be generally enthusiastic about taking this course.     

Intersectionality,Rural Criminology,and Re-imaging the Boundaries of Critical Criminology

One of the significant shortcomings of the criminological canon, including its critical strands—feminist, cultural and green—has been its urbancentric bias. In this theoretical model, rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity and close density acquaintance networks. This article challenges the myth that rural communities are relatively crime free places of ‘moral virtue’ with no need for a closer scrutiny of rural context, rural places, and rural peoples about crime and other social problems. This challenge is likewise woven into the conceptual and empirical narratives of the other articles in this Special Edition, which we argue constitute an important body of innovative work, not just for reinvigorating debates in rural criminology, but also critical criminology. For without a critical perspective of place, the realities of context are too easily overlooked. A new criminology of crime and place will help keep both critical criminology and rural criminology firmly anchored in both the sociological and the criminological imagination. We argue that intersectionality, a framework that resists privileging any particular social structural category of analysis, but is cognisant of the power effects of colonialism, class, race and gender, can provide the theoretical scaffolding to further develop such a project.     

Colorblind ideology,mass incarceration,and controlling racial images: An intersectional analysis of presidential rhetoric from 1969–1996

Ample research exists on the relationship between mainstream constructions of racialized images and perceptions of criminals. Fewer studies, however, have assessed the influence of political rhetoric in the construction and the mobilization of images of criminals as the “racial other.” This study employs a qualitative content analysis guided by an intersectionality framework to answer the questions: to what extent Presidential rhetoric influenced images of criminals; and how was colorblind language used to facilitate this process? The examination of Presidential speeches related to crime policies, given from 1969 to 1996, revealed that criminal activity was primarily articulated as being committed by “young Black impoverished males.” Through the use of colorblind strategies, race, while not explicitly referenced, was the most salient dimension of the imagery of criminals depicted in Presidential rhetoric.     

Child Abuse and the Experience of Violence in College Dating Relationships: Examining the Moderating Effect of Gender and Race

Prior research suggests that being abused during childhood significantly increases one’s risk for the involvement in violent intimate relationships across the life course. The current study contributes to the literature by using a large sample of college students to explore the moderating effects of race and gender on the relationship between child abuse and later experiences of intimate partner violence. Results indicate that for both men and women, child abuse increases the risk for dating violence. Findings also suggest that specific race and gender combinations moderate the relationship between child abuse and later experiences of IPV, specifically regarding the risk for mutual or bidirectional violence. Implications for prevention and intervention and directions for future research are discussed.     

MASCULINITIES,PERSISTENCE, AND DESISTANCE

In life‐course criminology, when gender has been the focus of study, it has predominantly been treated as a variable. Studies that explore the gendered nature of criminal careers through the lived experiences of offenders are rare, even though these studies can make important contributions to our understanding of crime and the life course. Analyzing qualitative data, this article uses life‐history narratives of a small sample of male juvenile delinquents (N = 25), born in 1969–1974, to explore the possible link among masculinities, persistence, and desistance from crime. The findings of the study suggest that processes of persistence and desistance are imbued with age‐specific norms of what it means to “be a man” and successfully do masculinity in different stages of life. Analyzing these gender‐specific practices gives a deepened understanding of processes that underlie the offenders’ lives as they go through stages of continuity and change in crime. The findings of the study further suggest a complex intersection between gendered biographies and gendered structures, with fruitful contributions to life‐course criminology. The implications of these findings are discussed.     

The independent and joint effects of race,crime, and social location on the dispositional decisions of juvenile girls

The nexus of race, gender, and social location remain a habitual line of inquiry for many criminologists. However, quantitative studies of intersectionality are rare and especially rare as it relates to those studying serious and violent girls sentenced in the juvenile court. Particularly, this study seeks to explore how racialized gender expectations and forms of double/multiplicative jeopardy influence the back-end outcomes for serious and violent girls. Findings reveal the black girls, compared to their white counterparts, were sentenced with less leniency, and instead, punished in a more punitive matter. Importantly, these findings vary across the gamut of legal and extralegal variables. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed, as well as the limitations of the present study.     

Inequalities and crime

The study of inequalities undergirds much of criminology. At times, however, we may take the impact of inequalities for granted and miss opportunities to problematize the strong link between inequalities and crime. In this address, I maintain that it is important to step back and recognize that economic, race, ethnic, gender, and other inequalities are at the core of criminology. More explicit consensus about the centrality of the link between inequalities and crime will allow for our field to speak to the major social and political issues of our time and will strengthen the field. In this address, I highlight some fruitful avenues of research on inequalities and crime. I then argue that the concept of intersecting inequalities can provide additional connective tissue between research focused on economic, race, ethnic, and gender inequalities. By drawing on recent evaluations of the concept in other fields, I discuss key issues that must be addressed in employing an intersecting inequalities approach and then suggest solutions. I conclude that use of an intersecting inequalities approach has the potential to uncover important insights and span research areas, thereby pushing forward our understanding of the impact of economic, race, ethnic, gender, and other inequalities on crime and victimization.     

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.     

THE LAW OF CRIME CONCENTRATION AND THE CRIMINOLOGY OF PLACE*

According to Laub (2004), criminology has a developmental life course with specific turning points that allow for innovations in how we understand and respond to crime. I argue that criminology should take another turn in direction, focusing on microgeographic hot spots. By examining articles published in Criminology, I show that only marginal attention has been paid to this area of study to date—often termed the criminology of place. I illustrate the potential utility of a turning point by examining the law of crime concentration at place, which states that for a defined measure of crime at a specific microgeographic unit, the concentration of crime will fall within a narrow bandwidth of percentages for a defined cumulative proportion of crime. By providing the first cross‐city comparison of crime concentration using a common geographic unit, the same crime type, and examining a general crime measure, I find strong support for a law of crime concentration. I also show that crime concentration stays within a narrow bandwidth across time, despite strong volatility in crime incidents. By drawing from these findings, I identify several key research questions for future study. In conclusion, I argue that a focus on the criminology of place provides significant opportunity for young scholars and has great promise for advancing criminology as a science.     

The Role of Lifestyle and Personal Characteristics on Fear of Victimization among University Students

The fear of crime has been both theoretically and empirically connected to a complex relationship of situational context (e.g., time of day, location) and personal characteristics (e.g., age, race, gender, personal and vicarious victimization). Building off of routine activities and lifestyle-exposure theory, this research extends the understanding of these relationships by examining the impact of lifestyle activities (e.g., consumption of alcohol, illicit drugs, and time away from residence) and personal characteristics (e.g., direct and vicarious victimization) on the fear of various crimes across temporal situations, among a sample of college and university students. The results indicate that fear of crime varies by crime type and that certain demographic and lifestyle characteristics and experiences with victimization affect students?? fear of crime. Although no evidence was found to suggest that fear of theft varies by temporal context (i.e., during the day or at night), certain characteristics, such as gender, perceived risk, and avoidance behaviors, have varying relationships with fear of violent crimes when considering time of day. The findings suggest that future research should examine more critically the relationship that lifestyles, personality, gender, and time of day have with the fear of crime.     

Judging the Other: The Intersection of Race,Gender, and Class in Family Court

This critical ethnographic study of family court child maltreatment proceedings describes and illuminates the ways in which racial, gender, and class disadvantages can manifest on the ground as judges, attorneys, social service workers, and parents—joined often by gender but split by race and class—adjudicate cases. The findings suggest that intersectionality worked in ways that exponentially marginalized poor mothers of color in the courtroom. They were marginalized both through the rules of the adversarial process (which silenced their voices) and through the construction of narratives (which emphasized individual weakness) over structural obstacles as well as personal irresponsibility over expressions of maternal care and concern. Standard due process courtroom practices also communicated bias or social exclusion, especially in a courtroom split by race and class.     

THE CONTEXT OF MARRIAGE AND CRIME: GENDER,THE PROPENSITY TO MARRY,AND OFFENDING IN EARLY ADULTHOOD*

Marriage is central to theoretical debates over stability and change in criminal offending over the life course. Yet, unlike other social ties such as employment, marriage is distinct in that it cannot be randomly assigned in survey research to more definitively assess causal effects of marriage on offending. As a result, key questions remain as to whether different individual propensities toward marriage shape its salience as a deterrent institution. Building on these issues, the current research has three objectives. First, we use a propensity score matching approach to estimate causal effects of marriage on crime in early adulthood. Second, we assess sex differences in the effects of marriage on offending. Although both marriage and offending are highly gendered phenomena, prior work typically focuses on males. Third, we examine whether one's propensity to marry conditions the deterrent capacity of marriage. Results show that marriage suppresses offending for males, even when accounting for their likelihood to marry. Furthermore, males who are least likely to marry seem to benefit most from this institution. The influence of marriage on crime is less robust for females, where marriage reduces crime only for those with moderate propensities to marry. We discuss these findings in the context of recent debates concerning gender, criminal offending, and the life course.     

Patterns of offending in urban and rural areas

Although the level of crime varies dramatically across the urban-rural dimension, little research has been directed at the issue of the patterns of offending across this dimension. Using National Crime Survey (NCS) victimization data, this paper examines to what extent the patterns of offending by particular age, race, and sex subgroups are similar in urban and rural areas. It was found that the patterns of age, race, and sex offending are essentially the same in both urban and rural areas. Particularly impressive is the consistency in the rankings (from high to low) of the propensity of offending in urban and rural areas when age, race, and sex were examined simultaneously. Also, these NCS data generally parallel Uniform Crime Reports arrest data with respect to the offender characteristics of age, race, and sex. This suggests that existing criminological theories can be applied to rural, as well as urban, crime patterns regarding the issue of offender characteristics.     

THE INTERACTION OF RACE, GENDER, AND AGE IN CRIMINAL SENTENCING: THE PUNISHMENT COST OF BEING YOUNG, BLACK, AND MALE

Prior theory and research on sentencing oversimplify the role of race, gender and age in judicial decision making. In this article we present a "focal concerns" theory of judicial decision making to frame hypotheses regarding the effects on sentencing of these social statuses, both singly and in combination. Analyzing statewide sentencing outcomes in Pennsylvania for 1989–1992, we find that, net of controls: (1) young black males are sentenced more harshly than any other group, (2) race is most influential in the sentencing of younger rather than older males, (3) the influence of offender's age on sentencing is greater among males than females, and (4) the main effects of race, gender, and age are more modest compared to the very large differences in sentencing outcomes across certain age-race-gender combinations. These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the joint effects of race, gender, and age on sentencing, and of using interactive rather than additive models.