THE EFFECTS OF LIFE CIRCUMSTANCES ON LONGITUDINAL TRAJECTORIES OF OFFENDING*

This study, which is based on individual criminal careers over a 60‐year period, focuses on the development of criminal behavior. It first examines the impact that life circumstances such as work and marriage have on offending, then tests whether the effects of these circumstances are different for different groups of offenders, and finally examines the extent to which the age‐crime relationship at the aggregate level can be explained by age‐graded differences in life circumstances. Official data were retrieved for a 4‐percent (N=4,615) sample of all individuals whose criminal case was tried in the Netherlands in 1977. Self‐report data were derived from a nationally representative survey administered in the Netherlands in 1996 to 2,244 individuals aged 15 years or older. In analyzing this data, we use semi‐parametric group‐based models. Results indicate that life circumstances substantially influence the chances of criminal behavior, and that the effects of these circumstances on offending differ across offender groups. Age‐graded changes in life circumstances, however, explain the aggregate age‐crime relationship only to a modest extent.     

DRUG USE AND DESISTANCE PROCESSES

Sampson and Laub's age‐graded theory of informal social control emphasizes the importance of adult social bonds such as marriage and stable employment in redirecting behavior in a more prosocial direction. Heavy alcohol use has also been shown to influence persistent patterns of offending as well as more episodic offending across the life course. Sampson and Laub's life‐course theory emphasizes the negative impact of alcohol use on marital and employment bonds. Although alcohol has indeed been shown to have significant effects on criminal offending, we argue that drug use and the drug culture in which many contemporary offenders are enmeshed have consequences that often complicate desistance processes in ways that alcohol does not. Drug use and its lifestyle concomitants bring together a host of distinctive social dynamics that compromise multiple life domains. The current project investigates the role of drug use on desistance processes relying on a contemporary sample of previously institutionalized youth. We draw on three waves of data from the Ohio life‐course study, a project that spans some 21 years. The results support the assertion that drug use exerts unique effects on desistance processes, once levels of alcohol use are taken into account. We investigate possible mechanisms that help to explain the differential impact of drug use on offending and find that social network effects, particularly partner criminality, explain some but not all of the negative impact of drug use on life‐course patterns of criminal offending.     

报业革新与产业化进程引发的思考

网络媒体声势浩大,信息技术的发展也在大步前行,社会已悄然迈进了信息时代,传媒业已成为迅速增长的产业。而面对这一潜力巨大的市场,面对境外集团的大兵压境,传媒业的惟一出路就在于发展自己的媒介产业,形成自己的规模与实力,形成足够的抵抗力和竞争力,只有如此,才能在巨大资本入陆和市场竞争洪流面前立于不败之地。     

为日常生活批判再辩护——论列斐伏尔《日常生活批判》第二卷的基本意义

列斐伏尔是一位“广为人知”而“罕为人解”的西方马克思主义创始人。与其他一些重要著作相比,他的《日常生活批判》第二卷,由于种种原因,长期以来处于默默无闻状态。而实际上,本书具有重要而不可替代的地位与价值———因为它是列斐伏尔毕生惟一一卷将日常生活概念及其基本范畴进行专门而系统阐述的著作。《日常生活批判》第一卷在相当程度上仍然是抽象的哲学与艺术批判分析,第二卷则重新厘定了日常生活批判概念,建立了一整套批判现代性日常生活现实的哲学范畴体系与社会学方法,确立了日常生活作为“层次”或“平台”(level)而存在的理念,描绘了一幅与传统社会主义政治革命理想相区别的“瞬间的星丛”图景。     

精品课程建设浅淡

西南政法大学“刑事诉讼法学”课程被评为国家精品课程。我们的经验是:秉承优良学术传统,注重优良作风传承;及时总结教学经验,积极开展教学科研;重视人才梯队建设,培养一流师资队伍;教学科研立足前沿,与时俱进开拓创新。     

建筑类高职学生基本素质课程设置的调查与研究

本文在对建筑类高职院校基本素质课程设置现状进行调查的基础上,对课程整合的有效途径、课程整合的原则、课程教学内容的选择、特色及课程改革的实施进行了充分的阐述。     

Examining the Consequences of the “Prevalent Life Events” of Arrest and Incarceration among an Urban African-American Cohort

The life course perspective has traditionally examined prevalent adult life events, such as marriage and employment, and their potential to redirect offending trajectories. However, for African-Americans, the life events of arrest and incarceration are becoming equally prevalent in young adulthood. Therefore, it is critical to understand how these “standard” criminal justice practices, which are designed to deter as well as punish, affect deviance among this population. This study evaluates the long-term consequences of criminal justice intervention on substance use and offending into midlife among an African-American community cohort using propensity score matching and multivariate regression analyses. The results largely point to a criminogenic effect of criminal justice intervention on midlife deviance with a particularly strong effect of young adult arrest on rates of violent and property arrest counts into midlife. The theoretical and policy implications of the findings are discussed.     

Negotiation and Conflict Resolution Education in the Age of the MOOC

Even as online learning is increasingly embraced by institutions of higher education, the past decade has seen the arrival of yet another new educational vehicle: massive online open courses (MOOCs). These courses are designed to disseminate knowledge at an unprecedented scale — even as they engender concerns about quality, learning efficacy, and the future of higher education. In this article, I discuss the MOOC phenomenon and describe a MOOC on negotiation that I developed and taught, exploring the advantages that such a course offers for negotiation and conflict resolution education in particular.     

AGE,GENDER, AND THE CRIME OF CRIMES: TOWARD A LIFE‐COURSE THEORY OF GENOCIDE PARTICIPATION*

This article asks whether genocide follows the age and gender distributions common to other crime. We develop and test a life‐course model of genocide participation to address this question using a new dataset of 1,068,192 cases tried in Rwanda's gacaca courts. Three types of prosecutions are considered: 1) inciting, organizing, or supervising violence; 2) killings and other physical assaults; and 3) offenses against property. By relying on systematic graphic comparisons, we find that the peak age of those tried in the gacaca courts was 34 years at the time of the genocide, which is older than the peak age for most other types of crime. We likewise find that women were more likely to participate in crimes against property and comparatively unlikely to commit genocidal murder. Symbolic–interactionist explanations of crime suggest people desist from crime as a result of shared understandings of the expectations of adulthood. We argue that this process may be turned on its head during genocide as participants may believe they are defending their communities against a perceived threat. Thus, in contrast to other criminological theories suggesting that people must desist from crime to be accorded adult status, some adults may participate in genocide to fulfill their duties as adult men.