Issue Information
(Source: Criminology)
Source: Criminology - April 4, 2024 Category: Criminology Tags: ISSUE INFORMATION Source Type: research
Degrees of difference: Do college credentials earned behind bars improve labor market outcomes?
AbstractIt is widely held that providing postsecondary education programs to incarcerated individuals will improve postrelease labor market outcomes. Little research evidence exists, however, to support this view. To test the effect of postsecondary carceral education credentials on employer perceptions of hireability, the current study uses a factorial design to survey a sample of employers nationwide (N = 2,538). Employers were presented with r ésumés of fictional applicants applying to a job as a customer service representative at a large call center. The résumés randomized education credentials earned while incarce...
Source: Criminology - March 5, 2024 Category: Criminology Authors: Abby Ballou Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Homicides involving Black victims are less likely to be cleared in the United States
AbstractDoes a victim's race explain variation in the likelihood of homicide clearance? Attempts to address this issue date back to the 1970s. Yet, despite its theoretical and policy relevance, we lack a comprehensive and clear empirical answer to this critical question. Here, I causally focus on this problem by investigating racial disparity in homicide clearance in the United States, exploiting two sources covering the 1991 –2020 period: the Murder Accountability Project data set (N = 522,278) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System data set (N = 98,677). I primarily analyze these sources by employing exact ma...
Source: Criminology - February 22, 2024 Category: Criminology Authors: Gian Maria Campedelli Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
When police pull back: Neighborhood ‐level effects of de‐policing on violent and property crime, a research note
This study addresses each of these issues, thereby advancing the evidence base concerning the effects of policing on crime. Leveraging two exogenous shocks presented by the onset of the coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and social unrest after the murder of George Floyd, we evaluated the effects of sudden and sustained reductions in high-discretion policing on crime at the neighborhood level in Denver, Colorado. Multilevel models accounting for trends in prior police activity, neighborhood structure, seasonality, and population mobility revealed mixed results. On the one hand, large-scale reductions in stops and drug-re...
Source: Criminology - February 10, 2024 Category: Criminology Authors: Justin Nix,
Jessica Huff,
Scott E. Wolfe,
David C. Pyrooz,
Scott M. Mourtgos Tags: RESEARCH NOTE Source Type: research
Pacifying problem places: How problem property interventions increase guardianship and reduce disorder and crime
This study, therefore, provides evidence that problem property interventions compel landowners to better manage the targeted property and that these effects have a diffusion of benefits on surrounding properties. The effect on place management, however, was limited to the target property and did not reliably generalize to the landowner's other holdings. This study reveals nuance in the ways that problem property interventions can benefit communities. (Source: Criminology)
Source: Criminology - February 9, 2024 Category: Criminology Authors: Michael Zoorob,
Daniel T. O'Brien Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
The problem with criminal records: Discrepancies between state reports and private ‐sector background checks
AbstractCriminal records are routinely used by employers and other institutional decision-makers who rely on their presumed fidelity to evaluate applicants. We analyze criminal records for a sample of 101 people, comparing official state reports, two sources of private-sector background checks (one regulated and one unregulated by federal law), and qualitative interviews. Based on our analysis, private-sector background checks are laden with false-positive and false-negative errors: 60 percent and 50 percent of participants had at least one false-positive error on their regulated and unregulated background checks, and near...
Source: Criminology - February 9, 2024 Category: Criminology Authors: Sarah Lageson,
Robert Stewart Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Officer diversity may reduce Black Americans ’ fear of the police
AbstractWould police racial and gender diversification reduce Black Americans ’ fear of the police? The theory of representative bureaucracy indicates that it might. We tested the effects of officer diversity in two experiments embedded in a national survey that oversampled Black Americans, producing several findings. First, in early 2022, nearly 2 years after George Floyd' s killing, most Black Americans remained afraid of police mistreatment. Second, in a conjoint experiment in which respondents were presented with 11,000 officer profiles, Black Americans were less afraid when the officers were non-White (Black or Hisp...
Source: Criminology - December 4, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: Justin T. Pickett,
Amanda Graham,
Justin Nix,
Francis T. Cullen Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Issue Information
(Source: Criminology)
Source: Criminology - November 15, 2023 Category: Criminology Tags: ISSUE INFORMATION Source Type: research
Autonomy: A study of social exchange in a carceral setting
This study rearticulates mutual dependence arguments about the social order of penological living in terms of social exchange theory and offers several i nnovations: 1) the structural forms of exchange relations in a penal housing unit stratify “carceral autonomy” across members of a social order; 2) diminished carceral autonomy contributes to the buildup of “exchange frustration”—the mixture of discontent and sadness experienced when goals cannot be achieved due the structure of an exchange network; 3) deprivations, inefficacies, and imported cultural standards contribute to what is exchanged and with whom in a ...
Source: Criminology - November 3, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: Michael L. Walker Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Labor markets and incarceration: The China shock to American punishment
AbstractStudies have failed to show a positive effect of unemployment on incarceration despite reasons to expect such a relationship. We note that prior estimates have been muddied by the absence of substate data, a focus on prisons rather than on jails, limited measures of unemployment, and the fact that the health of the labor market is endogenous to incarceration. We instrument for local exposure to the rise of Chinese exports ( “the China Shock”) to estimate the effect of job loss on American incarceration. Marshaling a new data set of prisoners and jail inmates by race at the commuting zone level, we show that neg...
Source: Criminology - October 26, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: John Clegg,
Adaner Usmani Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Updating, subtyping, and perceptions of the police: Implications of police contact for youths ’ perceptions of procedural justice
This study examines intra- and interracial variability in these processes using longitudinal survey data from 3,085 Black and White youth. Regardless of race, youth who indicate they were treated with disrespect during police encounters had lower perceptions of procedural justice than did those with no contact, whereas contact perceived as respectful had no significant effects. For White but not Black youth, police encounters rated as “neutral” are associated with more negative views of the police. Other forms of legal socialization are also racialized, including messages conveyed in the media and by parents. Limited e...
Source: Criminology - October 25, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: Dale Dan ‐Irabor,
Lee Ann Slocum,
Stephanie A. Wiley Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Transphobic discourse and moral panic convergence: A content analysis of my hate mail
AbstractRecently, new social anxieties about transgender people have begun to emerge, framed as an issue of “grooming”—a term typically used in the context of child sexual abuse. In this way, moral panic about transgender people seems to be merging with oft-repeated social fears about pedophilia, resulting not only in policies criminalizing trans people and their allies but also in escalating hatred and threats toward trans-affirming educators. This pattern requires further inquiry. As a trans academic who has been at the center of moral panic, my own hate mail can provide material for this exploration. I conducted a...
Source: Criminology - October 24, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: Allyn Walker Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Streetwork at the crossroads: An evaluation of a street gang outreach intervention and holistic appraisal of the research evidence
AbstractSpurred by the success of public health violence interventions, and accelerated by policy pressure to reduce violence without exacerbating overpolicing and mass incarceration, streetwork programs —those that provide anti-violence services by neighborhood-based workers who perform their work beyond the walls of parochial institutions—have positioned themselves as the most important non–law-enforcement violence prevention option available to urban policy makers. Yet despite their importa nce, the state of the field seems difficult to interpret for academics and practitioners alike. In this article, we make seve...
Source: Criminology - October 23, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: David M. Hureau,
Anthony A. Braga,
Tracey Lloyd,
Christopher Winship Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
Delinquency, unstructured socializing, and social change: The rise and fall of a teen culture of independence
This article delves into the connections between time trends in unstructured socializing and other dramatic changes in adolescence since the 1950s. Osgood et al.’s (1996) individual-level application of routine activity theory proposed that unstructured socializing contributes to crime by exposing people to situations conducive to deviance, and a large body of research supports this idea. Unstructured socializing has proven useful as an explanatory b ridge that links crime and deviance to key social factors like age, class, and gender. The present article expands on two recent studies (Baumer et al., 2021; Svensson& O...
Source: Criminology - October 22, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: D. Wayne Osgood Tags: THE 2022 SUTHERLAND ADDRESS Source Type: research
Support seeking, system avoidance, and citizenship: Social safety net usage after incarceration
AbstractScholars have long described the American penal state and welfare state as joined by a common logic of social marginalization. But researchers have only recently begun to explore how the individuals who pass through the carceral system also interact with welfare state programs. Using data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 1979, in this article, I explore how formerly incarcerated individuals make claims on the welfare state and how participation varies across social programs and states, as well as by race, drawing on theories of social welfare rights-claiming and system avoidance. In so doing, I provid...
Source: Criminology - October 4, 2023 Category: Criminology Authors: Brielle Bryan Tags: ORIGINAL ARTICLE Source Type: research
