Recent ucisose_cls_fp items

Investigating How Social and Physical Distance Impact Offender and Victim Mobility with Discrete Choice Modeling

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Objectives: This study assesses how physical and social distances influence locational choice decision-making across six crime types—burglary, larceny, vehicle theft, assault offense, robbery, and drug violations. It aims to identify how physical distance and social distance affect locational choices in offending and the exposure patterns underlying victimization, while comparing offender and victim mobility across different crime types. Methods: Employing a discrete choice modeling (DCM) framework, this analysis uses 341,804 police incident entries and 40,228 police arrest records from Dallas, covering 2014-06-01 to 2020-03-23. Data integrated from the 2010 Census and American Community Survey 5-year estimates are analyzed at the census block group level, controlling for features of target block groups. Results: Both offender and victim mobility exhibit clear distance decay patterns, with higher physical distances significantly reducing the likelihood of crime involvement in...

Questioning Unaccompanied Immigrant Children: Lessons from Developmental Science on Forensic Interviewing

Wed, 17 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Questioning Unaccompanied Immigrant Children: Lessons from Developmental Science on Forensic Interviewing

Corrigendum to “Fingerprint evidence in exoneration cases” [Forensic Science International: Synergy 12 (2026) 100675]

Thu, 4 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1016/j.fsisyn.2026.100675.].

Peer influence decay and behavioral diffusion in adolescent networks: A simulation approach.

Fri, 8 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

How far does peer influence spread through social networks before dissipating? This study investigates the diffusion of smoking behavior in adolescent friendship networks using longitudinal data from two schools (n = 3154 students) in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. Using Stochastic Actor-Oriented Models, we simulate interventions targeting heavy smokers using various strategies (random, in-degree, eigenvector centrality) and coverage (10 to 100%). A new exponential decay model quantifies influence attenuation, revealing indirect peer influences, or spillover effects, up to three steps from targets. Targeting 10 to 30% of central individuals maximizes smoking reductions, but gains plateau beyond 40 to 50% owing to network saturation. In our analyses, the denser network exhibits broader diffusion and slower decay than the larger, sparser network. This decay metric optimizes intervention design across diverse network structures.

How Does the Business Environment Shape Mobility By Offenders and Mobile Targets?

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Given that much street crime concentrates near businesses, a question is how the business composition of census blocks, not just specific businesses, impacts the spatial mobility of offenders and victims. The study uses data from Dallas, TX, from 2014 to 2020. The results showed that crimes occur farther from the home for offenders than for victims. Furthermore, locations with more consumer-facing businesses are targeted more often by offenders, and the mix of these businesses is particularly attractive for offenders. Finally, the results also showed that the presence of more consumer-facing businesses in the surrounding 400 m buffer increased the likelihood of offenders targeting a location for crime, regardless of the features of the block itself.

Measuring the spatial scale of structural racism and discrimination: Consequences for estimated life expectancy

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVES: Understanding the role of structural racism and discrimination is crucial for understanding persistent social disparities across many domains, but a key concern remains: how does it operate at different spatial scales, and does that affect how it should be measured? We explore both empirical and theoretical differences between structural racism measures at meso and macro scales in the United States. We construct two different measures of structural racism at the meso-level (that is, neighborhoods), one capturing absolute measures of neighborhood blight, the other relative indicators of Black-White inequality. We test four different scales of these meso-level measures, each defined by a buffer centered on a block with four different radii. We simultaneously measure relative racial inequality at the macro level (that is, the county). METHODS: We compared the relationship between structural racism measures on life expectancy at varying meso-scales. The structural racism...

Accounting for Feedback Effects in Neighbourhoods and Crime Research: How Much Does It Matter?

Thu, 26 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract Whereas much ecology of crime research employs cross-sectional study designs, these studies assume that crime does not cause various neighbourhood measures to change over time. However, longitudinal research evidence suggests this is not a plausible assumption. The present study explores this question using neighbourhood data in US cities in Southern California covering over 6.7 million residents. Using data from two time points—2000 and 2010—instrumental variable models account for this endogeneity. The results demonstrate sharp differences between models that do or do not account for endogeneity: several measures yield completely reversed results from positive to negative or vice versa, some measures exhibit much stronger results, whereas others have much weaker, or nonsignificant, results. The findings highlight the importance of accounting for endogeneity in the US context, and that the differences are potentially not modest, but large enough that failing to account...

Perceptions of AI-Driven EdTech: Nationwide Survey and Focus Group Insights from Key End Users

Wed, 11 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Schoolchildren in the United States are increasingly exposed to educational technologies (EdTech), many of which are or will be infused with Artificial Intelligence (AI). Despite this growing integration, there is limited understanding of the current perceptions and attitudes toward EdTech with AI among parents, teachers, and teens. To address this gap, we conducted a mixed-method study involving an A/B experiment through an online survey with 3,051 participants and complemented by focus group discussions with 80 participants. Providing a comprehensive snapshot of AI perception in education in 2024, our findings indicate that participants, particularly teachers, may hold more negative perceptions of our AI-powered EdTech mock-up compared to the one powered by human tutors. Based on these insights, we discuss the future of EdTech regarding the current perceptions. This research contributes to an empirical understanding of the perceptions and attitudes toward AI in K-12 education,...

Who gets quality urban parks? A socioeconomic disparity analysis using user reviews and the opportunity algorithm in Los Angeles

Thu, 12 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

This study explores urban park equity by leveraging user-generated content from Google Maps and applying the opportunity algorithm to assess disparities in park quality. We investigated whether perceived needs and satisfaction levels related to park features vary by neighborhood income level, racial composition, and park size. The opportunity algorithm identifies underserved and overserved features by comparing the relative importance and satisfaction scores. The results revealed that different park groups exhibited distinct underserved and overserved features. Safety concerns are underserved in low-income and minority neighborhoods. Conversely, amenities such as hiking and biking or natural features are often overserved in high-income or high-white areas. Furthermore, dog parks were viewed as overserved in low-white areas but underserved in high-white areas, reflecting a reversed pattern. These findings demonstrate the effectiveness of the opportunity algorithm approach in detecting...

Business environment ecology and crime: A robust test across 182 cities

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Studies assessing the question of how certain types of business establishments are related to the level of crime on blocks typically do not account for the general business context of those blocks. The present study extends one previous study that did so by using a large sample of blocks across 182 cities in the U.S. We assess whether measuring the general business context of blocks as three broad categories of businesses—consumer-facing businesses, blue-collar businesses, and white-collar businesses—along with the heterogeneity of consumer businesses on a block can explain where crime occurs. The study finds that these four measures explain much of the variation in crime due to businesses across blocks. Furthermore, whereas 12 specific types of businesses exhibit strong relationships with crime when not accounting for this business context, their relationships with crime greatly diminish, or completely evaporate, once accounting for the general business context. Finally, blocks...

Institutionalizing Bias: The Death Penalty, Federal Drug Prosecutions, and Mechanisms of Disparate Punishment

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Institutionalizing Bias: The Death Penalty, Federal Drug Prosecutions, and Mechanisms of Disparate Punishment

Trawling for minnows on the high seas: Criminal law's coercive capacities and the U.S. Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The Maritime Drug Law Enforcement Act (MDLEA) was passed in 1986 by the U.S. Congress at the height of the American drug war frenzy, further empowering the U.S. government to arrest and prosecute suspected drug traffickers nearly anywhere in the world when transporting drugs by sea. In this article, we use a case study of MDLEA prosecutions in the District of Puerto Rico to identify and delineate five distinct characteristics of criminal law's coercive capacity: (1) jurisdictional capacity; (2) defendant pool capacity; (3) charging capacity; (4) evidentiary capacity; and (5) punishment capacity. While some aspects of the MDLEA are unique, many of these capacious features are inherent to contemporary U.S. criminal law more broadly. Using data from interviews with legal actors, we show how criminal law's capacities work together to ensure convictions and long prison sentences even in the face of formal legal roadblocks. We conclude by suggesting that without scaling back the capacity...

Neighborhoods and violent crime

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Violence-while a broader societal issue-requires the co-occurrence of two or more people in a specific place at a specific time. As such, a large body of literature has examined the spatial patterns of violence. Much of this work focuses on understanding why some neighborhoods have more violence than others. This chapter reviews the current body of literature that examines violence in neighborhoods, including work focused on how neighborhood socio-demographic characteristics, social capital, housing change and the built environment are related to various forms of neighborhood violence both cross-sectionally and longitudinally.

Police talk in the jury room: the production of race-conscious reasonable doubt among racially diverse jury groups

Wed, 11 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract A central goal of Critical Race Theory (CRT) is to deconstruct the “jurisprudence of color-blindness” that is infused with the language of equality while operating to maintain racial hierarchies. Color-blind ideology extends to the procedures governing criminal juries, ensuring they are disproportionately white while constraining diversity of perspectives, especially regarding policing issues. In this paper, we merge CRT insights about color-blindness and race-consciousness in the criminal jury context and in the Fourth Amendment law governing policing, to advance empirical socio-legal scholarship on race and jury decision-making. We analyze deliberations data from mock jury groups that decided on verdict in a federal drug conspiracy trial, focusing on how groups talked about law enforcement testimony. We find that negative discussions of the law enforcement testimony is associated with shifts toward acquittal, there are more skeptical discussions about this testimony...

Engendering Hate Crime Policy: Gender, the "Dilemma of Difference," and the Creation of Legal Subjects

Fri, 9 Jan 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Nearly six years after two women were bound and gagged and had their throats slit while camping and hiking in Shenandoah National Park, U.S. Attorney General John D. Ashcroft held a historic nationally televised press conferenceon April 11, 2002 to announce that the U.S. Justice Department invoked the federal hate crimes statute for the first time to charge the alleged murderer with hate crime. In announcing the indictment, Ashcroft spoke at length about his meeting with the parents of the victims and about the lives and characters of the young women: two Midwesterners who migrated to New England, met and became lovers, and shared the love of science and the outdoors. Justifying the invocation of federal hate crime law, which carries with it enhanced penalties, Ashcroft said, “Criminal acts of hate run counter to what is best in America, our belief in equality and freedom. The Department of Justice will aggressively investigate, prosecute, and punish criminal acts of violence...

Shifting Neighborhoods, Changing Crime: How Urban Context Shapes Outcomes

Wed, 3 Dec 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study advances research on neighborhood change and crime by examining how key structural characteristics relate to changes in violent crime across diverse urban contexts. Utilizing longitudinal data from 2010 to 2018 in twelve U.S. cities, the analysis applies latent trajectory modeling to test three dynamic patterns: monotonic, asymmetric, and perturbation. Results indicate an asymmetric relationship between disadvantage and violent crime, particularly in large cities. Similarly, residential instability exhibits an asymmetric association with violent crime in stagnant and large cities. Changes in racial/ethnic heterogeneity are generally linked to reductions in violent crime in stagnant and large cities, while in small or growing cities, the relationship is asymmetric. This study provides a more nuanced understanding of how structural conditions shape violence.

Neighborhoods and Homicide Egohoods as a Solution to Methodological Challenges

Wed, 19 Nov 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Neighborhoods and Homicide Egohoods as a Solution to Methodological Challenges

Rap on Trial: A Legal Guide for Attorneys, 2nd

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Rap on Trial: A Legal Guide for Attorneys, 2nd

Immigration and crime around the globe: key findings across a diverse range of contexts

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This chapter reviews the ever-growing body of empirical research on the immigration-crime link around the globe, focusing on studies across a diverse range of contexts: the United States, Canada, Australia, and Europe. For each context, using a narrative review approach, we identify and describe findings from empirical studies on immigration and crime, as well as compare and contrast the findings across contexts. We conclude the chapter by extracting key lessons and takeaways that, we hope, will help generate a fruitful research agenda moving forward.

Integrative models: merging offender-based and event/place-based approaches

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Although offenders, targets, and guardians are essential features of crime incidents, existing empirical research often ignores one of more of these features. As a consequence, much of the crime and place literature focused on identifying targets in micro-geographic units fails to account for the potential presence of offenders. Likewise, the neighborhoods and crime literature studying meso-geographic units is focused on measuring potential guardianship but rarely accounts for offenders and their spatial patterns. Although there are theories considering all three of these ingredients, empirical research is lacking. A consequence is that existing empirical models may yield inaccurate information due to omitted variable bias, impacting our general knowledge. I propose ways to consider integrating theoretical and empirical models based on offenders with those based on the locations where crime occurs (place-based models). I conclude by providing a few examples of research integrating...

Immigrant Victimization: Centering Language in Theory, Data and Method

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Compared to immigrant criminality, relatively less attention is paid to immigrant victimization, even as extensive scholarship on criminal victimization exists more generally. This is curious in light of research showing that certain immigrant groups are at increased risk of victimization with respect to certain crimes. In this essay, we set out to answer the following questions: How do leading theories of victimization explain the risk of immigrant victimization? Are there aspects of immigrant victimization that would benefit from further theorization and empirical inquiry? How do challenges associated with data collection of immigrant populations impact the advancement of theorizing and research on immigrant victimization? What insights about immigrant victimization may be gained by better integrating theory, data, and method in this research area? To answer these questions, we first provide an overview of classic frameworks used to explain criminal victimization in general,...

Immigration and Crime in Comparative Perspective: An Emerging Framework for Research

Wed, 10 Sep 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Research on immigration and crime has experienced unprecedented growth. Studies reveal that immigration is not associated with increased crime rates in many countries including the United States, Canada, and Australia. In other places such as Europe, the findings are more mixed. Yet, limitations in this body of work hamper our understanding. In particular, researchers rely too heavily on conceptual dichotomies, or mutually exclusive categorizations (e.g., foreign-born vs. native-born, documented vs. undocumented, first generation vs. second generation), which insufficiently capture nuance or layers of diversity inherent in immigrant populations. Dichotomies must be replaced with an analytical framework that incorporates multiple dimensions of immigration. Beyond foreign-born (vs. native-born) status, intersections of immigrants’ legal statuses, assimilation levels, motives for migration, and settlement contexts create diverse groups whose backgrounds, experiences, and opportunities...

Immigration and Crime: The Role of Immigrant Heterogeneity1

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Objectives: Research on the immigration-crime link has grown substantially yet researchers have not sufficiently considered immigrant heterogeneity, which reflects both the number of immigrant groups in a community and their relative sizes or representation, even as theory has a lot to say regarding the possible impact of such heterogeneity. With few exceptions, scholars have yet to consider how immigrant diversity, including by race/ethnicity, country of origin, or language use, may matter for the immigration-crime association. This is the focus of the current study. Methods: Building on a handful of studies, we examine the association between measures of immigrant heterogeneity based on different social dimensions and crime rates across 15,000 neighborhoods in roughly 350 U.S. cities, reflecting a wide range of immigrant community contexts. Results: We find that immigrant diversity matters greatly for neighborhood crime rates, although in unique ways. Conclusions: We discuss...

A response to EA-4/23 INF:2025 “The Assessment and Accreditation of Opinions and Interpretations using ISO/IEC 17025:2017”

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

A response to EA-4/23 INF:2025 “The Assessment and Accreditation of Opinions and Interpretations using ISO/IEC 17025:2017”

The role of renter burden and affordable units at risk in city-level housing inadequacy

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

While substantial research has studied the effects of government-assisted provision of affordable housing units, little is known about the challenges that arise when the stock of affordable units is increasingly at risk due to the approaching expiration of their low-cost status. This study provides an empirical investigation of how city-level at-risk affordable units, as well as median rent and rent burden, relate to housing inadequacy using data for all cities with population greater than 5000 in the U.S. The results indicate a direct positive relationship between rent burden (relative to income) and housing inadequacy in multilevel models accounting for the county context of these cities. This positive relationship is strongest in counties with large population or high average income. Cities with higher (nominal) median rent have less housing inadequacy, particularly in counties with larger populations. Finally, the presence of more affordable units, as well as more at-risk...

Examining how structural characteristics and the physical environment simultaneously impact crime in neighborhoods: Using a semi-parametric strategy

Wed, 27 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This study examines the associations between various social and physical environmental characteristics and their interrelated influence on neighborhood crime. Using Kernel Regularized Least Squares (KRLS), we estimate the marginal effects of each independent variable at each datapoint by providing pointwise estimates of partial derivatives. Then we regress the derivative values for each independent variable on each other variable in the model to examine whether these derivative estimates (marginal effects) vary by other variables in the model. We found that the effects of the physical environment on different types of crime in neighborhoods vary by different levels of social structural characteristics. We simultaneously assess how the two different types of neighborhood environments can work together in a semiparametric way, theoretically integrate both social disorganization and criminal opportunity perspectives, and thus provide a more comprehensive as well as nuanced explanation...

Cognitive loopholes of crime: Mapping the Codevelopment of moral disengagement within perceptions of risks and rewards

Sat, 2 Aug 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Prior research has examined individuals' perceptions of punishments (PP) and rewards (PR) for crime, as well as their use of moral disengagement (MD), to understand why adolescents and young adults commit crimes. However, the joint development of these cognitions as a broader risk-perception mechanism remains understudied. This paper explores the independent and relational development of these processes in justice-involved youth. Data from 1,170 male participants (42.1% Black, 34.0% Hispanic, 19.2% White, 4.6% Other) in the Pathways to Desistance study were analyzed using a three-variable autoregressive latent trajectory model. MD, PP, and PR were measured across 11 waves and 7 years, allowing for the simultaneous examination of individual trajectories and their bidirectional relationships from adolescence to young adulthood. Although PP increased and MD and PR decreased across adolescence, all three exhibited decelerations in their change prior to young adulthood. Moreover, bidirectional...

RIDING THE RAILS OF MOBILE PAYMENTS Financial Inclusion, Mobile Phones, and Infrastructure

Wed, 23 Jul 2025 00:00:00 +0000

With the increase of digital and networked media in everyday life, researchers have increasingly turned their gaze to the symbolic and cultural elements of technologies. From studying online game communities, locative and social media to YouTube and mobile media, ethnographic approaches to digital and networked media have helped to elucidate the dynamic cultural and social dimensions of media practice. The Routledge Companion to Digital Ethnography provides an authoritative, up-to-date, intellectually broad, and conceptually cutting-edge guide to this emergent and diverse area. Features include: a comprehensive history of computers and digitization in anthropology; exploration of various ethnographic methods in the context of digital tools and network relations; consideration of social networking and communication technologies on a local and global scale; in-depth analyses of different interfaces in ethnography, from mobile technologies to digital archives.

Getting boxed in: How race and gang labeling shape solitary confinement use

Fri, 27 Jun 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Restrictive housing imposes isolation in austere conditions on people who commit serious rule violations or are too dangerous (or endangered) to house in the general prison population. We contribute to a growing body of scholarship analyzing restrictive housing placements, asking how gang membership, race/ethnicity, and misconduct interact to predict placement and lengths of stay. We integrate analysis of qualitative interviews with a random sample of 106 people in long-term solitary confinement in 2017 with analysis of 15 years of administrative data, both from Washington state prisons. We find that official gang labels “stick” to people, amplifying their risk of solitary confinement placement. Being labeled a gang member doubles the odds of being placed in solitary confinement and significantly increases the duration of those stays, even controlling for criminal history characteristics and in-prison behavior. We find differences in the effect of gang membership on solitary confinement...

First impressions matter: Mundane obstacles to a forensic device for probabilistic reporting in fingerprint analysis

Sun, 25 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article investigates why statistical reasoning has had little impact on the practice of friction ridge (or 'fingerprint') examination, despite both interest and some modest scientific progress toward this goal. Previous research has attributed this lack of results to practitioner resistance and legal apathy. This article seeks to complement those explanations through interviews with experts with a variety of perspectives on contemporary fingerprint practice about practical and mundane obstacles to the belated statistical revolution in fingerprinting. Based on these interviews, we argue that a 'forensic device' is required to incorporate statistical reasoning into fingerprint practice. This device would consist of a robust statistical model fronted by accessible, usable software. These components, in turn, require other components, such as large research data sets, markets, early adopters, government clients, education, and training. We conclude that the statistical revolution...

The securitization of research ethics: Navigating the ethics of engaging criminalized voices

Wed, 7 May 2025 00:00:00 +0000

We ask what ethical regulations govern criminal legal system research that is not “biomedical and behavioral research”—including oral history and archival projects, legal work and research, journalistic projects, big data, and multidisciplinary projects—but nonetheless takes place inside the academy? We examine ethical frameworks for research in the social sciences, as well as participatory action, oral history, archival, and data use, attending to how these academic ethical frameworks define risk and how these definitions shape resulting research, in intentional and unintentional ways. Through analysis of examples from each of these frameworks, we argue that efforts to eliminate risk often create other harms, while distracting from more fundamental ethical questions about the well-being of research subjects and data contributors in the criminal legal system. We identify an alternative to risk elimination: risk metabolization, a more collaborative and iterative approach to managing...

The spatial scale of inequality and crime: comparing egohoods across four cities

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This chapter examines how inequality impacts neighborhood crime at various spatial scales. First, I utilize a strictly spatial measure of neighborhoods-egohoods-which relaxes the assumption of non-overlapping boundaries of most existing neighborhood definitions. Existing strategies for constructing neighborhood boundaries typically minimize the amount of inequality present by design, and therefore may underestimate the relationship between inequality and crime in neighborhoods. Second, I assess whether inequality in the broader 2.5-mile area around the ½-mile egohoods further impacts the level of crime. Third, I move beyond cross-sectional analyses and estimate longitudinal models over 10 years. Finally, I extend existing research by selecting four cities that differ in key ways: two Sun Belt cities (Atlanta and Dallas) and two Rust Belt cities (Chicago and Cincinnati). There is strong evidence of the impact of spatial inequality, as greater inequality in a ½-mile egohood is associated...

The ecology of business environments and consequences for crime

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Research has typically focused on how certain types of business establishments are associated with the location of crime on street blocks. Studies in this genre, however, often have not accounted for the general business context of the block on which a business is located. This study uses a large sample of blocks in Southern California to test whether the context of businesses matters. We assess whether a nonlinear relationship exists between the total businesses on a block and crime, whether differences exist based on broad categories of businesses—consumer-facing businesses, blue-collar businesses, and white-collar businesses—and whether the mixing of businesses on a block impacts crime. The study finds strong evidence that blocks with more business mixing have higher levels of crime. A 1 standard deviation increase in business mixing is associated with 35%–95% more crime. The relationship between business mixing and crime is moderated by the size of the population on the block....

BODY IMAGE AND SEXUAL CONSIDERATIONS OF WOMEN COMPLETING GENITAL PLASTIC/COSMETIC PROCEDURES: THE VASE-2 STUDY

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

BODY IMAGE AND SEXUAL CONSIDERATIONS OF WOMEN COMPLETING GENITAL PLASTIC/COSMETIC PROCEDURES: THE VASE-2 STUDY

Collective Efficacy and Crime

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, we explore the literature on collective efficacy and crime, but pay attention to three major challenges that confront this literature, and researchers moving forward with the concept in studies of neighborhoods. These challenges are (1) precisely defining and measuring the concept of collective efficacy; (2) determining whether the notions of general cohesion and trust in neighborhoods are really components of collective efficacy, or determinants of it; and (3) whether neighborhood crime can have feedback effects on the level of collective efficacy.

Concentrated disadvantage and stress in daily life after prison

Wed, 23 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Reentry from prison is a stressful life transition, which has consequences for recidivism, health, and well-being. Navigating poor and highly surveilled neighborhoods after prison is considered a primary stressor after release; however, it is methodologically challenging to document how poor places exert these invisible, day-to-day strains. Bringing together theories of stress with “activity space” research, we analyze nearly 300,000 GPS estimates and more than 5300 daily reports of emotions collected through mobile phones across 3 months among a cohort of men recently released from prison in Newark, New Jersey. Using a new approach to measure activity spaces, which we term “egocentric places,” combined with multilevel models that investigate within-person changes over time, we find that daily exposure to disadvantaged places is associated with increased negative emotions, specifically, stress. These associations are most evident when navigating commonly visited places (as opposed...

Accessing the right to vote among system-impacted people

Mon, 14 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Recent efforts to dismantle felon disenfranchisement regimes have the potential to substantially expand electoral eligibility among people with criminal records; however, even among those with criminal legal histories who are eligible to vote, voting rates are often extremely low. Analyzing interview, focus group, and text message conversations among a multi-state sample around the November 2022 election, we identify and describe how administrative barriers to voting-including a lack of understanding about the voting process, confusion about legal eligibility, and perceived risks of rearrest of voting while ineligible-pose an access to justice issue among system-impacted people. These barriers are amplified by government mistrust, specifically the perception that barriers are intentionally constructed to suppress voting, and they are potentially mitigated by outreach by community organizations that are viewed as credible. The findings emphasize that legislative reforms repealing...

The International Persistence and Resilience of Solitary Confinement

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Drawing on a combination of legal analysis and fieldwork conducted with prisoners and administrators in both Denmark and the United States, this article interrogates how solitary confinement has been defined and constrained – or not – in the context of U.S., European, and international law over time. Solitary confinement has existed consistently in prisons across the world, since the first prisons opened. Solitary has been surprisingly predictable over its long history: resilient to criticism, subject to ongoing debates about just how detrimental it is, and repeatedly producing instances of extreme and de-humanizing brutality. This consistency and predictability suggests substantial limitations inherent in the newest barrage of critiques leveled by courts, scholars, international human rights bodies, and professional associations against the practice of solitary confinement. Indeed, this reveals that many critiques of solitary confinement have failed because they have promoted...

Law's Infamy Ashker v. Governor of California and the Failures of Solitary Confinement Reform

Wed, 9 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Law's Infamy Ashker v. Governor of California and the Failures of Solitary Confinement Reform

Mobile Money: Communication, Consumption and Change in the Payments Space

Thu, 3 Apr 2025 00:00:00 +0000

This article explores the emerging field of 'mobile money': mobile phone-enabled systems for value transfer and storage, primarily in the developing world, which are heralded as signal interventions in the effort to broaden financial inclusion and bank the 'unbanked.' Focusing on the stories that circulate in the emergent network of expertise that is calling 'mobile money' into being, it discusses how economic techniques and social narratives about markets - specifically, narratives about the opportunities for profit and financial inclusion in the 'payments space' - format a consumer market for mobile money. Furthermore, it asks whether end-users' repurposing of mobile money - and the use of airtime as currency - heralds a new means of exchange or store of value, potentially remaking money in the process. © 2012 Copyright Taylor and Francis Group, LLC.

Intergenerational Effects of a Family Cash Transfer on the Home Environment

Tue, 18 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

OBJECTIVE: A natural experiment that provided income supplements to families has been associated with beneficial outcomes for children that persisted into adulthood. The children in this study are now adults, and many are parents. METHOD: The study builds on the longitudinal, representative Great Smoky Mountains study conducted from 1993 to 2020. At follow-up in their late 30s, 1,094 of the 1,348 living participants (81.2%) were assessed. Of these participants (67.6%), 739 were parents. A tribe in the area implemented a cash transfer program of approximately $5,000 annually per person to every tribal member based on the profits received from operating a casino. Ten aspects of the home environment of participants were assessed (eg, family chaos, substance use, and food insecurity) as well as a composite measure across all home environment indicators. The proposed analyses were preregistered (https://osf.io/ex638). RESULTS: Of the 739 parents assessed, 192 (26.0%) were American...

Domains of policy: Law and society perspectives on punishment and social control

Sat, 15 Mar 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Domains of policy: Law and society perspectives on punishment and social control

Life after life: Recidivism among individuals formerly sentenced to mandatory juvenile life without parole

Mon, 10 Feb 2025 00:00:00 +0000

In Miller v. Alabama (2012), the Supreme Court abolished mandatory juvenile life without parole (JLWOP) sentences and subsequently decided that the ruling applied retroactively (Montgomery v. Louisiana, 2016), effectively rendering thousands of inmates eligible for resentencing and potential release from prison. In its decisions, the Court cited developmental science, noting that youth, by virtue of their transient immaturity, are less culpable and more amenable to rehabilitation relative to their adult counterparts. Specifically, the Court notes adolescents' propensity for impulsive action, sensitivity to social influence, and difficulty understanding long-term consequences. Even so, these rulings raised concerns regarding the consequences of releasing prisoners who had committed heinous crimes as juveniles. Several years after the Court's decision, preliminary data are now available to shed light on rates of recidivism among those released. The current paper comprises three...

Academic Navel-Gazing Debating Globalization as the Planet Burns

Wed, 15 Jan 2025 00:00:00 +0000

Academic Navel-Gazing Debating Globalization as the Planet Burns

Trajectories of offending over 9 years after youths' first arrest: What predicts who desists and who continues to offend?

Mon, 16 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Antisocial and illegal behavior generally declines as youth approach adulthood, but there is significant individual variation in the timing of the peak and decline of offending from adolescence to young adulthood. There are two primary research questions in the present study. First, are there subgroups of youth who follow similar patterns of offending over the nine years after their first arrest? Second, what baseline factors predict which youth will follow each pattern of offending? Data were drawn from the Crossroads study, which includes a sample of racially and ethnically diverse boys who were interviewed regularly for 9 years following their first arrest. Boys were between 13 and 17 years old at the start of the study and were approximately 24-25 years old at the final interview. Trajectories were measured with youths' self-reported offending using latent class growth analysis (LCGA). Results indicated that there were four subgroups of youth: a stable low group (55%), an...

Adolescents’ Digital Technology Use, Emotional Dysregulation, and Self-Esteem: No Evidence of Same-Day Linkages

Wed, 11 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Concerns regarding the potential negative impacts of digital technology use on youth mental health and well-being are high. However, most studies have several methodological limitations: relying on cross-sectional designs and retrospective reports, assessing technology use as an omnibus construct, and focusing on between- instead of within-person comparisons. This study addresses these limitations by prospectively following young adolescents (n = 388) over a 14-day ecological momentary assessment study to test whether adolescents’ digital technology use is linked with self-reported emotional dysregulation and self-esteem and whether these relationships are stronger for adolescent girls than boys. We found no evidence that adolescents experienced higher emotional dysregulation (b = − .02; p = .07) and lower self-esteem (b = .004; p = .32) than they normally do on days where they use more technology than they normally do (within-person). Adolescents with higher average daily technology...

Place‐Based Developmental Research: Conceptual and Methodological Advances in Studying Youth Development in Context

Tue, 3 Dec 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Scientists have, for some time, recognized that development unfolds in numerous settings, including families, schools, neighborhoods, and organized and unorganized activity settings. Since the turn of the 20th century, the body of mainstream neighborhood effects scholarship draws heavily from the early 20th century Chicago School of Sociology frameworks and have been situating development in neighborhood contexts and working to identify the structures and processes via which neighborhoods matter for a range of developmental outcomes, especially achievement, behavioral and emotional problems, and sexual activity. From this body of work, two new areas of developmental scholarship are emerging. Both areas are promising for advancing an understanding of child development in context. First, cultural-developmental neighborhood researchers are advancing neighborhood effects research that explicitly recognizes the ways that racial, ethnic, cultural, and immigrant social positions matter...

The Impact of Waiver to Adult Court on Youths’ Perceptions of Procedural Justice

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The current study examined perceptions of fair treatment in a past court experience among a sample of incarcerated youth (n = 364). Perceptions were compared for youth whose cases were processed through the juvenile (n = 261) versus adult court (n = 103) systems. In general, youth who were adjudicated in adult court felt more justly treated by legal authorities than youth adjudicated in juvenile court. Specifically, youth in adult court rated judges as only marginally more just than youth in juvenile court, but rated their defense attorney's treatment as significantly more just. Youth rated the prosecutor's treatment as relatively unjust regardless of where their case was handled. Differences in perceptions of procedural justice were also observed based on prior arrest history and race, with minority youth and repeat offenders perceiving the process to be less procedurally just. Our findings should not be used as support for the increased transfer of youth into adult court, as...

Aggressive Male Juvenile Offenders with Callous-Unemotional Traits Show Aberrant Attentional Orienting to Distress Cues

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Antisocial youth with callous-unemotional (CU) traits exhibit a pattern of severe and persistent conduct problems and deficits in emotional processing that parallels adults with psychopathy. Aberrant emotional attention, particularly among individuals high on aggression, constitutes one such deficit; however, its robustness across race/ethnicity requires further investigation given findings that the psychopathy construct manifests differently across race (Sullivan and Kosson 2006), and emotional attention is susceptible to the influence of adverse environmental factors such as violence exposure that is more common among ethnic minority youth (Kimonis et al. in Development and Psychopathology, 20, 569–589, 2008b). Also, the development of a comprehensive measure of CU traits, the Inventory of Callous-Unemotional Traits (ICU), has identified specific CU dimensions (Uncaring, Callous, Unemotional) that are yet to be investigated in relation to emotional attention deficits. Thus,...

Health Service Utilization in Adolescents Following a First Arrest: The Role of Antisocial Behavior, Callous-Unemotional Traits, and Juvenile Justice System Processing

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Previous research indicates that youth exhibiting antisocial behavior are at risk for utilizing a disproportionate amount of health services compared to youth without these problems. The present study investigates whether being processed by the juvenile justice system and showing callous-unemotional (CU) traits independently predict health service utilization (medical and mental health service use and out-of-home placement) over and above the severity of antisocial behavior across adolescence. A total of 766 participants who had been arrested for the first time in adolescence provided data at ten appointments over a period of seven years. Results showed that self-reported antisocial behavior at the time of arrest predicted increased use of most health service use types over the next seven years (i.e. medicine prescriptions, tests for sexually transmitted infections, mental health service appointments, and out-of-home placements). All except prescription medication use remained...

Adolescent Contact, Lasting Impact? Lessons Learned From Two Longitudinal Studies Spanning 20 Years of Developmental Science Research With Justice-System-Involved Youths

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this article, we summarize key findings from 20 years of research conducted at the intersection of developmental psychology and juvenile justice in the United States. We predominantly examine data from two large-scale, multisite longitudinal studies involving justice-system-involved adolescents-the Pathways to Desistance study and the Crossroads study. Topics of discussion include predictors of offending and desistance from crime; youth outcomes and psychosocial needs; and emerging research, programs, and policy initiatives. First, individual-level (e.g., age, psychosocial maturity) and contextual-level (e.g., antisocial peers, exposure to violence) risk factors associated with offending are explored. Second, we discuss short-term and long-term outcomes of justice-system contact for youths engaging in moderate offenses. We highlight main findings from the Crossroads study indicating that youths who are sanctioned by the justice system at their first arrest have worse outcomes...

Sexual abuse disclosure among incarcerated female adolescents and young adults

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

BACKGROUND: Childhood sexual abuse (CSA) is over-represented among incarcerated girls and women. In order to inform effective methods of response, they represent a critical group for better understanding disclosure processes. OBJECTIVE: The purpose of the current study was to assess the CSA and CSA disclosure experiences of incarcerated female adolescents and young adults. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Participants were 94 serious female offenders, ages 15-24 (M = 18.72, SD = 1.94), incarcerated in a secure juvenile facility. METHOD: In one-on-one interviews, participants answered questions about abuse characteristics, whether they had previously disclosed, to whom they had disclosed and after how long, and reasons for prior disclosure or nondisclosure. RESULTS: Over half of the sample (51.8%,n = 44) reported experiencing CSA. Most individuals who reported a CSA history had previously disclosed (79.5%, n = 35), with approximately equal proportions claiming to disclose within one week...

Mothers with justice‐involved sons: Socioeconomic impacts of COVID‐19 by neighborhood disorder in the United States

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Women, particularly mothers, have faced disparate socioeconomic consequences throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. Research has yet to examine whether the consequences of the pandemic vary based on the level of neighborhood disorder, which is associated with various health conditions, including COVID-19 complications. The present study utilizes data from a diverse sample of 221 women with justice-involved sons interviewed during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. Negative binominal and logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine whether perceived neighborhood social disorder is related to socioeconomic impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, and whether the relation varies for mothers with and without children in their home during the pandemic. The results suggest that greater perceived neighborhood social disorder was associated with increased in COVID-19-related socioeconomic consequences. Neighborhood social disorder affected socioeconomic impacts above and beyond...

Trajectories of Violent Behavior Among Females and Males

Fri, 8 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Both the psychological and criminological fields have long hypothesized the mechanisms that influence desistance from violent offending, but few studies have focused on violent females. This study identifies patterns of violent behavior across 7 years among 172 females and 172 matched males ages 15-24, testing if heterogeneity in violent offending is linked to (a) developmental change in impulse control and (b) attainment of adult milestones. Fewer females persist in violence (25%) than males (46%); 19% of males increase in violent behavior. Females who develop impulse control and are employed are more likely to desist from violence. Violent offending is unrelated to other adult milestones. Developmental increases in impulse control may trigger desistance, while employment may maintain desistance from violence.

Intergenerational effects of a casino-funded family transfer program on educational outcomes in an American Indian community

Tue, 5 Nov 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Cash transfer policies have been widely discussed as mechanisms to curb intergenerational transmission of socioeconomic disadvantage. In this paper, we take advantage of a large casino-funded family transfer program introduced in a Southeastern American Indian Tribe to generate difference-in-difference estimates of the link between children’s cash transfer exposure and third grade math and reading test scores of their offspring. Here we show greater math (0.25 standard deviation [SD], p =.0148, 95% Confidence Interval [CI]: 0.05, 0.45) and reading (0.28 SD, p = .0066, 95% CI: 0.08, 0.49) scores among American Indian students whose mother was exposed ten years longer than other American Indian students to the cash transfer during her childhood (or relative to the non-American Indian student referent group). Exploratory analyses find that a mother’s decision to pursue higher education and delay fertility appears to explain some, but not all, of the relation between cash transfers...

Analysing non-linearities and threshold effects between street-level built environments and local crime patterns: An interpretable machine learning approach

Wed, 9 Oct 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Despite the substantial number of studies on the relationships between crime patterns and built environments, the impacts of street-level built environments on crime patterns have not been definitively determined due to the limitations of obtaining detailed streetscape data and conventional analysis models. To fill these gaps, this study focuses on the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environments and local crime patterns at the level of a street segment in the City of Santa Ana, California. Using Google Street View (GSV) and semantic segmentation techniques, we quantify the features of the built environment in GSV images. Then, we examine the non-linear relationships and threshold effects between built environment factors and crime by applying interpretable machine learning (IML) methods. While the machine learning models, especially Deep Neural Network (DNN), outperformed negative binomial regression in predicting future crime events, particularly...

Davis v. Mississippi (1969)

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Davis v. Mississippi (1969)

Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969)

Thu, 12 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Davis v. Mississippi, 394 U.S. 721 (1969)

The interdependence of caring, safety, and health in correctional settings: Analysis of a survey of security staff in a large county jail system

Wed, 11 Sep 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The health of incarcerated populations is intertwined with the health of security staff, but the social mechanisms, and especially the specific interventions, that might mitigate these health harms are underexplored. We examine one possible mechanism of interrelated health harms: whether and how jail security staff are willing and able to care for mentally ill detainees. We hypothesize that the attitudes of security staff towards care affect the well-being of everyone in a jail setting-staff, as well as detainees. Analyzing 539 anonymous respondent surveys administered to a stratified cluster sample of security staff working in a large U.S. county jail system, we (1) describe the prevalence of a perceived duty to care and availability of caring resources among security staff and (2) analyze whether variations in a duty to care and caring resources predict outcomes associated with staff and detainee well-being. Across five maximum likelihood models estimated, both perceived duty...

Patterned remittances enhance women's health-related autonomy

Thu, 15 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The consequences for women "left behind" by virtue of temporary male migration are mixed. On the one hand, concomitant changes in fertility, participation in the labor force, and social norms are often associated with increased independence for women. On the other hand, women left behind can be vulnerable to increased dependency on members of their husbands' family or face limited access to social institutions. These shifts in women's capacity for decision making can have important implications for their health and well-being. Focusing on the state of Kerala in southern India, we examine the conditions under which the remittances that migrants send home have an impact on the health of women left behind. Specifically, we assess the extent to which the timing of remittance sending can support women's autonomy and improve their ability to make autonomous healthcare decisions. We use evidence from migrant households in Kerala, a region deeply engrained in the world labor migration...

Immigration and Crime: Is the Relationship Nonlinear?

Wed, 14 Aug 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Research finds that immigration and crime are not related across neighbourhoods, contrary to social disorganization theory and consistent with the immigration revitalization thesis. This research, however, is largely silent as to any possible nonlinear effects. Yet social theory offers sound reasons for why the immigration–crime association may be nonlinear; explanations, including immigrant/ethnic enclave theory and immigrant victimization theory, underscore potential concentration effects—albeit in different ways. Using a novel dataset with information on crime in over 15,000 neighbourhoods across a diverse range of US cities, we examine whether or not the immigration–crime association is nonlinear. We find that for both violent and property crime, a nonlinear relationship best captures the relationship. In additional analyses, we determine the theoretical perspective with which the findings are most consistent.

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

Wed, 31 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Diversity and the Transition to Adulthood in America

The Contribution of Forensic and Expert Evidence to DNA Exoneration Cases: An Interim Report

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The Contribution of Forensic and Expert Evidence to DNA Exoneration Cases: An Interim Report

Microscopic Hair Comparison and Convicting the Innocent

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Microscopic Hair Comparison and Convicting the Innocent

Police Misconduct in Exoneration Cases in Los Angeles County

Wed, 17 Jul 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Police Misconduct in Exoneration Cases in Los Angeles County

Downstream Effects of Frayed Relations: Juror Race, Judgment, and Perceptions of Police

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Building on research demonstrating significant differences in how Black and White Americans view law enforcement, this study assesses how those differential views shape potential jurors’ decision-making in the context of a federal drug conspiracy case in which the primary evidence against the defendant is provided by an FBI agent and an informant cooperating with the agent. A sample of 649 Black and White jury-eligible U.S. citizens were exposed to the case, in which a Black defendant is being tried, and where the informant-witness race (Black or White) was varied. Participants determined verdict, evaluated evidence, and completed additional measures. Results indicated that Black participants were significantly less likely to convict than White participants, especially in the White informant condition; rated the law enforcement witness as less credible, and viewed police more negatively across three composite measures. Exploratory analysis of how juror race and gender interacted...

Geographical variability and network structure

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

In this paper, we explore the potential implications of geographical variability for the structure of social networks. Beginning with some basic simplifying assumptions, we derive a number of ways in which local network structure should be expected to vary across a region whose population is unevenly distributed. To examine the manner in which these effects would be expected to manifest given realistic population distributions, we then perform an exploratory simulation study that examines the features of large-scale interpersonal networks generated using block-level data from the 2000 U.S. Census. Using a stratified sample of micropolitan and metropolitan areas with populations ranging from approximately 1000 to 1,000,000 persons, we extrapolatively simulate network structure using spatial network models calibrated to two fairly proximate social relations. From this sample of simulated networks, we examine the effect of both within-location and between-location heterogeneity on...

Disagreement in Assessing Neighboring and Collective Efficacy: The Role of Social Distance

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Whereas existing research typically treats variability in residents’ reports of collective efficacy and neighboring as measurement error, the authors consider such variability as of substantive interest in itself. This variability may indicate disagreement among residents with implications for the neighborhood collectivity. The authors propose using a general measure of social distance based on several social dimensions (rather than measures based on a single dimension such as racial/ethnic heterogeneity or income inequality) to help understand this variability in assessments. The authors use data from wave I (2001) of the Los Angeles Family and Neighborhood Survey (n = 3,570) to aggregate respondents into egohoods of two different sizes: quarter-mile and half-mile radii. Consistent with expectations, neighborhoods with higher levels of general social distance have higher variability in reports of neighboring and the two components of collective efficacy, cohesion and informal...

What is the ‘Neighbourhood’ in Neighbourhood Satisfaction? Comparing the Effects of Structural Characteristics Measured at the Micro-neighbourhood and Tract Levels

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Using the neighbourhood sub-sample from the American Housing Survey for 1985, 1989 and 1993, this study tests whether the social context of the local micro-neighbourhood or of the broader census tract more strongly affects neighbourhood satisfaction. It is found that the local context of the micro-neighbourhood generally has a stronger effect on residents' reported satisfaction. In contrast to studies aggregating to larger units, it is found that greater residential stability in the micro-neighbourhood increases reported neighbourhood satisfaction. A low socioeconomic status of the local micro-neighbourhood decreases neighbourhood satisfaction more than does the socioeconomic status of the surrounding tract and this effect is amplified in low-income tracts. Whereas prior evidence is mixed when aggregating perceptions of crime to larger units, a robust negative effect on satisfaction is found when aggregated to the micro-neighbourhood.

Prosecutors as punishers: A case study of Trump-era practices

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Recent punishment and society scholarship has addressed the limits of policy reforms aimed at reducing mass incarceration in the U.S. This work has focused in particular on the political dimensions of penal legal reform and policy-making, and the compromises and shortcomings in those processes. Nearly absent in this scholarship, however, has been empirical and theoretical engagement with the role of front-line prosecutors as facilitators and/or resistors to downsizing efforts. Using the case of the U.S. federal criminal legal system's modest efforts to decrease the system's racially disparate and punitive outcomes, this paper elucidates the fragile nature of such reforms by delineating the critical role that front-line prosecutors play in maintaining punitive approaches. Focusing specifically on federal prosecutorial policy and practices in the Trump era, I draw on a subset of data from an interdisciplinary, multi-methodological project set in distinct federal court jurisdictions...

(Re-)centering Law in the Criminology of Sentencing & Punishment

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The article argues for a more robust incorporation of law in the criminological study of sentencing and punishment.

Minority Status Distortion and Preference for In-group Ties

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

To assess residents’ perceptions of social capital (social cohesion, place attachment, and neighboring), the authors create innovative measures of residents’ assessments of neighborhood ethnic minorities and the extent of social ties between members of the same ethnic group compared with chance. The authors use a sample of nearly 10,000 residents nested in 297 neighborhoods in two Australian cities. Residents who perceive more minorities in their neighborhood, who have more or fewer ties with members of the other ethnic group than expected by chance, or who live in neighborhoods with more intergroup ties than would be expected report lower levels of social capital.

Parolee concentration, parolee embeddedness, and the reciprocal relationship with crime rates: A longitudinal study of neighbourhoods and re-entry

Wed, 5 Jun 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Drawing on recent scholarship on mass incarceration and prisoner re-entry, this study examines the reciprocal relationship between returning parolees and neighbourhood crime rates in five large cities in Texas. Besides the more common approach of counting the number of people on parole in communities (parolee concentration), we propose a novel approach for measuring people on parole by capturing their exposure in the community as parolee embeddedness (i.e., the cumulative number of days that people on parole resided in the neighbourhood). Results show that parolee concentration has a significant positive effect on both violent and property crime, but parolee embeddedness is significantly associated with reductions in violent and property crime. Our findings detect different effects depending on the measurement of people on parole and their community context, illustrating the need to better understand the dynamics of parolee re-entry in the era of mass incarceration.

Unconditional Care Beyond the Carceral Education State: A Call for Abolitionist Departure

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

This paper wrestles with the concept of care and its role in the movement towards abolitionist education. I draw from my experiences as a teacher / ethnographer in an alternative high school, called FREE LA, that serves and was created by system-impacted young people who have been pushed out of or barred from, or otherwise refused to participate in, traditional schooling. Grounded in students’ perceptions of how this space departs from traditional schools and other carceral institutions, I grapple with their consistent emphasis on care. Students’ juxtaposition between the type of care they experienced in traditional schools, and a different type of care experienced at FREE LA, leads me to consider both the violent genealogies of conditional care as endemic to state schooling, and the potential for reclaiming old-new genealogies of unconditional care that map radically reimagined educational space(s). The juxtaposition between these two types of care opens broader questions about...

Family Systems, Inequality, and Juvenile Justice

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

America’s juvenile justice system was founded on the notion that the juvenile court would serve as the “ultimate parent” for youth. Yet, the history of youth punishment challenges the promise of juvenile “justice.” To offer a more comprehensive account of the family systems in juvenile court, this study draws from the insights of historical research on youth punishment and family criminalization to examine juvenile court outcomes in Arizona. Combining a historical lens with insights from attribution theory, we use quantitative and qualitative methods to examine the relationship between diverse family systems, including single mothers, single fathers, extended families, and foster care families, and juvenile court outcomes (i.e., diversion, preadjudication detention, petition, and judicial dismissal). Our findings suggest the need for more complex understandings of both family and punishment, and more expansive theorizations of the sorts of solutions that match the scope and scale...

The State as the “Ultimate Parent”: The Implications of Family for Racial and Ethnic Disparities in the Juvenile Justice System

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Racial and ethnic disparities permeate juvenile justice processing. Research attempting to explain these disparities has superficially considered the role of family measures in the differential treatment of youth of color. In particular, research has given little attention to the role of family supervision, despite its relevance to the mission of the juvenile court. Using attribution theory as a framework and data from three Arizona jurisdictions, we examine the effect of race/ethnicity on probation officers’ attributions of family supervision; the effect of family characteristics, such as financial strain, parental incarceration, and family risk as measured by a risk assessment instrument, in shaping attributions of family supervision; and the effect of race/ethnicity, family characteristics, and attributions of family supervision on recommendations to formally or informally process youth. We find that attributions of family supervision are informed by race/ethnicity and family...

Juvenile court in the school-prison nexus: youth punishment, schooling and structures of inequality

Fri, 31 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Influenced by Dr. Michael Leiber, a body of juvenile justice research explores how legal, extralegal and institutional decision-making factors racialize the process of punishment. While this scholarship has indirectly considered the role of school-related factors for unequal court outcomes, an interdisciplinary body of work explores the relationship between schooling and criminal justice institutions directly, often under the framework of the school-to-prison pipeline. Building on juvenile justice research, and departing from the pipeline framing, we utilize the analytic framework of the school-prison nexus–which theorizes schools and the criminal justice system as fundamentally and symbiotically linked–to examine the role of school referral source and school enrollment status on differential court outcomes. Our findings highlight the structural and institutional processes behind the relationship between school enrollment and incarceration, and have implications for the ways in...

Persistent racial diversity in neighbourhoods across the United States: Where does it occur?

Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While there is a long history of racial change in the United States, and how this plays out within neighbourhoods, a key recurring question is whether some neighbourhoods are able to achieve and maintain racial diversity, or whether they simply transition to dominance by a new racial group. We test and find evidence of 1631 neighbourhoods across the United States from 1980 to 2020 that exhibit persistent racial diversity (PRD), and assess where this PRD occurs. Our analysis shows that PRD neighbourhoods (PRDNs) are likely to be present in counties with more economic opportunities–that is, counties with higher socioeconomic status (SES). PRDNs themselves, however, tend to be relatively lower SES neighbourhoods within relatively higher SES counties, suggesting that affordable locations surrounded by more economic opportunities may have served as an environment in which diversity can persist over a long period of time in the United States.

Marginal-Preserving Imputation of Three-Way Array Data in Nested Structures, with Application to Small Areal Units

Tue, 14 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Geospatial population data are typically organized into nested hierarchies of areal units, in which each unit is a union of units at the next lower level. There is increasing interest in analyses at fine geographic detail, but these lowest rungs of the areal unit hierarchy are often incompletely tabulated because of cost, privacy, or other considerations. Here, the authors introduce a novel algorithm to impute crosstabs of up to three dimensions (e.g., race, ethnicity, and gender) from marginal data combined with data at higher levels of aggregation. This method exactly preserves the observed fine-grained marginals, while approximating higher-order correlations observed in more complete higher level data. The authors show how this approach can be used with U.S. census data via a case study involving differences in exposure to crime across demographic groups, showing that the imputation process introduces very little error into downstream analysis, while depicting social process...

Do progressive prosecutors increase crime? A quasi‐experimental analysis of crime rates in the 100 largest counties, 2000–2020

Wed, 8 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract: Research summary: In recent years, there has been a rise in so‐called “progressive prosecutors” focused on criminal justice reforms. Although there has been considerable debate about the relationship between progressive prosecution policies and crime rates, there has been surprisingly little empirical research on the topic. Building on the limited extant research, we examined whether the inauguration of progressive prosecutors in the nation's 100 most populous counties impacted crime rates during a 21‐year period (2000 to 2020). After developing an original database of progressive prosecutors in the 100 largest counties, we used heterogeneous difference‐in‐differences regressions to examine the influence of progressive prosecutors on crime rates. Results show that the inauguration of progressive prosecutors led to statistically higher index property (∼7%) and total crime rates (driven by rising property crimes), and these effects were strongest since 2013—a period...

Federal Statutes and Environmental Justice in the Navajo Nation: The Case of Fracking in the Greater Chaco Region

Wed, 24 Apr 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Arguing for the importance of robust public participation and meaningful Tribal consultation to address the cumulative impacts of federal projects, we bridge interdisciplinary perspectives across law, public health, and Indigenous studies. We focus on openings in existing federal law to involve Tribes and publics more meaningfully in resource management planning, while recognizing the limits of this involvement when only the federal government dictates the terms of participation and analysis. We first discuss challenges and opportunities for addressing cumulative impacts and environmental justice through 2 US federal statutes: the National Environmental Policy Act and the National Historic Preservation Act. Focusing on a major federal planning process involving fracking in the Greater Chaco region of northwestern New Mexico, we examine how the Department of the Interior attempted Tribal consultation during the COVID-19 pandemic. We also highlight local efforts to monitor Diné...

Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Tax Evasion: The Consequences of International Policy Initiatives on Financial Centres in the Caribbean Region , by Aretha M. Campbell

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Money Laundering, Terrorist Financing, and Tax Evasion: The Consequences of International Policy Initiatives on Financial Centres in the Caribbean Region , by Aretha M. Campbell

Peer Influence, Peer Selection and Adolescent Alcohol Use: a Simulation Study Using a Dynamic Network Model of Friendship Ties and Alcohol Use

Sat, 30 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

While studies suggest that peer influence can in some cases encourage adolescent substance use, recent work demonstrates that peer influence may be on average protective for cigarette smoking, raising questions about whether this effect occurs for other substance use behaviors. Herein, we focus on adolescent drinking, which may follow different social dynamics than smoking. We use a data-calibrated Stochastic Actor-Based (SAB) Model of adolescent friendship tie choice and drinking behavior to explore the impact of manipulating the size of peer influence and selection effects on drinking in two school-based networks. We first fit a SAB Model to data on friendship tie choice and adolescent drinking behavior within two large schools (n = 2178 and n = 976) over three time points using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We then alter the size of the peer influence and selection parameters with all other effects fixed at their...

Law’s artefacts: Personal rapid transit and public narratives of hitchhiking and crime

Thu, 28 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

The West Virginia University (WVU) Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) system was built between 1971 and 1975 in Morgantown, West Virginia to be a prototype transportation system of the future. Envisioned as a hybrid of public and automotive transportation, the fully automated cars deliver passengers directly to their destinations without stopping at intervening stations. The PRT concept may be familiar to STS scholars through Latour's study of Aramis, a PRT in Paris that was never completed. This article recounts a history with the opposite ending: the successful realization of a PRT in West Virginia. Our account supplements existing ones, which explain the construction of the WVUPRT primarily as the product of geography and politics. While not denying these factors, we carve out an explanatory role for another influence: a public narrative about the dangers of hitchhiking and crimes that might ensue from that practice. In weaving together that narrative with the history of the WVUPRT,...

Finding a Moral Heart for U.S. Immigration Policy: An Anthropological Perspective