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Some of the material in is restricted to members of the community. By logging in, you may be able to gain additional access to certain collections or items. If you have questions about access or logging in, please use the form on the Contact Page.
The initial transition to graduate school provides a critical opportunity for promoting a positive educational experience among incoming students. This study discusses the importance of this transition and then describes a novel student...
Minority threat theory has been used to explain sentencing decisions, but rarely has the theory’s logic been assessed by examining changes in threat. Building on prior theoretical and empirical research, we develop hypotheses about the...
Objectives. This article examines two questions. First, does interracial contact increase or decrease Whites' perceptions of Blacks' criminality? Second, does it affect Whites' perceived victimization risk, and, if so, is the effect...
Purpose Scholarship suggests that prison visitation is important because it allows inmates access to social ties that, in turn, can offset social isolation and help inmates cope with the transition back into society upon release. Only a...
Despite the marked increase in incarceration over the past 30 years and the fact that roughly two thirds of released offenders are rearrested within 3 years of release, we know little about how the social ecology of the areas to which...
Prior studies of criminal sanctioning have focused almost exclusively on individual-level predictors of sentencing outcomes. However, in recent years, scholars have begun to include social context in their research. Building off of this...
Objectives This paper examines Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (A general theory of crime. Stanford University Press, Stanford, 1990) self-control theory and develops theoretical arguments for why self-control may have a differential effect on...
Mass incarceration has led to increased interest in understanding the effects of imprisonment. Reviews of criminological theory and research report mixed evidence that incarceration reduces recidivism; indeed, some studies report...
The growth of theories, methodologies, and substantive/empirical areas in sociology has not led to consensus about what sociology is or how to generate cumulative knowledge. Recourse to general or “grand” theories, conceptual frameworks, ...
Objectives: Drawing on the racial threat and intergroup contact literatures, we explore whether (1) a school’s racial or ethnic context increases school suspensions for Black, Hispanic, and White students; (2) intergroup contact among...
“Get tough” approaches for responding to sex crimes have proliferated during the past decade. Child pornography in particular has garnered attention in recent years. Policy makers increasingly have emphasized incarceration as a response...
Nationally, there have been increased calls for evidence-based criminal justice policy. Despite considerable progress toward that objective, there still is no systematic, comparative foundation for assessing the relative effectiveness of...
Despite decades of research on domestic violence, considerable challenges must be addressed to develop sound, theoretically and empirically-based interventions for reducing domestic violence revictimization. Many basic and applied...
Sex crime laws seemingly have proliferated recently as part of a national “get tough” shift in criminal justice policy. However, to date, there exists no systematic account of these state-level legislative changes. Accordingly, the ...
Although much literature has examined macrolevel employment contexts and crime rates and, at the individual level, employment and offending, few studies have examined systematically whether macrolevel employment contexts influence...
In the 1990s, states enacted a plethora of new “get tough” laws targeting sex crime. These included extending the death penalty—a punishment typically reserved for murderers—to convicted sex offenders. Little attention, however, has been...
This paper examines the role of individual and contextual factors and legal interventions in reducing time to domestic violence revictimization. Drawing on current theory and research, hypotheses are deduced about the effects of these...
Scholars have long argued that inmate behaviors stem in part from cultural belief systems that they “import” with them into incarcerative settings. Even so, few empirical assessments have tested this argument directly. Drawing on...
After the Columbine school shooting in 1999, concern about bullying crescendoed. A prominent belief emerged that bullying causes school shootings. However, many of the beliefs about bullying constitute myths—that is, empirically...
The dramatic growth in incarceration nationally has increased attention to the factors that influence recidivism among ex-prisoners. Accordingly, scholars have called for research that identifies factors, such as employment opportunities...
Although many states have adopted sentencing guidelines, questions remain about whether guidelines achieve one of their primary goals—reducing disparities that arise from such extralegal factors as race and ethnicity. To date, research...
The “get-tough” era of punishment led to exponential growth in the rate of incarceration in the United States. Recent reviews of the literature indicate, however, that limited rigorous research exists examining the effect of imprisonment...
Despite a large literature on public views about crime, the racialization of crime, and the contact hypothesis, surprisingly little is known about how interracial friendships may influence Whites’ fear of crime. At the same time, and...
Prisoner reentry constitutes one of the central criminal justice challenges confronting U.S. society. Coinciding with this emerging social problem has been increased policymaker interest in faith-based programs to improve outcomes for...
Scholars and policymakers have called for greater attention to understanding the causes of and solutions to improved prisoner reentry outcomes, resulting in renewed attention to a factor—prison visitation—long believed to reduce...
With the possible exception of terrorists, sex offenders in the United States experience a greater degree of punishment and restriction than any other offender group, nonviolent or violent. Members of the public overwhelmingly support ...
Drawing on theory and research on prisoner behavior, this study examines whether spatial distance from home influences inmates’ likelihood of engaging in misconduct. Three hypotheses are developed: distally placed inmates will engage in...
The juvenile justice system has been transformed in recent years with a range of policies designed to hold youth accountable, but how does society hold this system accountable? Calls for governmental accountability are common, yet few...
Recent juvenile justice reforms have produced increasingly complex and criminal-like approaches to sanctioning youths, yet research to date has not examined the full range of newly available sentencing options nor systematically drawn on...
Considerable attention recently has been given to the principles of effective intervention and their importance for reducing recidivism. By contrast, much less attention has been given to youth performance while in treatment or to...
Objectives. Drawing on several interrelated lines of scholarship, we argue that cultural beliefs at individual and neighborhood levels may affect police and court decisions. We hypothesize that individuals who more strongly adhere to the...
Community corrections in the twenty-first century faces three challenges: how to be an alternative to imprisonment, how to be a conduit for reducing recidivism, and how to do less harm to offenders and their families and communities....
During the 1990s, the United States enacted several punitive sex crime laws. Contemporary scholarship suggests this shift can be understood as a modern “witch hunt.” However, theoretical accounts have yet to examine systematically the...
Purpose: To illuminate how racial disparities in police use of force may arise and to guide research aimed at explaining such disparities. Methods: We draw on research on policing, racial disparities in criminal justice, and cognitive...
Dramatic changes in juvenile justice have occurred in recent decades. One result has been the emergence of new policies and practices, many of which remain largely unexamined. One avenue for gaining insight into whether such policies and...
Despite recent “get tough” trends in juvenile justice, relatively little is known about support for sanctioning youths in adult courts. In response, this study examines several neglected explanatory factors, including links between...
Scholars have documented how media accounts and policy discourse have presented Blacks and criminality as virtually synonymous, a phenomenon termed the racialization of crime. However, despite extant research on the contact hypothesis...
Evidence of a corrections agency scandal involving corruption can be expected to diminish public perceptions of agency effectiveness, especially in an era in which government accountability has featured prominently in national and state...
A justification for lengthier stays in prison stems from the belief that spending more time in prison reduces recidivism. Extant studies, however, have provided limited evidence for that belief and, indeed, suggest the effect of time...
A growing body of research lends support to opportunity theory and its variants, but has yet to focus systematically on a number of specific offenses and contexts. Typically, the more crimes and contexts to which a theory applies, the...
As we enter the 21st century, many States have introduced fundamental changes to their juvenile justice systems. The changes focus on jurisdictional authority, especially transfer to adult court; sentencing guidelines and options;...
Despite the growth in and debate about super-maximum security housing, there exist few studies of inmates’ experiences or placement in supermax incarceration. The lack of research on this new type of confinement assumes particular...
More than 735, 000 inmates are released from U.S. prisons annually, many of whom have mental and physical health problems that go largely unaddressed during incarceration and on return to society. That has led some scholars and policy...
Rational crime policy constitutes a basic goal for society. If, however, evidence-based, cost-efficient crime prevention is the standard, there is little indication that current policies—including programs, laws, and court decisions—are...
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