Criminal Justice or Political Science Applied - Annotated Bibliography Example

Sayer, L. C., Robinson, S. M., & Bianchi, J. (2004). Are Parents Investing Less in Children? Trends in Mothers’ and Fathers’ Time with Children. American Journal of Sociology, 110(1), 1-43. In this study, the researchers hoped to assess the trends in child care time of mothers and fathers between the mid-1960s to the late 1990s. The decision to study such topic came from the widespread belief that child rearing in the U.S. has declined in the past years and the researchers wanted to determine if this was true or not. Using time diary data (wherein the respondents are required to jot down what they are doing when their paging device goes off), the authors of the article discovered that contrary to common knowledge, both mothers and fathers were spending more time in taking care of their children in the late 1990s compared to the 1960s. There was a noticeable decline with mother involvement during the 1965-75 era, from 80 to 66 minutes, and a consequent increase in involvement in 1975-1998, reaching 90 minutes per day. Moreover, 1998 results showed that more parents were using child care time as an opportunity to teach and play with their children. Married and single mothers registered the same trend. Fathers, too, have reported increased child care activities. Like the mothers, the data for 1965-1985 decreased slightly but this was followed by a significant rebound. Moreover, 1985 data registered greater father involvement in parenting activities compared to the previous years. This essentially meant that time in primary child care declined for both mothers and fathers as they become more involved with child parenting. This suggests that there was a massive behavioral change among parents and the so-called “degradation” of the society is not associated with parenting. Yabiku, S. T., Axinn, W. G., & Thornton, A. (1999). Family Integration and Children’s Self‐Esteem. American Journal of Sociology, 104(5), 1494-1524. In this article, the authors deal with family integration and how it affects individuals. The primary hypothesis of the research is that parent integration to the family affects the child’s development of the “self”. Because the roles and functions of the family were changing, negative effects such as the decreased solidarity in the family and the weakening of families’ capability to maintain personalities and prevent anomie. To determine whether family integraUsing data from a 23-year intergeneral panel study of mothers and their children. Such data presents a number of indicators meant to measure family integration. The children, who were already adults at the end of the study, were asked to respond to the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale so as to create a benchmark for comparing family integration and children’s self-esteem. Using the 1961 birth records of the Detroit Metropolitan area covering Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties, the researchers chose married white women who have already given birth to their first, second, third and fourth child. The first interview for the study was conducted in winter 1962 and was repeated again in the fall of the same year, and 1963, 1966, 1977, 1980, and 1985. The children born on the first interview were interviewed in 1980, when they were aged 18 and in 1985, when they were aged 23. Three dimensions measured family integration: home production, family social networks and family support networks. The results show that in 1962, family integration had no direct effect to the child’s self-esteem when he/she reached 18 in 1985, but there is great possibility that it affected the child’s self-esteem during adolescence. Moreover, there was no evidence that family integration did not affect self-esteem when he/she reached adulthood. The researchers, however, commented that the study only measured self esteem at the start and beginning of the study in order to create streams of measurement in order to analyze the data further. The implication of this research is the same as the first article by Sayer, Robinson and Bianchi: the family has no role and function of the development of the child. This is a worrisome finding because much of the crime prevention strategies being utilized today are connected with families and parenting. If there was no connection between parenting and the child’s self development, then what else is causing the increase in crime? How else will crime be prevented? While the first two articles have presented two shocking discoveries, one has to note that there is a need to re-do their researchers because there is a possible issue with the method design, particularly in the second study. Lumpkin, K. D. P. (1932). Parental Conditions of Wisconsin Girl Delinquents. American Journal of Sociology, 38(232-239). The first two articles in this paper showed that parental involvement in raising children have no effect on the so-called degeneration of society. This article, on the other hand, attempts to discover if there is a connection between the socioeconomic status of the parents and delinquency among girls. Using data of girls incarcerated in Wisconsin, it was discovered that these girls have different family background. 71.4% of girl delinquents came from “unfavorable” households where incomes were low and irregular and someone in the family is an alcoholic or a delinquent. Most of the girls also had absent mothers, hence they had little to no parent supervision. Often, when the mother had work outside the home, the daughter finds employment. It is through the girl’s work that she is brought to court, typically due to theft. Most of the girls, according to their employers, show signs of instability before they start working in their business. While this is the case, the researchers pointed out that early wage earning and delinquency may not necessarily be directly connected and there is a need to examine working conditions first before any generalizations concerning these two variables can be made. In terms of family size, girl delinquents have large families, with a mean of 5.1 children per family. 53.4% of the families had 5 or more children. This could essentially mean that perhaps families find it difficult to provide for their numerous children, particularly with the unreliable income they are receiving. Moreover, survey shows that many of these families are complicated by structural disarrangement wherein one parent had died or left. 33.3% of the girls have either a mother and a father only, or one of the parent is too preoccupied with work to be involved in the parenting. This is perhaps the first indication that dysfunctional families may affect children. Compared to the first two studies, this one focused mainly on delinquents and according to the results, there is a high susceptibility for crime if the family cannot fully support the needs of a growing child. Note that this study was conducted in 1932, and could be obsolete, but the lessons it has offered are still very much in use. There is a need to repeat this survey. perhaps include all teenage offenders, in order to validate whether the claims made here are still true today. Moreover, it is important to note that compared with the other two articles, this one found families in the extreme – there was an alcoholic or an uninvolved parent, it was not merely measuring how involved the parents are. Here, there was an apparent lack of parental guidance which could’ve in fact affected the psychoemotional development of the child. Giordano, P. C., Schroeder, R. D., & Cernkovich, S. A. (2007). Emotions and Crime over the Life Course: A Neo‐Meadian Perspective on Criminal Continuity and Change. American Journal of Sociology, 112(6), 1603-1661. Over the years, the need to understand a person’s decision towards criminal involvement has led to a number of studies. This next article talks about the connection between emotions and crimes. While there have been earlier proof that emotions actually affect a person’s decisions, emotions have not been used to explain criminological theorizing. This article was created in order to discover whether emotions had effects on criminal continuity or change. But this study did not just correlate emotions and the propensity to do crimes, instead, they developed a theory that emotions also has a connection on the role transitions that an individual has to undergo. The neo-Meadian theory proposed in this study highlighted the emotions that are social, have strong cognitive foundations and have a tendency to influence crime continuity and change. The study used quantitative and qualitative data derived from three waves of interviews from delinquent youths. The researchers already had interviews with adolescent offenders which was collected in 1982. They again attempted to locate the respondents from this original sample to be interviewed again in 1995, and finally in 2003, when the respondents have already reached adulthood. Using the three data sets, logic regression was performed in order to determine three patterns: respondents who have shown desistance from crime, those who have reported inconsistent criminal involvement in 1995 and 2003, and those who have high criminality reported in 1995 and 2003. Meanwhile, the researchers also collated open-ended history narratives from 97 women and 83 women who are part of the sample. The 1995 interview was lengthy because it focused more on the emotional processes that the respondents underwent during incarceration while the 2003 interviews were used only to determine how the interviewees have fared over the years. The research found out that there was a general pattern of desistance among the respondents. The narratives showed that there was “anger” in earlier years and illustrated that much of this emotion was developed through family conflict. The adult narratives showed that these individuals have learned to address their negative emotions which was originally connected with criminality. Of course, there were also positive emotions associated with criminality and these are proof that adolescent delinquents are not just mere victims of their circumstances, they also made the decision to “do something…and get away with”. But the study showed that it is possible to transition these positive emotions so that they are no longer connected with criminality but rather, in significant changes over the life course such as marriage. Comparison of the “younger” and “adult” interviews showed that the respondents learned greater skill in managing their emotions, hence preventing them from diverting back to a life of crime. This study actually breaks the belief of “once a criminal, always a criminal”. The stigma associated with incarceration has prevented many youth from having a better life because they think that there is “no hope” and that people will always look at them with repulsion. But this study shows that change is possible, if only they [adolescent offenders] make the decision to lead a better future. Newkirk, P. R. (1943). Psychotherapy on Juvenile Delinquents. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, 34(2), 100-105. The previous research was a breakthrough especially since many researches in the past viewed adolescent offenders as psychologically incapacitated. For example, this 1943 article written by P.R. Newkirk proposed the use of psychotherapy on juvenile delinquents. This was coming from the knowledge that juvenile offenders are suffering from trauma due to their unfavorable neighborhood, bad company and broken families. According to the research, 10 to 15% of all juvenile delinquents are prospective candidates for psychotherapy (excepting those diagnosed as morons, severe psychopaths, and constitutionally anti-social individuals). Intelligence and personal confidence were additional requirements. Through psychotherapy, Newkirk believed, adolescent delinquents will benefit with behavioral change. To illustrate his point, the researcher cited several of his cases. The first one involved a boy convicted for committing homosexual acts and male prostitution. The offender also had a sister incarcerated due to sexual promiscuity and kleptomania. The mention of the sister was intended to show that the boy’s family had a history of crime and that the hope of psychotherapy is to break this history. The boy was subjected to hypnotic examination and through doctors reported that the he obeyed “post-hypnotic orders with the greatest precision”. The boy was then released and his neighbors reported that no further offenses. A second case was also cited but this time, the subject was a teenager. Newkirk reported the same improvement as the boy with the teenager. Presented with Newkirk’s own research, it can it difficult to deny the effectiveness of psychotherapy, but reading the article, several questions come to mind. How did the juvenile offenders feel during or after the treatment? Did the treatment offer improvement in the quality of their lives, or was therapy effective only in “eliminating” the cause of incarceration, but not criminality itself? Newkirk’s proposal of using psychotherapy has its merits, but it is important to test it more. There is a possibility that psychotherapy does work, and perhaps it enhances the development of the juvenile, but there is a need to be extremely sure of the result, and this can only be done through scientific testing. Research on the journals presented did not return results regarding research about delinquency and psychotherapy has been produced in recent years, hence, there was no follow up to this study. Thomas, W. J., Stubbe, D. E., & Pearson, G. (1999). Race, Juvenile Justice, and Mental Health: New Dimensions in Measuring Pervasive Bias. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-), 89(2), 615-670. While there is a problem with the assumption in Newkirk’s article, one must remember that there is a need to subject juvenile delinquents to mental services to diagnose or treat any psychological symptoms they present. If they were not initially traumatized by their backgrounds many critics say that adolescent offenders could’ve had a terrible experience with the juvenile courts to warrant psychological assessment. A 1999 article written for the Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, attempted to create the racial profiles of juvenile offenders in order to determine who had the greatest tendency to develop mental illnesses and what age it typically appears. This study also aims to determine whether the juvenile court determined the psychological issue even before the incarceration and if they did the correct step by sending the juvenile to a mental facility. This is important to know because it could have a potential effect to future rehabilitation of the juvenile delinquent. The researchers examined the population of two institutions (the state’s juvenile correctional school and state psychiatric hospital) from July 1, 1993 to June 30, 1994. From this examination, the authors created a sociodemographic/family history of the patient, discovered the criminal charge, diagnostic behavior and episodes of violent or disruptive behavior while at the hospital. The results show that court-referred hospital patients were young at 14.13 years while those who have been incarcerated first before they were turned over to the mental facility were older at 14.66 years. 82% of those referred by the “Correction School” were non-white while court-referred cases were relatively even (58% white and 42% non-white). Other findings showed that most juveniles incarcerated were charged with sexual assault and illegal drug abuse. Through correlation, it was found that most cases of sexual assault were referred to mental facilities while illegal drug usage was not. Moreover, those who were charged with violent assault were also referred for mental health evaluation. Using these results the researchers said that there was a high bias against non-white offenders who were sent immediately for correction, instead of mental evaluation. It seems as if the common view that whites engage in crime only because they are mentally incapacitated while non-whites were fully aware of their crimes. Whites are assigned a least restrictive settings so and non-whites have to “suffer” the opposite. Frazier, D., Bishop, M., & E., C. (1996). Race Effects in Juvenile Justice Decision-Making: Findings of a Statewide Analysis. The Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology (1973-)1, 86(2), 392-414. This 1996 article examines whether discrimination indeed happen in courts. The research used qualitative and quantitative data gathered by the Florida Department of Health and Rehabilitative Services (DHRS). Data was organized so that the researchers could acquire two full years of offense and processing history record for every juvenile offender. The results show that non-whites comprised 21% are aged 10 to 17, 29% of them were referred with a delinquency intake (illegible for incarceration) and only 19% were referred as status offenders (runaways, etc.). Most 53% of non-white youth caught in violation were referred to courts while more than 15% were detained. Non-white youths who were incarcerated compared to only 18% of the whites. Moreover, there were more white youths who were incarcerated due to a repeat offense (36%) compared to non-whites (26%). Meanwhile, results show a higher propensity for white males to be detained compared to white females. Non-white males and non-white females are handled similarly. In terms of repeat offenses, non-white males have 21% of being detained compared with their non-white counterparts. In cases on no-record, race and gender shows no significant differences. From these findings cited, one can already see that there is greater bias toward whites, as has been inferred in the previous study. Moreover this research adds the gender dimension, and results show that gender constructions are also present – females are still seen as “more peaceful, less prone to violence”, hence they are often released. A black, make juvenile delinquent gets the worst treatment as he will almost always be referred to court, detained and incarcerated. Lee, C., Muna, E.-Y., White, H. R., & Simon, P. (2010). Substance Use Trajectories of Black and White Young Men from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood: A Two-Part Growth Curve Analysis. Journal of Ethnicity in Substance Abuse, 9(4), 301-319. In the past two articles, it is pretty clear that there is a bias against non-whites. Most often, non-whites are either immigrants or they belong to the African-American group who are often stereotyped as “bad company”. Their neighborhoods are perceived as noisy, hazardous and distraught with poverty. Looking at non-whites this way it is no longer a surprise why the courts almost often rule against them. Black youth charged with crime will most likely receive incarceration because there is common belief that “they did it because of drugs”. In this next article, the researchers attempted to discover whether there is any truth to the previous statement. The researchers were mainly concerned about understanding what causes substance abuse among the black and white adolescents and what factors lead to their cessation or continuation of drug use. This study collected data through the Pittsburgh Youth Study which is known as a “prospective longitudinal study of development of delinquency, substance abuse, and mental health problems”. An initial sample was chosen in 1987-1988 which consisted of boys from 1st to 7th graders. 30% of the boys who were at risk for anti-social behavior were listed for followup. Followup interviews were conducted every 6 months and assessment were done annually. Initial results show drug use before age 11 was nonexistent. Results show that alcohol use was prevalent among those aged 8 to 19 and usage tends to accelerate for older groups. Meanwhile, there drug use was more prevalent in the younger group compared to the older cohort. In terms of race, the blacks were less likely than the whites to drink, and they also reported lower use of hard drugs. Marijuana use was almost the same for both groups, but racial differences appear in late adolescence wherein the blacks register higher frequency and quantity of substance abuse. It also showed that whites drank more (3.3 drinks) compared to the blacks (2.5 drinks) blacks increased drinking as they got older. In terms of parent’s social economic status (SES), it was discovered that for the older groups, high SES led to increase in the frequency and quantity of drug and alcohol use. Perhaps this is because children are now capable of purchasing more, or because there is less time for the parents to monitor their children’s activities. Meanwhile in the younger groups, high SES of parents led to less likely to engage in substance use. This discussion shows that the stereotype among blacks about drug use has no basis, though there are indications that alcoholism is phenomenon. Note however, that such prevalence was no equated to criminal behavior so there really is no reason why people would think that blacks can do crimes out of whim. Moreover, survey indicates that it is the whites who use hard drugs, which essentially means they experience more negative outcomes due to drugs compared to the blacks. Sampson, R. J. (1986). Crime in Cities: The Effects of Formal and Informal Social Control. Crime and Justice, 8, 271-311 How is crime being controlled in the society? This 1986 article attempts to discover the structural determinants of crime (particularly robbery and homicide) and the effectiveness of formal and informal social control. The article aims to answer this question: Do variations in criminal justice sanctions and the structural arrangement of families influence criminal behavior? In the previous articles reviewed for this paper, it was discovered that parental involvement and family integration of parents did not affect behavior of children. Meanwhile, parent’s socioeconomic position had significant affects to delinquency among girls. This study confirms that low income (due to low occupational status) has an effect on robbery and homicide. Marital disruption due to divorce also has a significant effect on adult offending. These are findings already proven by previous researches hence, will no longer be discussed in-depth in this summary. This article discovered that local official sanction such as police arrests and jail incarceration act as deterrents to criminality. Using data on offenders gathered from 171 American cities with populations greater than 100,000, this research serves as basis for widening police presence and installing security devices (such as ctv’s). When people think that they have greater chances of getting caught, there is lower tendency to do crimes. Note, however, that the researchers believe that it is the possibility of punishment that actually deters criminals, not the possibility of getting caught. If more criminals are referred to court and are judged appropriately, then it causes other criminals pause, especially when there is greater tendency of getting caught. In terms of crimes, police aggressiveness and local incarceration had no effect on homicide, but state punitiveness had a positive effect, which actually meant that it prison sanctions actually increase homicide levels instead of decreasing it. Meanwhile robbery cases shows the opposite findings. High police aggressiveness and high risk of jail served to decrease robbery rates. Such effect may be said of burglary, but murder cases follow those of homicides. This essentially means that formal crime control have very little effect at preventing violent crimes, which are typically premeditated, whereas petty crimes are often unplanned. This means murder and homicide had other motivations, perhaps to express pain or it is used as a form of retribution. In this case, the perpetrators are unconcerned of the jail risk, but are rather, more concerned with their own goals. Hagan, B. M. and J. (1992). Mean Streets: The Theoretical Significance of Situational Delinquency Among Homeless Youths. American Journal of Sociology,, 98(3), 597-627. This last article may have implications on orphaned youths and on families experiencing financial hardship. Dealing mainly with homeless youths in Canada, it aims to prove that adverse conditions suffered by the offender causes them to commit crimes. Data for this research was gathered between 1987 to 1988 in Toronto, Canada. Subjects were adolescents who are no longer living with their families and did not have a permanent addresses. They did not come from homeless families, but rather, they have decided to live on the streets for various reasons. The researchers used a self-reporting method which are facilitated by social service agencies which catered specifically to homeless adolescents. Data from youth living with their parents were also gathered to serve as benchmark. Demographic data showed that the 67% of the respondents were male and around 12% were aged below 16 years. There was also a highly significant connection between theft and prostitution to situational problems such as lack of shelter, hunger, length of time in the streets, and arrests of street friends. Meanwhile, unemployment was highly correlated with prostitution. This meant that males had higher tendency to steal while females engaged in prostitution. Sexual abuse, prostitution at home and a working class family were all determinants of prostitution. This meant that many of the females who chose to live in the streets were already experiencing a form of abuse and might’ve run away to escape such condition. The implication of this work is immense. Families which with low income does not automatically produce children with high propensity for criminality, instead, it is in families where the child is highly affected by the low SES which can cause the problem. When children experience hunger and inadequate shelter, then they may resort to theft in order to relieve themselves of this need. Moreover, abuse is a significant factor. If one of the parents have problems with substance abuse, then they can “push” their children towards a criminality. Read More