Television crime series,women police,and fuddy-duddy feminism

This essay argues that Prime Suspect has become a canonical text for feminist television studies and that Helen Mirren's performance of Lynda La Plante's creation has provided an influential template for television, and the broader culture, to imagine what a senior female police officer is like. So Jane Tennison is important not only within the depicted world of the “canteen culture” of the police in Prime Suspect, but also within the broader context of television production where she has demonstrated that crime shows with female leads can be extremely successful. Juxtaposing Prime Suspect with two later “girly” British TV police series, I ask how we might approach the “daughters of Jane Tennison” found in series such as Ghost Squad (2005) and Murder in Suburbia (2004–2006). Are these “postfeminist” shows? I argue that attention to these programmes can productively inform our understanding of what is entailed for women in not being “fuddy-duddy,” and my comments thus engage, in the continuing debate about the utility and periodisation of the notion of “postfeminism.”     

Inequality and crime revisited: effects of local inequality and economic segregation on crime

Economic inequality has long been considered an important determinant of crime. Existing evidence, however, is mostly based on inadequately aggregated data sets, making its interpretation less than straightforward. Using tract- and county-level U.S. Census panel data, I decompose county-level income inequality into its within- and across-tract components and examine the extent to which county-level crime rates are influenced by local inequality and economic segregation. I find that the previously reported positive correlation between violent crime and economic inequality is largely driven by economic segregation across neighborhoods instead of within-neighborhood inequality. Moreover, there is little evidence of a significant empirical link between overall inequality and crime when county- and time-fixed effects are controlled for. On the other hand, a particular form of economic inequality, namely, poverty concentration, remains an important predictor of county-level crime rates.     

Pregnant in prison: An integrative literature review

BackgroundPregnant women in prisons are recognised as a marginalised group. However, there is a limited understanding of the women’s unique maternity needs and how correctional institutions and maternity service providers respond to these needs.AimThe aims of the review are threefold.

• 1.Identify pregnant women’s needs during the antenatal, birthing and postnatal periods in prison.
• 2.Examine how the pregnant incarcerated women’s needs are met by the correctional institutions.
• 3.Explore what maternity services are available and how these services are provided.

MethodAn integrative literature review was undertaken. A comprehensive search strategy using seven electronic databases resulted in the retrieval of 363 articles. Of them, 32 peer-reviewed studies met the final selection criteria and were included in this review which utilised the Critical Appraisal Skills Program tools and adhered to the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses flowchart. Thematic analysis identified universal themes.FindingsThree dominant themes emerged related to the experience of pregnant women in prison: (1) risks and vulnerability factors; (2) prison enablers and supports; and (3) prison barriers. Extant research on risks and vulnerability factors is disproportionate to research examining how prisons can enable or obstruct responding to the women’s perinatal needs. Limited research on the midwifery support available to the women in prison is available. Significantly, only two out of 32 reviewed papers include research directly conducted with the pregnant women in prison.ConclusionPregnant women in prisons have complex needs. More research is required to understand how prisons can enhance the pregnancy experience by engaging pregnant women in prisons as research participants.     

Three strikes and you're out: Demographic analysis of mandatory prison sentencing

Much of the debate about the costs and benefits of “three-strikes” laws for repeat felony offenders is implicitly demographic, relying on unexamined assumptions about prison population dynamics. However, even state-of-the-art analysis has omitted important demographic details. We construct a multistate life-table model of population flows to and from prisons, incorporating age-specific transition rates estimated from administrative data from Florida. We use the multistate life-table model to investigate patterns of prison population growth and aging under many variants of three-strikes laws. Our analysis allows us to quantify these demographic changes and suggests that the aging of prison populations under three-strikes policies will Significantly undermine their long-run effectiveness.     

Television and Postfeminist Housekeeping: No Time for Mother

This feminist, qualitative study sheds light on how young Arab women used cyberactivism to participate in the wave of political and social transformations widely known as the Arab Spring. It argues that these activists leveraged social media to enact new forms of leadership, agency, and empowerment, since these online platforms enabled them to express themselves freely and their voices to be heard by the rest of the world, particularly the global media. This resulted in a multidimensional personal, social, political, and communicative revolution. This study is based on in-depth, personal interviews with more than twenty young Arab women citizen journalists, bloggers, and activists from Arab countries that witnessed political upheaval.     

In the slammer: the myth of the prison in American gay pornographic video

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the significance of the prison scenario and its various permutations in the texts of American commercial pornographic video. The paper will identify the prison as a highly eroticised all male environment, an arena where the active/passive dichotomy of gay pornography is staged and re-staged. The significances of the prison are multiple. The prison draws on a gay mythology of homosexual desire that has its origins in sources as diverse as the literature of the Marquis de Sade and Jean Genet and the erotic illustrations of Tom of Finland and Etienne. Prison scenarios take many shapes in gay pornography such as the American penitentiary, the military brig, and the fantasised dungeon of the leatherman. I see these scenarios as performing an important function within gay porn by offering idealised spaces for the acts of pornography: voyeurism, narcissistic display and active/ passive role-play.     

Socio-spatial attributes of social problems: The case of crime and delinquency

This article examines three hypotheses: (1) Socio-spatial structures and processes, like segregation, succession, and specialization, help explain the emergence of social problems. (2) "Space" is embedded — implicitly or explicitly — in every sociological approach to crime or delinquency. (3) Its explicit consideration increases the explanatory power of these approaches. Different dimensions, aspects or qualities of space are distinguished in order to dispel the terminological confusion that often surrounds "space". Spatial distances or units may include costs, symbols, of power. The relevance of these aspects for different approaches or criminal sociology like anomie, disorganization, opportunity structure, and labelling are demonstrated, and the implications of these arguments for the development of sociological theories, as well as societal, political and planning practices are also considered. Most empirical examples are drawn from recent sociological research in West Germany. Such an approach to integrate urban and criminal sociology can be used to draw conclusions for urban planning as is shown in a final passage: Desegregation and functional diversification of spatial units are recommended as strategies which may diminish crime and delinquency.I would like to thank the American and German publishers and editors for the permission to publish this extended English translation. My special thanks goes to Dr. Ralph B. Taylor from The Johns Hopkins University, Center for Metropolitan Planning and Research for helpful discussions and assistance with the English version[1].     

Television,Sustainability and Subjective Wellbeing in Peru

Social Indicators Research - Earlier studies have concluded that television consumption is detrimental to environmental sustainability and people’s subjective wellbeing due to its promotion...     

Immigration,crime, and incarceration in early twentieth-century america

The major government commissions on immigration and crime in the early twentieth century relied on evidence that suffered from aggregation bias and the absence of accurate population data, which led them to present partial and sometimes misleading views of the immigrant-native criminality comparison. With improved data and methods, we find that in 1904, prison commitment rates for more serious crimes were quite similar by nativity for all ages except ages 18 and 19, for which the commitment rate for immigrants was higher than for the native-born. By 1930, immigrants were less likely than natives to be committed to prisons at all ages 20 and older, but this advantage disappears when one looks at commitments for violent offenses. The time series pattern reflects a growing gap between natives and immigrants at older ages, one that was driven by sharp increases in the commitment rates of the native-born, while commitment rates for the foreign-born were remarkably stable.     

Women and Death in Film,Television, and News: Dead But Not Gone

Abstract

This article investigates the relationship between science and nation, class and gender in the televised Nobel Banquet, held after the Nobel Prize ceremony. The representation of the body of the Swedish Queen is used as a lens through which to view intersectional power dimensions. Drawing on cultural, media and gender studies, this article examines the mediated persona of the Queen in the televised Nobel Banquet via contextualized textual analysis. The article suggests that the purpose of the Nobel Foundation in inviting the royals is to enhance the social status of science. But it is the Queen who has received more TV time than anyone else—scientist or royalty—since her TV debut in 1976. How can the camera focus on her silent body be interpreted in relation to science? This article suggests that the meaning of the Queen’s body also implies certain understandings of central power dimensions. The body of the Queen signifies that gender, heterosexuality, class affiliation, nationality, and race are important and normative factors in scientific discourse. At the Nobel Banquet, the representation of her body identifies science as associated with the heterosexual, white elites, and reproduces a traditional, ideal femininity.     

Fear of crime and behavioral restrictions in urban and suburban neighborhoods

Variations in fear of crime and behavioral restrictions were explored within city and suburban neighborhoods of the Chicago metropolitan area. A random telephone survey (n=1,803) gathered information on fear and behavioral restrictions, other crime-related experiences and perceptions, perceptions of the neighborhood physical and social environment, and demographic characteristics. These data were supplemented by merging contextural information (from census and other archival sources) about each respondent's place of residence to the data set. Hierarchial step-wise regression analyses were performed separately for the city and suburban residents. Sets of predictor variables were found that accounted for more than 25 percent of the variance in the criterion measures. Implications of these findings for policy makers and future research are discussed.