Exploring the Social Construction of Crime by Neighborhood: News Coverage of Crime in Boston

ABSTRACT

Information disseminated by the news shapes the way that the public perceives criminal events, often providing a distorted view of crime. Previous research has largely overlooked neighborhoods in discussions of how the news portrays crime. This study examines the ways that the news media report the neighborhoods in which homicides, robberies, and assaults are committed. Multiple theoretical perspectives rooted in the law of opposites and racial typification provide differing explanations for the reporting of crime. Using Boston as a test site, this study employs a content analysis of The Boston Globe crime articles to identify the neighborhoods in which instances of homicide, robbery, and assault receive coverage. A comparison with official crime data from the Boston Police Department suggests differences in neighborhood reporting trends for robbery and assault but not for homicide. Specifically, the news media tend to disproportionately report more robberies and assaults in neighborhoods with lower levels of neighborhood disadvantage. Implications for the social construction of crime and neighborhoods as well as criminal justice response for disadvantaged neighborhoods are discussed.     

When sorry is not enough: Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law's image restoration strategies in the statement on sexual abuse of minors by clergy

In January 2002, the Boston Globe ran a two-part story on sexual abuse of minors by clergy in the Archdiocese of Boston that sparked the biggest crisis in the history of the American Catholic Church. Two days after the articles appeared, Archbishop Cardinal Bernard Law held a press conference to respond to the Globe's charges. This study examines Law's image restoration strategies in his press conference and proposes that even though Law failed to restore his image, he provided a fitting response. The study proposes that one may attribute Law's failure to restore his image to his relational history with his audience and to the perceived offensiveness of his actions.     

Beginning street life: Factors contributing to children working and living on the streets of Khartoum, Sudan

Understanding why some children work on the streets while others live there, and how causal factors differ by gender, is important in developing effective services for them. This study examined these questions in Sudan using participant observation, qualitative interviews, and surveys of working boys (n = 1025), working girls (n = 192), street boys (n = 397), and street girls (n = 35). Street children were less likely than working children to have local families (66% and 77%, p < 0.001), and more likely to have experienced some prior hardships, e.g. a mother's death (17% and 10%, p < 0.001), or coming from the war-torn south (30% and 10%, p < 0.001). 70% of street children and 10% of working children had abused (i.e. sniffed and sucked) glue (p < 0.001); initiating glue abuse often coincided with a transition from working to living on the streets. Within groups, conditions ‘pushing’ girls to street life were often harsher than for boys. For working girls, these included death of both parents (10% and 3%, p < 0.001), and/or insufficient food at home (59% and 43%, p < 0.001). For street girls, they included having a homeless family (23% and 9%, p = 0.019), and/or insufficient food at home (63% and 40%, p = 0.008), but street girls also more often reported boredom at home (80% and 48%, p < 0.001). Services should be tailored to the particular needs of each group by gender, including community-based prevention, street-based health and safety interventions, and street child counseling and re-integration programs.     

DIFFERENTIAL DEPOSIT GUARANTEES AND THE EFFECT OF MONETARY POLICY ON BANK LENDING

This paper utilizes differences in de jure deposit insurance coverage across banks and changes in coverage over time to identify a bank‐lending channel in Poland. Banks with partial guarantees have a stronger loan response to monetary policy than banks with full guarantees. Furthermore, the weak response of the fully guaranteed banks is attributed to their ability to raise low‐reserve, uninsured time deposits relative to the partially covered banks. When differential coverage is eliminated, there is no disparity in the loan response between the two groups. This lending channel has implications for credit control and financial system development in emerging markets. (JEL E52, G21, G28)     

Freedom,mobility and marginality: an interdisciplinary study of the historical roots of contemporary street youth in urban Brazil

This study is focused on the lives of street youth in urban Brazil through an interdisciplinary and cross-historical approach, providing a conceptual analysis of three different but interconnected sources of knowledge: A historical study of vagrants in the 1800s by [Fraga Filho, Walter. (1996). Mendigos, Moleques e Vadios na Bahia do Século XIX. São Paulo: HUCITEC/EDUFBa], the novel Jubiába by [Amado, Jorge. ([1935] 1984). Jubiába. New York: Avon Books] on the life of a youth on the streets in the 1930s, and empirical material from a current ethnography of boys and young men on the street. This approach facilitates a broader perspective on stability and change regarding the dynamics of street life, allowing cross-historical themes to surface. It reveals how young men on the street challenge socio-spatial and moral boundaries. While their marginal position empowers them and increases their mobility, it also encumbers their trajectories. The conclusion arrived at is that marginality and mobility are closely interlinked, as marginality is not only the cause but also consequence of mobility, and sometimes even the obstruction of it.     

The social construction of the medical malpractice crisis: A case study of Massachusetts physicians

This study used observations from the 1985 Massachusetts malpractice insurance rate hearings, semistructured interviews conducted in 1985–1986, a survey of Massachusetts physicians in February 1988, and newspaper reports from theBoston Globe. Physicians and the Massachusetts Medical Society have promoted the medical malpractice crisis as an economic one. The after-expense income of most physicians, however, has remained relatively constant. The more serious threat to physicians appears to be the reduction of their autonomy. It is concluded that the medical malpractice crisis has been socially constructed in economic rather than autonomy terms because, traditionally, economics has been a more acceptable basis for labor unrest in the United States. Constructing malpractice as an economic crisis presents a more viable argument for stemming social change adverse to the medical profession.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 57th annual meeting of the Eastern Sociological Society, May 1987, Boston, Massachusetts.     

Attachment intervention through peer-based interaction: Working with Istanbul's street boys in a university setting

Street youths are a particularly vulnerable group because of early experiences of emotional and physical neglect and abuse which can make them difficult to approach. Traditional interventions such as 1 h weekly therapy sessions do not meet their needs. This article describes a creative and novel approach to the rehabilitation of street children implemented during the To-Gather with Youth Project (TYP) under the aegis of the Research and Application Center to Support Children/Youth Living and Working in the Streets (SOYAÇ) at Maltepe University in Istanbul, running in collaboration with state-run care institutions for boys since 2010. The approach consists of a peer-based supportive model that provides adolescent boys care with emotional and social security through attachment relationships that they develop with university students. The teaching staff and students of the psychology department constitute the core group running the program, which also includes workshops assisted by teachers and students from humanities departments such as philosophy, drama, and radio. These workshops are organized to promote the psychosocial and cognitive development of the participating street boys as well as to enable their direct access to the public through their art and photography. Based on a qualitative analysis of narrative interviews with boys and detailed observational reports by project volunteers, we identify several mechanisms that we believe contribute to change in the boys, including the development of secure attachment relationships with a trusted adult, a child-centered approach, and a socially safe environment created by peer-support in a university setting. The boys and volunteers also reported incidents and feelings that seem to suggest that the boys' have increased their capacity to regulate their emotions, sense of self-esteem and resilience, and desire to develop their lives in the future. This paper offers this intervention as a feasible service model for the rehabilitation of street boys in other cities.     

“WITHOUT A TRACE AS THE RIPPLES ON THE SURFACE OF THE SEA”

Anatoly Rybakov, Deti Arbata in Druzhba narodov (Moscow), nos. 4, 5, 6, 1987; Children of the Arbat. (Tr. from the Russian by Harold Shukman). Boston, MA: Little, Brown &; Co, 1988.     

Negotiated Discretion: Redressing the Neglect of Negotiation in “Street‐Level Bureaucracy”

This article proposes an interactionist update of “street‐level bureaucracy,” one of the most influential approaches for studying how public policy is translated into street‐level practice. While the street‐level approach assumes that bureaucrats are alone in enacting policy, the present article argues for seeing “street‐level policy” as formed in negotiation between bureaucrats and clients. To demonstrate this, the article uses ethnographic data and a Straussian framework to analyze how nurses and patients negotiated access in a Norwegian emergency service. The article thus sets a new course for street‐level research, helping researchers look beyond the individual to explore inter‐individual negotiation and its influence on street‐level decision‐making.     

RECLAIMING HERITAGE: COLOURIZATION,CULTURE WARS AND THE POLITICS OF NOSTALGIA

This article considers the discursive continuities between a specifically liberal defence of cultural patrimony, evident in the debate over film colourization, and the culture war critique associated with neo-conservatism. It examines how a rhetoric of nostalgia, linked to particular ideas of authenticity, canonicity and tradition, has been mobilized by the right and the left in attempts to stabilize the configuration and perceived transmission of American cultural identity. While different in scale, colourization and multiculturalism were seen to create respective (postmodern) barbarisms against which defenders of culture, heritage and good taste could unite. I argue that in its defence of the ‘classic’ work of art, together with principles of aesthetic distinction and the value of cultural inheritance, the anti-colourization lobby helped enrich and legitimize a discourse of tradition that, at the end of the 1980s, was beginning to reverberate powerfully in the conservative challenge to a ‘crisis’ within higher education and the humanities. This article attempts to complicate the contemporary politics of nostalgia, showing how a defence of cultural patrimony has distinguished major and minor culture wars, engaging left and right quite differently but with similar presuppositions.     

Muslim Women's Challenges to Islamic Law The Case of Malaysia

The reform of Islam by women and especially the lessons this activism might contain for feminist praxis is a highly topical and important issue. This article outlines some of the lessons to be drawn from studying this area with a specific focus on the activism of some groups of Malaysian Muslim women aimed at the reform of Islam. Two different strategies for reform are explained and traced in their attempts to reform religious interpretation and the Islamic legal system, the Syar'iah. The aim of the article is to provoke dialogue over the relationship of Islam to women's rights, while highlighting the agency of Muslim women within an Islamic framework. Another aim is to contribute to the debate over what constitutes feminism and the need to subject the debate continuously to cross-cultural and international perspectives.     

Secularism as a Barrier to Integration? The French Dilemma

This article focuses on the secularism debate currently taking place in France by examining how this issue impacts the integration of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants. Secularism is one of the key values of French Republicanism, but one which has been challenged by the establishment of a settled population of Muslim immigrants in France. The issue has been particularly highlighted by the affaire des foulards (headscarf affair), an ongoing debate over the rights of Muslim girls to wear a headscarf to secular French schools. Discussions of the principle of secularism and of its application have been even more intense in recent months with the publication in December 2003 of a report by the Stasi Commission, a commission set up by President Chirac to investigate the application of the principle of secularism, and by the passage of legislation intended to outlaw the wearing of any “overt” religious insignia in French schools. This article examines these recent developments in the context of the long‐running debate over Muslim women's right to wear a headscarf in French schools. It argues that the current focus on secularism provides evidence of the return of assimilation as a primary objective of public policy (Brubaker, 2001) and the decreasing strength of the movement in favour of the droit à la différence (right to difference). Finally, the paper argues that this has provided important obstacles to the integration of certain groups of immigrants, particularly Muslim immigrants.     

The Role of Androphilia in the Psychosexual Development of Boys

ABSTRACT

It is generally recognized that boys, and especially later prepubertal and young adolescent boys, are openly attracted to older boys and men. They identify with these more mature, most often unrelated males; they want to learn about the masculine world; they want to “be like” these people. This article examines previctimological and more recent literature to consider the extent to which boys’ generalized inclinations to explore, experience, and enjoy their emerging masculinity in the company of older males also may be manifested in their psychosexual developmental interests, desires, and activities. Insights from the literature concerning boys’ perspectives are taken into account, and various extraneous factors that may negatively affect boys’ psychosexual development are considered. The authenticity of this juvenile male androphilic sexuality is found to be supported, as is the repression thereof as a significant dynamic in young male social alienation and maladjustment.     

MORTGAGE LENDING IN BOSTON: A RECONSIDERATION OF THE EVIDENCE

Is there statistical evidence of racial discrimination in home mortgage markets? The Boston Fed recently addressed this concern head-on, by collecting all available data from loan applications in Boston. They find that the extent of discrimination is reduced after one accounts for all of the confounding variables measured in these applications, but that it remains statistically significant. However, their strong conclusions are unwarranted due to the use of invalid statistical methods. Correctly evaluated, their data provide no significant evidence of racial discrimination in mortgage markets. (JEL K31, J7)     

Targeting youth at risk for gang involvement: Validation of a gang risk assessment to support individualized secondary prevention

Objective/PurposeA major challenge in economically marginalized neighborhoods across the United States and around the world is the proliferation of local street gangs and the violence they perpetuate. While estimates vary from place to place, in the United States approximately 10% to 19% of youth between the ages of 12 and 16 are likely to join a local street gang in these high-risk areas. While a substantial proportion of those who join a gang drop out relatively quickly (within a year or so), others remain involved over several years. Prolonged involvement in a street gang frequently results in violent injury or death among gang-involved youth and among innocent victims. Communities and families facing these problems are looking for ways to discourage gang involvement before it starts.MethodsHere we report a test of the prospective validity of an assessment that supports concentrated prevention efforts focused on the youth most likely to join a gang. This approach, called secondary gang prevention, works intensively to remediate influences that motivate high-risk youth to join a neighborhood gang. The prospective validity of the Gang Risk of Entry Factors (GREF) assessment was tested over a 12 to 18 month period (baseline to retest) in a high-risk sample of 11 to 16 year old youth in Los Angeles County.ResultsThe findings confirm the assessment's effectiveness in prospectively identifying the youth most likely to join a gang within impacted communities. In the study sample, 100% of the boys who reported current gang membership, 81% of boys who report former gang membership, and 74% of the boys who reported hanging out with the gang at the posttest had been identified as high-risk 12 to 18 months earlier on the baseline assessment. All but one of the 14 girls in the study who reported any gang involvement (including just hanging out) on the posttest had been assessed as high-risk on the baseline interview.ConclusionsThe findings confirm the assessment's effectiveness in prospectively identifying the youth most likely to join a gang within impacted communities.     

THE IMPACTS OF THE USDA BROADBAND LOAN AND GRANT PROGRAMS: MOVING TOWARD ESTIMATING A RATE OF RETURN

In this article, we evaluate the rate of return to government efforts to promote broadband. Specifically, we estimate the impact of USDA's broadband loan and grant programs on the average payroll per worker using zip code level data from the Zip Code Business Patterns for the period from 1997 to 2007. Our results indicate that two of the smaller broadband programs (the Pilot loan program and the broadband grants program) likely had no effect on local payroll per workers. On the other hand, the largest program in terms of funding and coverage (the current broadband loan program) likely had a positive impact. Our estimate implies that a $1 per capita increase in a particular zip code's one-time receipt of the current program broadband loan results in a $0.92 increase in payroll per worker annually. Our calculated point estimates of the benefit: cost ratios for this broadband program range from 1.98 to 2.99, depending on assumptions about the time frame over which benefits accrue. However, the confidence intervals are wide enough to include the possibility that the costs outweigh the benefits.(JEL L86, J30, O18)     

Coverage of China in the UK national press

This article analyzes the coverage of China in the UK national daily press for the calendar year 2008. The article demonstrates that, although there were many articles mentioning China, these were distributed throughout the year so as to emphasize large-scale and dramatic events. Second, the articles were not evenly distributed across the titles analyzed. The big-selling down-market titles had very few substantial articles on China. The mid-market titles had more, but the total was still very small. Only the up-market titles, with their elite readership, covered China regularly and in depth. The article then compares the quality of the coverage through an analysis of the frames present in the Sun, the Daily Express, and the Financial Times. The article finds that the coverage had some similarities across all titles, but that the two more popular titles concentrated on negative aspects of China while the elite title carried more nuanced coverage. It is speculated that the Financial Times has more detailed and better-rounded coverage of China primarily because the readers are much more likely to have professional and personal relations with China and need a better picture of the realities of that country. The less wealthy and well-educated readers of the other papers have little direct experience of China, and the country can be used as one of the markers of a dangerous and threatening world. It is noted that this is an analysis of what is present in newspapers, and no valid conclusions can be drawn about audience attitudes from this evidence.     

Street art in non-capital urban centres: between exploiting commercial appeal and expressing social concerns

ABSTRACT

How do local cultural agents in particular places adopt new policies towards street art as having commercial and political value? The present article takes up this question through a discussion of street art festivals and their role within urban culture and cultural policies in two large Russian cities. It considers the activities of cultural intermediaries promoting street art vis-à-vis the existing constellation of over-centralized politics, creative industries, urban development and precarious labour. Drawing on fieldwork in these cities and conducting critical sociological analysis of the street art curating, I show how the appropriation of street art by cultural intermediaries is subtly changing its ecology and values and argue that this change contributes to the range of ambivalences of neoliberal cultural politics. The article also sheds light on cultural policy and practice in Russia at a juncture characterised by the impact of globalization, on the one hand, and the country's isolationist and conservative politics, on the other.     

Genograms: Is it Time for a Change?

This article began as a letter to the Editors, expressing Anne Macvean's concern about the genogram convention that the ANZJFT follows. How does a journal decide whether or not it is time to change? This seemed to be an issue deserving of a wider debate. Here is the beginning of the debate, with comments on Anne's letter from two local users of genograms, Jenny Brown and Jan Evans, and from Monica McGoldrick, internationally known genogram expert, author of You Can Go Home Again [1995], co‐author of Genograms: Assessment and Intervention (1999).