Punishment and status in collective action: How status hierarchies foster optimal punishment use

I provide a brief overview of the literature on human cooperation, punishment, and social dilemmas. After reviewing relevant literature, I move on to a series of predictions, intertwining findings on punishment, public goods, and social status. Leaning on Status Characteristics Theory, I explicate how the behavioral expectations that we derive from status positions foster a means of using punishment to secure public goods. Furthermore, I argue that we carry general expectations for high status actors to punish when deemed collectively necessary. Building on this expectation, I articulate how initially status‐homogenous groups can develop status ranks on the basis of punishment behavior, allowing task groups to mimic sanctioning institutions commonly seen in public goods research and everyday life.     

Punishing Juvenile Offenders as Adults: An Analysis of the Social and Political Determinants of Juvenile Prison Admissions across the United States

Abstract

Although the punishment of juvenile offenders has increasingly become an issue of major concern to the public, few studies test the government's coercive response to offending by this particular group. This article addresses the issue by examining the variation in the willingness of courts in the United States to adjudicate juvenile offenders in the adult criminal courts and sentence them to adult correctional facilities. I use pooled time-series negative binomial regression to analyze raw counts of juveniles admitted to adult prisons from 1983 to 2001. Results consistently show that states with larger minority populations admit more juvenile offenders to prisons but that states with very large African American populations send fewer of these offenders to prison. The findings also show that differences in the ideological climate of each state are a strong predictor of the variation in adult sanctions for minors. Additional evidence shows that states where judges must run in an election to gain their seats and states where judges have shorter terms proscribe more severe sanctions for juvenile offenders by sentencing more of them to adult prisons. Overall, the results suggest that race and politics play a very strong role in the sentencing of juvenile offenders to adult prisons.     

Punishment and pleasure: women, food and the imprisoned body1

Food assumes enormous importance in prison: for many prisoners it conditions their life in custody and, in many respects, is symbolic of the prison experience. This article explores the complex relationship between gender, food and imprisonment through an analysis of data obtained from in‐depth interviews and group discussions conducted in three women's prisons in England. The findings indicate that, in prison, where control is taken away as the prisoner and her body become the objects of external forces, food is experienced not only as part of the disciplinary machinery, but also as a powerful source of pleasure, resistance and rebellion. The implications of such findings for health promotion in the prison context are discussed. Here, the pleasures and consolations of food may well constitute a redefinition of what it is to be healthy in this context, one that challenges the dominant meaning constructed in current health promotional discourse.     

The meaning of agency in processes of desisting from delinquent behaviour in prison: an exploratory study among juvenile inmates in Germany

The impact of youth prisons and other repressive measures is subject to public and scientific debates for years. The meaning of individual agency has, however, been largely neglected in the context of understanding processes of desistance among juvenile inmates. This text addresses differences in perceiving the institutional setting, interrelations with other inmates and the authorities as well as participation in educational training. Based on a larger study of qualitative, retrospective interviews in German youth prisons, three exemplary cases are presented illustrating different developments during incarceration. Overall, three cases document several obstacles and requirements that are supportive in the individual process of developing agency, rethinking prior behaviour and maintaining modified ways of behaviour. The three cases also provide some explanations why many young inmates maintain delinquent behaviour.     

An Interplay of Individual Motivations and Sociocultural Factors Predisposing Men to Acts of Rape in Kenya

ABSTRACT

There is a general public perception in Kenya that rapists are “sick” people who deserve to be put far away from the society. Consequently, rape perpetrators are left to be dealt with by the criminal justice system while most of the research has focused on the rape survivors without taking into consideration the need to explore and understand the motivations and sociocultural factors that could predispose men to rape. This paper examines this form of “deviant” sexuality characteristic of some men. The paper is based on findings of a study conducted in three main prisons in Kenya between January and March 2008. The study sample was drawn from the Kamiti, Naivasha, and Nyeri main prisons. Respondents were convicted rapists serving their jail terms. The findings suggest that a number of factors may predispose a man to rape. These factors could be either individual motivational factors, sociocultural factors, or a combination of both. The individual motivational factors identified included drug consumption, marital problems as an excuse for rape, inability to negotiate for consensual sex due to being shy or afraid of women, rape as a form of sexual access, psychological factors like pornographic influence and rape hallucinations, impersonal sex and power, and use of rape as a “tool” for punishment. On the other hand, the sociocultural factors identified included the view of rape as a sexual act rather than an act of violence, social attitude that the woman “invited” the rape, early childhood environment, cultural practices, peer influence, and a lack of parental advice on sexual activities.     

Juvenile delinquency in Romania: a comparison between minors in prisons and re-education services

This article assesses the relationships between the individual and family characteristics of minors and juvenile delinquency in Romania. This cross-sectional study involved Romanian delinquent minors, 285 of whom were incarcerated in prisons in Romania and 280 subject to educational measures in re-education services in Romania. The multivariate logistic regression analysis showed that delinquency in incarcerated minors is associated with age, the offence committed, drug use, school dropout rates, recidivism, family alcoholism, the relationship with the biological parents, and the number of biological siblings. The study provides baseline data to identify at-risk minors in order to develop prevention programmes. We have adopted a public health approach to analysing delinquency and targets risk factors.     

The Prison Cage as Home for African American Men

Through critical discourse analysis I describe the impact of incarceration as seen in narratives that underlie the overrepresentation of Blacks in American prisons. Much of my research illustrates how narratives can show the moral agency required for rehabilitation. This article shows the context into which that moral agency fits and calls for a critical literacy for communities to understand incarceration and its effects on family and society.     

Rational Choice theory and prison chaplaincy: the chaplain's dilemma

Critical responses to the application of Rational Choice theories to the study of religious phenomena tend to be polarized between outright denial that the theories have any relevance to religion and equally outspoken claims that the theories are the only hope for progress in the sociology of religion. This article aims to avoid both of these extreme positions by raising a question, instead, about one of Rational Choice's central propositions about religion. This proposition holds that levels of religious vitality vary positively with the degree to which agencies of the state are prevented from regulating religious activity. The findings of recent research into prison chaplaincy in the UK and the USA will be used to test this claim. The main argument will be that the existence of an established church has facilitated a higher level of religious activity, especially for minority faiths, in prisons in England and Wales than is possible in American prisons. This difference in religious vitality is explained in terms of the Church of England's privileged position as a 'broker' between the state and minority faith communities. There is greater equality of opportunity for religious activity in American prisons, but the level of the activity is necessarily lower. In neither country is there anything truly resembling a 'free' market for religion in prisons, but the established Church of England is able to use its quasi-monopoly powers to broker advantageous conditions for minority faith communities. This brokerage function may be advantageous to all religious organizations in the highly regulated 'economy' of prisons.     

‘To return to the bosom of their fatherland’: Brazilian immigrants in nineteenth‐century Lagos

This article explores the southern prison system during the expansion of slavery in the nineteenth-century USA, to reveal struggles over landscape and geography. It suggests connections between diverse institutions such as plantation jails, county and city jails, workhouses, state penitentiaries and slave pens that have not been conceptualized as part of a carceral system supporting slavery. Slaveholders' various means of using these institutions are outlined as are their perceptions of these prisons. The article concludes by discussing the perspective of enslaved peoples, arguing that prisons were the site of considerable resistance as slave geographies were unable to be completely confined by the expanding carceral system.     

Role Fusion: The Occupational Socialization of Prison Chaplains

The conclusion that prisons, as total institutions, are “forcing houses” for the changing of persons can be extended beyond inmates to the prison staff. In this article I focus on one subset of prison staff that has received only scant examination: prison chaplains. Using qualitative interview data, I analyze the occupational socialization of state‐employed prison chaplains. I begin by discussing the initial expectations chaplains held about their work and what they hoped to accomplish. I describe the challenges of working in the correctional environment and note the occupational adjustments chaplains made in reaction to these challenges. I conclude with a theoretical examination of the role and identity processes that framed the occupational socialization of prison chaplains.     

Immigrants in Spanish prisons: searching for an educational way out

In recent years, the Spanish prison system has undergone major changes, with a marked increase in the number of immigrant inmates. Thus, educational interventions in prisons must be set against this backdrop of ethnocultural diversity, especially if the aim is re-education and reinsertion into society. This paper focuses on the design, implementation and evaluation of a comprehensive educational intervention programme for closed prisons, adaptable to diverse prison situations and educational aims. Particular attention is paid to the relationship between immigration and crime, the potential for educational intervention in this context, and possible strategies favouring intercultural communication within prisons.     

A retrospective study of attitudes and triggers towards gambling of prisoners before their incarceration in Australia

The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between attitudes towards gambling, triggers for gambling, and the severity of the gambling problem of convicted offenders before their incarceration. Participants were recruited through transitional managers of prisons. There were 96 referrals, of which 66 participants completed the study. Results showed that there was a significant correlation between the Gambling Attitudes and Beliefs Survey (GABS) and the Inventory of Gambling Situations (IGS) and a significant correlation between the IGS and the EIGHT Gambling Screen. However, no significant correlation was found between the EIGHT Gambling Screen and the GABS. The results indicated that attitudes towards and beliefs about gambling did not directly influence the severity of the participants’ gambling problem. Attitudes and beliefs were more closely linked to their triggers for gambling, and these triggers carried more weight in the severity of their gambling problem. These results suggest that problem gamblers need assistance in dealing with their trigger situations for gambling as well as receiving a therapeutic programme to change their attitudes towards and beliefs about gambling.     

Popular music and urban regeneration: The music industries of Merseyside

In this article I address the origins of America's national parks, particularly as they figure in the environmentalist discourse surrounding the institution of Yosemite Valley as a public park. Although technically speaking Yosemite did not become a national park until 1890, its cession to the State of California in 1864 provides an important cultural site for the emergence of environmentalism as part of a broader concern with the relations between aesthetic, social and natural agency. In mapping out these relations in Frederick Law Olmsted's 1865 report on the management of Yosemite, I claim that the preservation of Yosemite reproduces nature as a public park in which human agency can be simultaneously produced and elided by means of the aesthetic agency of nature. I read Olmsted's report as a discursive site on which we can trace the structural parallels between the preservation of Yosemite and several related cultural practices in which the origins of American environmentalism are embedded. I also read it as sketching out the configurations of human and natural agency within which these parallel practices are articulated.

My study operates from the assumption that science and technology need to be understood not simply by explaining how they are socially or culturally constructed, but also by looking at how certain fundamental ideas of metaphors (like natural agency or the reproduction of nature) are worked out at the same historical moment in different discursive practices. In taking up the idea of America as it both defines and is defined by the network of relations among science, technology and culture, I outline certain myths of American environmentalist origins as played out across a number of diverse and heterogeneous discourses and technologies of representation and reproduction. I hope also to illuminate the way in which American cultural origins are simultaneously constructed and destabilized through the act of reproducing nature.     

Crime,Politics, and Punishment: Criminological Research for Political Sociologists

As a sociologist studying the intersection of crime, punishment, and politics, it is often surprising to me how many aspects of political sociology and the study of crime and punishment overlap, and yet, there is often limited cross‐fertilization of the two fields. For the sake of brevity in this discussion, I refer to those who study crime, deviance, law, criminal justice, and punishment as criminologists. My goal is to provide an extremely brief “primer” on criminology for political sociologists, in the hopes that a short reading of some issues and research in criminology may stimulate additional theorizing and research, as has so often happened when I have read political sociological work. To do this, I begin with a brief discussion of overlaps in political sociological and criminological perspectives. Following this, I highlight some examples of criminological research which incorporates politics, and would likely interest political sociologists, Then, I highlight a hot button issue in criminology – sex offenses – and suggest some ways that political sociologists could examine recent legislation on sex offenders and conclude with brief discussions of a few additional areas of overlap for the two disciplines.     

VOUCHERS,PUBLIC SCHOOL RESPONSE,AND THE ROLE OF INCENTIVES: EVIDENCE FROM FLORIDA

This paper analyzes the incentives and responses of public schools in the context of an educational reform. Much of the literature studying the effect of voucher programs on public schools has looked at the effect on student and mean school scores. This paper tries to go inside the black box to investigate some of the ways in which schools facing the Florida accountability‐tied voucher program behaved. Schools getting an “F” grade for the first time were exposed to the threat of vouchers, but did not face vouchers unless and until they got a second “F” within the next 3 years. In addition, “F,” being the lowest grade, exposed the threatened schools to stigma. Exploiting the institutional details of this program, I analyze the incentives built into the system and investigate the behavior of the threatened public schools facing these incentives. There is strong evidence that they did respond to incentives. Using highly disaggregated school‐level data, a difference‐in‐differences estimation strategy as well as a regression discontinuity (RD) analysis, I find that the threatened schools tended to focus more on students below the minimum criteria cutoffs rather than equally on all. Second, consistent with incentives, the threatened school improvements were, by far, the largest in writing. These results are robust to controlling for differential preprogram trends, changes in demographic compositions, mean reversion, and sorting. These findings have important policy implications. (JEL H4, I21, I28)     

Legal Ruralism and California Parole Hearings: Space,Place, and the Carceral Landscape*

This article discusses the important relationship between rurality and criminal justice processes, drawing on field observations and in-depth interviews with parole commissioners to argue that California's physical carceral landscape profoundly shapes lifer parole hearings. First, commissioners report that prisons' location in rural areas affects the rehabilitative resources available, which are seen as an important aspect of their readiness for release. Location and perceived rurality of prisons shape commissioners' perception of the inmates at various institutions, creating implicitly different standards for inmates housed at different prisons. Second, spatiality and rurality influence parole commissioners' work lives, exacting a toll that includes onerous travel, early burnout, and challenges to assembling a diverse board. Together, these findings underscore the importance of legal ruralism to the relationship between spatial and carceral landscapes.     

Drug users who only need treatment should get it,not arrest and incarceration

Many changes at the local, state and federal levels have resulted in getting treatment to at least some people with opioid use disorder (OUD) in prisons and jails — treatment that just a few years ago would have been unthinkable in those very institutions. Lawsuits over inmate deaths have been followed by establishment of methadone and buprenorphine treatment in some locations, while others have been moving toward treatment as a matter of public policy, Paul Samuels, director and president of the Legal Action Center, told the attendees of the American Association for the Treatment of Opioid Dependence (AATOD) conference in Orlando, Florida, last month. He was joined by a jail accreditor, a sheriff and a judge at the plenary on corrections.     

Punishment,inequality, and welfare: a public good experiment

This paper reports the results of an experiment that investigates the two-sided relationship between punishment and welfare. First, it contributes to the literature on the behavioral determinants of punishment by examining the role of relative income and income comparisons as a determinant of punishment in a two-stage public good game when inequality arises endogenously from the subjects’ behavior. Second, this paper investigates the impact of punishment on both absolute and relative incomes. We compare three treatments of our game. The Unequal Cost treatment replicates Fehr and Gächter (2000)’s experiment under a stranger matching protocol. The Equal Cost treatment is identical to the previous one except that the ratio between the cost of one punishment point to the punisher and its cost to the target equals one. The third treatment is similar to the second one except that a partner matching protocol is implemented in order to isolate strategic motives for punishment. Our results indicate that subjects punish even when they cannot alter the current distribution of payoffs. We also find that in all treatments, the intensity of punishment increases in the level of inter-individual inequality. Finally, despite its cost, punishment progressively improves welfare in association with a decrease in the aggregate level of inequality over time.