An Experimental Juvenile Probation Program: Effects on Parent and Peer Relationships

In an effort to provide a wider range of services to youth and their families than is traditionally available in routine probation, the South Oxnard Challenge Project (SOCP) employed a team approach to service delivery of an intensive probation program. The researchers interviewed juveniles who were randomly assigned to either the SOCP experimental condition or the control condition of a routine probation program. The intensive probation program, among other goals, focused on improving parent-child relationships and teaching youth how to choose better peers. At 1 year post random assignment, experimental and control youth were not significantly different on key family or peer relationship measures. Level of program intensity, implementation issues, and other problems inherent in doing this type of research are provided as possible explanations for the lack of differences. These null findings are examined in light of the recent movement toward parental involvement legislation

Getting up: an ethnography of hip hop graffiti writers, their art, and perceptions of society\u27s reactions.

This ethnographic analysis of the modern hip hop graffiti writing subculture connects the separate but complementary theoretical constructs of serious leisure (Stebbins 1982), dark leisure (Smith and Raymen 2016), recreational specialization theory (Bryan 1977), and edgework (Lyng 1990) and situates the writer “standpoint” (Smith 1987) in terms of interrelations of policy and written discourse. Past research found that writers were motivated by fame and status, to express artistic skills, and to control and destroy space (Brewer and Miller 1990). Others found that writers sought to express contestant notions of style and resist economic and political authority (Ferrell 1996; 2006), and some emphasize affective aspects of accomplishment and desire in graffiti (Halsey and Young 2006). Policy research indicates wide misunderstandings of graffiti and its inclusion under a ‘gang’ label (Ferrell 1996), and cities increasingly favor “wars on graffiti” (Iveson 2010) where ineffective anti-graffiti campaigns justified in “broken windows” ideals often result in increasing illegal graffiti (Haworth, Bruce, and Iveson 2013). Interviews of policy officials of a mid-sized Midwestern city revealed varying views, preferences, and understandings of graffiti, and city ordinance criminalized all unsanctioned graffiti. Interview data from a snowball sample of writers indicated dynamic motives, views, and practices and three writer classes. A key finding is as writers specialized on a career trajectory, a shift in focus occurred from writing for thrill to writing for flow. Motives were consistent with past research, and the subculture regulated its membership via social control and mentoring. Further, socialization was a central part of progression, and writing occurred as “everyday forms of resistance” (Scott 1984), edgework, serious leisure, and recreation specialization. To acknowledge these nuances through policy may benefit the public, engage writer voices, and reduce fear by increasing awareness and public exposure to graffiti, potentially disassociating it from ‘master vandal’ or gang status

An Experimental Juvenile Probation Program: Effects on Parent and Peer Relationships

In an effort to provide a wider range of services to youth and their families than is traditionally available in routine probation, the South Oxnard Challenge Project (SOCP) employed a team approach to service delivery of an intensive probation program. The researchers interviewed juveniles who were randomly assigned to either the SOCP experimental condition or the control condition of a routine probation program. The intensive probation program, among other goals, focused on improving parent-child relationships and teaching youth how to choose better peers. At 1 year post random assignment, experimental and control youth were not significantly different on key family or peer relationship measures. Level of program intensity, implementation issues, and other problems inherent in doing this type of research are provided as possible explanations for the lack of differences. These null findings are examined in light of the recent movement toward parental involvement legislation

What’s a threat on social media? How Black and Latino Chicago young men define and navigate threats online

Youth living in violent urban neighborhoods increasingly post messages online from urban street corners. The decline of the digital divide and the proliferation of social media platforms connect youth to peer communities who may share experiences with neighborhood stress and trauma. Social media can also be used for targeted retribution when threats and insults are directed at individuals or groups. Recent research suggests that gang-involved youth may use social media to brag, post fight videos, insult, and threaten—a phenomenon termed Internet banging. In this article, we leverage “code of the digital street” to understand how and in what ways social media facilitates urban-based youth violence. We utilize qualitative interviews from 33 Black and Latino young men who frequent violence prevention programs and live in violent neighborhoods in Chicago. Emerging themes describe how and why online threats are conceptualized on social media. Implications for violence prevention and criminal investigations are discussed

Graphicons and Tactics in Satirical Trolling on Tumblr.com

Internet trolling is inherently multimodal, relying on both textual and graphical means of communication (or “graphicons”). We examined how satire and ideological trolls who use graphicons on the microblogging site Tumblr.com, use knowledge of local culture as part of their trolling tactics. Based on a qualitative thematic analysis of 172 trolling posts (that include 284 graphicons), we identified 7 Tumblr satire troll tactics: the lying tactic, the derailment tactic, the parodic exaggeration tactic, the misappropriation of jargon tactic, the straight man (or “comical seriousness”) tactic, the troll reveal tactic, and the politeness tactic. We also found that ideologically extremizing language was the most commonly used outrage tactic and that trolls used graphicons frequently as flame baiting prompts and for tone modification

A Violence of “Best Practice” and Unintended Consequences?: Domestic Violence and the Making of a Disordered Subjectivity

Often, efforts by schools to standardize marginalized children with histories of domestic violence have alarming effects. More recent efforts of standardization typically find a sustained existence in the discourse of “best” practices predicated upon a religious-like adherence to behavioral data driven frameworks. This article traces how children and youth with histories of domestic violence (or HDV youth) navigate and resist deficit laden school subjectivities shaped by special education discourses of medicalization and pathologization. In one case study, I spell out how an elementary school created and maintained an HDV child’s EBD (emotional behavioral disordered) subjectivity with detrimental effects. The article ends with further critique of the social and emotional (behavioral) frameworks populating our schools today and their relationship to the school-to-prison pipeline for children and youth with histories of domestic violence

Crime in Institution of Learning: Some Theoretical Explanations of Engaging in Sex Deviance.

Common-sense understandings of crime also tend to rely on legal definitions and those behaviors and events that are specified in criminal law. They imply there is some underlying consensus about what constitutes criminality and what does not. But conceptions of crime clearly vary from place to place and change over time. At some time or another, some form of society or another has defined almost all forms of behavior that we now call “criminal” as desirable for the functioning of that form of society.’ Scholars have developed a variety of theories to explain various forms of deviant behavior. Such explanations revolve around why the individuals commit crime and why crime and criminal behavior is more prevalent in some locations and periods than others. It is against this backdrop that this paper attempts to analyze the various explanations of crime institution of learning from some theoretical explanation

In Search of Popularity: Non-Conforming Reputations of Hispanic Adolescent Graffiti Writers

Although the literature on graffiti writers continues to expand, there is a paucity of studies on Hispanic adolescent writers in the U.S., especially with a focus on assimilation. Using the qualitative analyses of in-depth interviews with Hispanic adolescent writers, this study attempts to fill in the gaps in our understanding of whether and how ethnologies of writers differ with respect to their family-, school-, and peer-related experiences. A key feature of the study is comparison of two crews (groups) of Hispanic adolescent writers who differ with respect to their immigrant generational status. Above all, this paper seeks an understanding of the purpose behind the graffiti-writing behavior. The findings of this study underscore the importance of boundary-testing, statusand risk-seeking in the lives of adolescent writers who, through the engagement in graffiti-writing, attempt to establish a non-conforming reputation among one\u27s peers