An Assessment of Cross-National Variation in Rates of Incarceration

Our theoretical approach compares the relative efficacy of multiple theories of law and social control. From a general social threat perspective, we find that variables reflecting the size of the unemployed youth population and general measures of income inequality have positive impacts on a nation\u27s rates of incarceration. We also find partial support for one of Durkheim\u27s laws of quantitative change and penal evolution, in that, all else equal, nations with a more authoritarian form of government utilize incarceration at a higher rate than their more democratic counterparts. We also find that the institutional anomie perspective, which has previously been applied only to rates of crime, might also have implications for sanctioning practices. Specifically, a measure of socialist and/or communist government, adopted as a proxy for the decommodification of citizens from the labor market, is marginally related to lower rates of incarceration. As a whole, this research project points to new directions for understanding variation of penal practices in a sample of over 150 nations

Beyond the ghetto: methamphetamine and the punishment of rural America.

Doctor of PhilosophyDepartment of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social WorkL. Susan WilliamsSince the early 1970s, the United States has grown increasingly reliant on the criminal justice system to manage a wide array of social problems. Aggressive drug control policies and an over-reliance on imprisonment helped produce the world’s largest prison and correctional population, often described as mass imprisonment. Within this context, the study provides an explanatory account of the political, cultural, and social conditions that encourage states like Kansas to pursue methamphetamine as a major public concern, and to a greater degree than other states with relatively higher meth problems. Ultimately, and most important, the study makes a theoretical contribution by demonstrating how meth control efforts, analogous to previous drug control campaigns, extends punitive drug control rationalities to new cultural contexts and social terrains beyond the so-called ghetto of the inner city, thereby reinforcing and extending the logics of mass imprisonment

Darkness on the Edge of Town: Visual Criminology and the Black Sites of the Rural

Black has long been employed to inspire or communicate horror, isolation and dread. Employed the state and capital, from the CIA and municipal police departments to corporations, the black site is a geography that conceals the knowledge of its own existence and boundaries. Rurality is a spatial concept characterized by the unknown and the blurred edges of its own temporal and material existence. Taking the common rural prison and Contained Animal Feeding Operations (CAFOs) as examples of rural black sites , we contend that efforts to render them visible can be enhanced by the lessons of paranormal/spirit photography

Pygmalion in the courtroom: the impact of court-level racial threat on criminal justice decision making

Master of ArtsDepartment of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social WorkL. Susan WilliamsBuilding upon macrostructural “social threat” (Blalock, 1967) research, the current study develops a theoretical model of judicial decision-making processes that focuses upon racial threats perceived within individual court contexts and the corresponding effects on individual sentencing outcomes. This model recognizes that in the absence of a true-measure of a defendant’s threat to the community (likelihood to re-offend) judicial decision makers often rely upon stereotypical generalizations regarding offender populations to render decisions. Although actors develop biases and stereotypes through interactions with society in general, the most relevant knowledge affecting sentencing decisions is perceptions gained through the course of work. Similar to the influential “Pygmalion in the Classroom” study, biases and stereotypes regarding the criminality of groups of criminal defendants are pervasive in contemporary society, undoubtedly influencing sentencing outcomes. Therefore, the most meaningful measurement of threat, as it pertains to sentencing, is the contextual composition of court caseloads. Using data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics-State Court Processing Statistics (SCPS) program, this study examines court-contextual or caseload level threats and the interaction between courtroom context and individual offense/offender characteristics and the corresponding impact on sentencing outcomes. Findings demonstrate that courts of high minority defendant volume apply more punitive sanctions to (increased sentence length and odds of incarceration) to all defendants within this context, while black defendants receive the greatest sanctions. These findings support assertions regarding the impact of threatening populations within courtroom contexts

Ghost Criminology: a framework for the discipline’s spectral turn

Drawing upon recent criminological scholarship examining spectrality, as well as Jacques Derrida’s notion of hauntology, this article sets out a framework to explore harms experienced as ‘out of joint’. We propose a new sub-discipline of ‘ghost criminology’ as a means to explore and reckon with these afterlives. We identify three strands of the (in)visible, the (in)corporeal and dead space with which to capture phenomena hovering between presence and absence. In doing so, we provide examples of justice being achieved within this sense of time being ‘off its hinges’. A ‘ghost criminology’ provides a means of listening to the voices of the discipline’s dead, as well as the ghosts of its future