Research on inmate social order, a once-vibrant area, receded just as U.S. incarceration rates climbed and the country's carceral contexts dramatically changed. This study returns to inmate society ...with an abductive mixed-methods investigation of informal status within a contemporary men's prison unit. We collected narrative and social network data from 133 male inmates housed in a unit of a Pennsylvania medium-security prison. Analyses of inmate narratives suggest that unit "old heads" provide collective goods in the form of mentoring and role modeling that foster a positive and stable peer environment. We test this hypothesis with Exponential Random Graph Models (ERGMs) of peer nomination data. The ERGM results complement the qualitative analysis and suggest that older inmates and inmates who have been on the unit longer are perceived by their peers as powerful and influential. Both analytic strategies point to the maturity of aging and the acquisition of local knowledge as important for attaining informal status in the unit. In summary, this mixed-methods case study extends theoretical insights of classic prison ethnographies, adds quantifiable results capable of future replication, and points to a growing population of older inmates as important for contemporary prison social organization.
The strong correlation between measures of personal and peer deviance occurs with near “law‐like” regularity. Yet, as with other manifestations of peer similarity (often referred to as homophily), ...the mechanisms generating this relationship are widely debated. Specific to the deviance literature, most studies have failed to examine, simultaneously, the degree to which similarity is the consequence of multiple causes. The current study addresses this gap by using longitudinal network data for 1,151 individuals from the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) School Project. Structural equation modeling is used to address these issues by adapting Jussim and Osgood's () model of deviant attitudes in dyadic pairs to the current data. Across two separate behavioral domains (substance use and property offending), the results provide strong support for the prediction that individuals project their own deviant tendencies inaccurately onto their peers. Conversely, the results provide little or no support for the predictions that respondents accurately perceive their peers’ deviance or that their perceptions of peer deviance influence their own behavior. Implications for understanding the role of peer behavior in the etiology of adolescent deviance are discussed.
Peer delinquency and unstructured socializing have been identified as important correlates of delinquency and substance use. This state-of-the-art review explicates research into these associations ...to identify important trends in the literature and directions for future research.
A search of the criminological literature and literatures of allied disciplines was executed to identify studies that have examined the potential influence of peer delinquency and unstructured socializing on delinquency and substance use.
The review highlights the theoretical underpinnings of the two constructs, issues of measurement quality, the generality of effects on delinquency and substance use, advances in the respective literatures, and important remaining gaps for future research to fill.
While considerable attention has been given to studying the potential influence of peer delinquency and unstructured socializing on delinquency and substance use, there remain a number of ways in which these literatures can be advanced to provide a more complete understanding of the relevance of these constructs for the etiology of delinquency and substance use.
•Review summarizes the literature linking peer and individual delinquency.•Review summarizes the literature linking unstructured socializing to delinquency.•Quality of measurement strategy is central to both literatures.•Associations are frequently moderated by other key theoretical variables.•Several important research questions require additional empirical scrutiny.
This article examines how actors' perceptions of other people's behavior may be exaggerated and how this inaccuracy may influence behavior. More specifically, we apply these issues to improve our ...understanding of the correlation between delinquency of friends and individual delinquency. This relationship is one of the most replicated findings in the social sciences. However, research has not distinguished misperceptions of friends' behavior from actual behavior of friends, leaving two empirical questions unanswered. First, why do youth overestimate their friends' level of delinquency? Second, does overestimation of friends' delinquency influence one's own delinquency? We examine these questions using data from two waves of the Netherlands Institute for the Study of Crime and Law Enforcement (NSCR) School Project. These data include self-reports by school friends of their own delinquent behavior, as well as respondents' estimates of their friends' behavior, making them uniquely equipped to calculate how much respondents exaggerate the behavior of their school friends and to investigate the determinants and consequences of this overestimation. Findings indicate that youth who engage in delinquency, have attitudes supporting delinquency, and experience peer pressure are more likely to exaggerate the prevalence of delinquency in their friendship network. Also, overestimating friends' delinquency leads to more delinquency in a subsequent wave, net of actual delinquency of friends and individual and situational characteristics. Overestimating friends' delinquency has the strongest effect on individuals who value social approval, are unpopular in their school, and experience peer pressure from their friends. We conclude by discussing avenues for future research.
•The first complete network study of prison inmates in the era of mass incarceration.•98% of inmates “get along with” at least one other inmate (average degree=3.8).•Weak subgroups that include “old ...heads” but no gang or race/ethnic clustering.•Inmates who are more powerful or broker subgroups also bridge race/ethnic groups.•The inmate network resembles friendship networks in other settings.
The current study investigates informal social structure among prison inmates. Data come from the Prison Inmate Network Study (PINS), a project focused on a unit of a Pennsylvania medium security men’s prison. We focus on 205 inmates and their “get along with” network – an approximation of friendship in other settings. We find a weak subgroup structure dominated by two groups of “old heads” and characterized by moderate (non gang-based) race/ethnic clustering. Structurally, the network resembles adolescents in schools, suggesting that prison inmates are capable of successfully building peer associations. We conclude that under the right conditions self-organizing inmate society can foster social integration reminiscent of other social settings.
Objectives
On-officer video camera (OVC) technology in policing is developing at a rapid pace. Large agencies are beginning to adopt the technology on a limited basis, and a number of cities across ...the United States have required their police departments to adopt the technology for all first responders. However, researchers have just begun to examine the effects of OVC technology on citizen complaints, officers’ attitudes, and police–citizen contacts.
Methods
This study examines officer behavior and perceptions of camera technology among 100 line officers in the Mesa Police Department during police–citizen encounters over a 10-month period. Experimental data from 3698 field contact reports were analyzed to determine whether being assigned to wear an OVC influences officer behavior and perceptions of OVC technology.
Results
Bivariate and multilevel logistic regression analyses indicate that officers assigned to wear a camera were less likely to perform stop-and-frisks and make arrests, but were more likely to give citations and initiate encounters. Officers were also more likely to report OVCs as being helpful if they wore a camera and in situations where they issued a warning or citation, performed a stop-and-frisk, and made an arrest.
Conclusions
Our results provide important insights into the consequences of OVCs on police behavior and suggest that officers are more proactive with this technology without increasing their use of invasive strategies that may threaten the legitimacy of the organization.
A wealth of literature has examined the association between breastfeeding and the development of cognitive abilities in childhood. In particular, at least some evidence exists suggesting that ...breastfed children perform better on measures of intelligence later in life. Although a correlation appears to be present, fewer observational studies have included appropriate adjustment for potentially confounding variables; maternal intelligence, maternal education, and cognitive stimulation provided by mothers being chief among them. As a result, we analyze a national sample of approximately 790 American respondents to test the association between breastfeeding and intelligence during childhood and adolescence using multiple intelligence tests and controlling for a range of key covariates. Our results suggest that the correlation between breastfeeding throughout the first six months of life and intelligence is statistically significant and consistent, yet of substantively minor impact.
Recent scholarship has focused on the role of social status in peer groups to explain the fact that delinquency is disproportionately committed during adolescence. Yet, the precise mechanism linking ...adolescence, social status, and antisocial behavior is not well understood. Dual-taxonomy postulates a testable mechanism that links the sudden increase in risky behavior among adolescents to the social magnetism of a small group of persistently antisocial individuals, referred to here as the “role magnet” hypothesis. Using semi-parametric group-based trajectory modeling and growth-curve modeling, this study provides the first test of this hypothesis by examining physical violence and popularity trajectories for 1,845 male respondents age 11–32 from a nationally representative sample (54 % non-Hispanic White; 21 % non-Hispanic African American; 17 % Hispanic; 8 % Asian). Individuals assigned to a “chronic violence” trajectory group showed consistently lower average levels of popularity from 11 to 19. But, these same individuals experienced increases in popularity during early adolescence and subsequent declines in late adolescence. These findings are linked to current research examining social status as a mechanism generating antisocial behavior during adolescence and the consequences of delayed entry into adult roles.
Self-control theory (Gottfredson and Hirschi 1990) argues that individuals with similar attributes tend to 'end up together' (i.e., homophily) because of the tendency to select friends based on ...self-control. Studies documenting homophily in peer groups interpret the correlation between self-control, peer delinquency, and self-reported delinquency as evidence that self-control is an influential factor in friendship formation. However, past studies are limited because they do not directly test the hypothesis that self-control influences friendship selection, nor do they account for other mechanisms that may influence decisions. As a result, it is unclear whether the correlation between individual and peer behavior is the result of selection based on self-control or alternative mechanisms. To address this gap in the literature this study employs exponential random graph modeling to test hypotheses derived from self-control theory using approximately 63,000 respondents from 59 schools from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health). In contrast to the predictions made by Gottfredson and Hirschi (1990), and the conclusions drawn from prior research, there is little evidence that self-control influences friendship selection. The findings are embedded in past work on the relationship between self-control and peer relationships, and implications for future research are discussed.
What does it mean to say that a prison has a “culture?” Scholars have long emphasized the presence of a “prison code” and, more recently, a “racial code” as salient cultural domains in men's prisons. ...Yet, even though most people intuitively understand what is meant by “prison culture,” little progress has been made regarding the conceptualization and operationalization of culture as an analytical construct in prison scholarship. The current study makes two primary contributions to this literature. First, drawing on advances in anthropology, cultural sociology, and cognitive science, we incorporate the concept of cultural schema to provide a concrete analytical construct. Second, we test varying conceptualizations of cultural schema as either characterized by consensus or as overlapping relational structures. Using cultural consensus and correlational class analyses among a sample of 266 incarcerated men, we find little evidence of a culture of consensus for either the prison code or the racial code. Furthermore, we show evidence of heterogenous schema among these cultural domains. Our study is relevant to wider disciplinary work on culture as the problem of analytical precision we address is characteristic of much of the work in criminology and criminal justice that evokes culture as an explanatory device.
PDF
