criminology

New & Noteworthy

• Murder at Home, Police Violence at Work by Sara Kadoura details a new study that reveals how homicide in white police officers’ neighborhoods impacts their use of force on the job. {2 min read}
• Market Transition and Materialism in China by Tianhe Chen covers new research showing how economic reform reshaped Chinese cultural values. {2 min read}
• In An Update from TSP in the Twin Cities, TSP’s editors give some initial reflections and updates regarding ICE presence in Minnesota. {3 min read}
• Check out our Media Report by Mallory Harrington for recent news featuring social science experts. Last week, Nicole Bedera on how ICE Watch can de-escalate violence; Matthew Marr on a Florida state-required sociology textbook; Cynthia Miller-Idriss on violence and masculinity; and Tressie McMillan Cottom on how to fight political exhaustion. {2 min read}

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Council on Contemporary Families

• Alicia M. Walker talked to Nina Bandelj about her new book, Overinvested: The Emotional Economy of Modern Parenting for CCF’s “3Qs” series. {7 min read}
• Also for CCF’s “3Qs” series, Alicia M. Walker talked to Fatima Suarez about her new book, Latino Fathers: What Shapes and Sustains Their Parenting. {7 min read}
• In January, CCF reprinted research by Raquel Delerme on the costs of mothers’ care work for their incarcerated adult children. The study was published last year in Gender & Society. {4 min read}
• At the beginning of the year, a CCF brief by Jean Choi, Sae Hwang Han, Yee To Ng, and Elizabeth Muñoz detailed their findings on how neighborhood cohesion shapes cognitive health. Their study was previously published in The Journals of Gerontology. {5 min read}

First Publics

• This week, First Publics reposted a piece from Victor Ray that contextualizes ICE’s occupation of Minnesota. {7 min read}
• In Teaching Methods in Times of Crisis, the First Publics board recounted takeaways from a webinar with sociologists Steve McKay, Patricia Richards, and Naomi Sugie. The professors answered questions about how, and why, to teach research methods in abnormal times. {8 min read}

Give Theory a Chance [podcast]

• In this episode, Chris Conner joins host Kyle Green to discuss Conner’s research on the electronic music scene and gay dating apps. {43 min listen}

Backstage with TSP

• TSP is easing back into regularly scheduled programming while our board continues to manage stressors related to federal presence in the Twin Cities. Thank you for bearing with us as we navigate new developments.
• Anastasia Dulle is our newly minted Graduate Editor. She joins Doug and Chris leading TSP operations.
• The alliteration is back! The “TSP Friday Roundup” is rebranding as “TSP Tuesdays” to accommodate board members’ schedules this semester.
• Anastasia will work with board member Sara Kadoura to bring you the latest from TSP and our partners every week.

New & Noteworthy

• Domestic Violence Doesn’t Have Just One Exit by Jacob Otis highlights the diverse ways victims resist abuse, from research by Lynette Renner, Carolyn Hartley and Knute Carter, published in the Journal of Family Violence. {2 min read}
• In the latest episode of Sociology in the News, TSP board members Jordyn Wald and Mallory Harrington discuss Emine Fidan Elcioglu’s recent article in The Conversation on how YouTube shapes young adults’ political identities. {5 min listen}
• Check out our Media Report by Mallory Harrington for recent news featuring social scientists. This week, Elizabeth Chiarello on pharmacists as “medical gatekeepers”; Patrick Sheehan on “hype” culture in Silicon Valley; Nancy Berns on flag burning; and Abigail Coplin on American-Chinese research collaboration. Plus, a new book by Charles Derber on societies’ self-imposed breakdowns. {3 min read}

From the Archives

• The “No Kings” movement is galvanizing Americans to protest in the streets, including some who attend in inflatable costumes like frogs, dinosaurs and unicorns. This piece from 2024 covers some sociology behind humor in politics. {6 min read}
• Republican-led states are adjusting SNAP benefits to restrict junk food, in line with the Trump administration’s Make America Healthy Again campaign. Some experts say the restrictions will have little to no impact on children’s health outcomes. Check out our 2018 article that considers Why Poor Parents Say “Yes” to Junk Food. {2 min read}

More from our Partners & Community Pages

Contexts

• In a Letter from the Editors, Contexts’ Seth Abrutyn and Amin Ghaziani offer an overview of the Summer 2025 magazine issue. They hope that pieces centering positivity will bring light to our ever-darker afternoons. {3 min read}

Council on Contemporary Families

• With teens’ growing access to high-potency cannabis products, Jamie Seabrook outlines his research on a little-known condition linked to frequent and prolonged usage in Cannabis and Vomiting: What Every Parent, Youth, and Doctor Should Know. {4 min read}

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This week on The Society Pages, we tackled drug addiction and harm reduction, body image and stigma, Twitter as a public forum for shaming, marriage equality and health, and the thin line between The Bachelor‘s Juan Pablo and Duck Dynasty‘s Phil Robertson. Plus much more (as always)!

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Criminologists Al Blumstein and Kiminori Nakamura offer a powerful New York Times op-ed this week, arguing that “stale criminal records” should expire when they can no longer distinguish criminals from non-criminals.

But this isn’t just a couple of bleeding heart academics advocating on behalf of a stigmatized group—there’s a solid research foundation supporting the argument. Several smart and creative studies have now followed people arrested or convicted of crimes to watch how long it takes before a criminal’s risk of a new offense drops to the point that it is indistinguishable from those with no record of past crimes.

Several teams of social scientists have designed really elegant studies to answer this important question. Most use some variant of event history or survival analysis—a semi-fancy but straightforward set of statistical tools. Based on their own research, Blumstein and Nakamura now conservatively estimate the “redemption time” at 10 to 13 years. Megan Kurlychek, Bobby Brame, and Shawn Bushway came up with about a 6-year window using somewhat different data and methodology in 2006.

While the specific “time-to-no-crime” varies across studies, the best evidence is now calling into question standard “lifetime” bans on employment, voting, and other rights and privileges. This doesn’t mean that the laws will be changed or even that they should be changed. But it does show how good social science can challenge old assumptions and inject much-needed evidence into public debates. And, for those of us who like to put our semi-fancy statistics to good purpose, the op-ed and the research beneath it offer a fine example of public scholarship.

I’m always impressed with teachers who blend established knowledge with shifting social currents, bringing it together in ways that students can understand and appreciate. My pubcrim colleague Michelle Inderbitzin seems to do this every year in her classes at both Oregon State University and Oregon State Penitentiary.

This fall, her Inside-Out Prison Exchange students combined a social fact (that 1 of every 100 American adults is incarcerated) with a new social movement (the We are the 99 Percent cry of the Occupy movement) , photographing prisoners and the people around them holding signs that shared their stories. The result is We are the 1 in 100, a class project and tumblr site that shows an important side of the American incarceration story.

 As a professor who works and teaches in this area, I rarely come across materials that render the lived everyday reality of prisons in such a clear, human, and intimate way. You can read Michelle’s account on pubcrim or visit and add to the archive with your own photos and stories. It takes courage and trust — and an impressive amount of  work, in a 10-week class — to bring these private moments and messages to light.