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bernard harcourt’s times op-ed

Chris Uggen on January 16, 2007

bernard harcourt, my gracious host on a recent visit to chicago law, offered a provocative op-ed in the times this week. shouldn’t sociological criminologists be able to offer some explanation for the figure at left, showing the aggregate rate of institutionalization for prisons and mental hospitals? in my opinion, the questions posed by professor harcourt might also make for some outstanding dissertations:

Why did we diagnose deviance in such radically different ways over the course of the 20th century? Do we need to be imprisoning at such high rates, or were we right, 50 years ago, to hospitalize instead? Why were so many women hospitalized? Why have they been replaced by young black men? Have both prisons and mental hospitals included large numbers of unnecessarily incarcerated individuals?

juvenile delinquency starts now

Chris Uggen on January 15, 2007

i’m welcoming 80 new juvenile delinquency students on tuesday. having taught some variant of the course since ’93, i’ve got lots of delinquency alums in the community — as social workers, officers, lawyers, and even sociology professors. cooler still, two former delinquency student just got engaged to one another. will this semester’s students find love and fulfilling careers? i’m not sayin’, i’m just sayin’…

stigma, rehabilitation, and change

Michelle Inderbitzin on January 15, 2007

chris and i have both posted on this blog about the demonization of sex offenders (as a side note: in the reincarnation of pubcrim II, he’s now shown as the author on some of the things i’ve written — he’s too polite to say, but i suspect he may cringe at some of my opinions which are now attributed to him). yesterday’s “modern love” column in the new york times offered an interesting glimpse into a side of accused sex offenders that we rarely consider.

ashley cross, the author of the essay “i fell for a man who wore an electronic ankle bracelet,” dated a young man accused of raping a friend at college. she describes him and his version of the event:

Almost all of his close friends were girls. From what I knew, he had a strong relationship with his parents, who were progressive and intelligent and nurturing. He was a rule follower, a brilliant and dedicated student, a chronic people pleaser. He had a history of serial monogamy. I simply couldn’t reconcile the smart, gentle guy I knew with this startling revelation.

As I peppered him with questions, he talked me through the fateful night of only a few months before, when he and the girl, who’d been a friend, had mingled at a party and drifted off drunk together before winding up back in her room, where, several hours later, they had sex. She became hysterical, claiming he forced himself on her. He left, bewildered and distraught. That night he wrote her a letter apologizing for upsetting her and left it at her door. He told me the letter was an attempt to salvage the friendship.

“Did you rape her?” I asked.

“We had sex,” he said. “But I didn’t mean to hurt her, no.”

he accepted a plea bargain and was sentenced to 18 months of house arrest and required sexual offender rehabilitation. ms. cross describes how the stigma of his sex offender label and his efforts at “rehabilitation” changed him:

Already he felt the shame of the charge and conviction. With the sexual evaluations, he was forced to question the normalcy of his impulses. Now the rehabilitation extinguished the remaining spark he had left, the irreverence I’d originally fallen in love with, replacing it with a generic “respect” for others that in reality was a kind of bland and suffocating politeness…

Yet what alarmed me was not some sinister side of him I never saw but a passivity and retreat that I saw far too much of. In the end, I found it harder to love an emasculated boyfriend than one accused of rape…

But I’ll always regret what might have been. His ordeal will always haunt me. In my mind, he was not seeking to humiliate and subjugate a woman on that night many years ago. I believe he was a boy who endeavored for hours in the dark to express his drunken, fumbling desire in a way that, fair or not, ended up unraveling his life. I wish he had found me first.

i’ve noticed that my inside students talk about “when they fell” or the one mistake that sent them to prison. they know they have changed while serving time, but they are not yet sure how. while none of them are sex offenders, they know the stigma of being an ex-felon will follow them out of the prison’s gates. we should remember, too, it may be equally difficult for their loved ones to adapt to the changed men that return home.

wanna get tased?

Chris Uggen on January 10, 2007

have you caught the recent press regarding the taser c2, the new consumer taser that comes in pink? i supervised a graduate research partnership with jesse wozniak this summer, in which he attended a taser convention in las vegas and wrote an electrifying paper on policing, masculinity, and tasers.

mr. wozniak will be presenting the shocking results (sorry woz, couldn’t resist) at our department workshop this tuesday at 4 in 1114 social sciences. there is absolutely no truth to the rumor that his new advisor will be tased during the presentation. here’s the ‘stract:

Real Men Use Non-Lethals: Masculinity and the Framing of Police Weaponry

This presentation centers on an examination of masculinity formation in the police subculture. Using first-hand ethnographic accounts of a major non-lethal weapons manufacturer’s annual sales and educational conference, I explore how the introduction of “less-masculine” weapons are marketed to coalesce with the hypermasculine police subculture. Connell’s (1995) theories of masculinity are tested to understand how such a tightly-defined subculture absorbs such challenges to its core values and re-imagines itself to keep those core values intact.

nij and employment programs

Chris Uggen on January 9, 2007

i’m just back from a national institute of Justice conference in dee cee. the orienting question was what have we learned from longitudinal research? and, parenthetically, was it worth it?

my talk reviewed research on employment and crime. i learned much, but the highlight was a discussion with reynaldo decerega, a new youth development specialist at the department of labor. he described programs designed to place young people with records into high-growth industries. i’ve long lamented that job training in juvenile facilities seem to be preparing delinquent youth for the job market of the 1940s. it is sad to see kids working hard to learn, say, typesetting on ancient printing presses — especially when almost everybody on the outside has been setting type on a pc since the 1980s.

mr. decerega offered a few examples of jobs in high-growth industries that would suit young offenders. in particular, he cited a program that moved a former drug dealer into a successful career in cell phone sales and services. hmm. such work takes advantage of an existing skill set and, presumably, cell phones will be around for a few more years. i’m just glad to see some thoughtful attention to the “what kind of training might lead to actual jobs” labor demand question, as well as the “instilling human capital into delinquent youth” labor supply question.

soc of deviance in the real world?

Chris Uggen on January 3, 2007

my biggest fear as an instructor — the one that summons the late-night howling fantods — is that i will somehow manage to teach students nothing they can take beyond the classroom. i confronted this fear directly last month at the conclusion of my sociology of deviance class. as a two-point bonus question on my final exam, i asked students for a specific example showing how they used course materials outside of my class during the semester.

i teach from two competing logics in the course. first, i try to give them a durkheimian sociological realism, emphasizing social facts and the methods we use to obtain them. second, i employ a constructionist emphasis on labels, power, rulemaking, and careers in deviance. it was cool to see students employ both logics in their answers:

“My boyfriend is in prison and I am constantly asking him about things I learned in class, such as excuses and justifications of rapists, how prison culture convinces people to re-offend, stigmas of certain inmates such as child molesters, intense homophobia in the inmate population, etc. I have used course materials to sociologically analyze his ‘deviance’ and how he will manage the stigma and escape the deviant label once his is reintegrated into society.”

“I constantly seem to be having discussion about gay marriage and the current raging debate. On a society level, I believe that GLBT lifestyles are seen as deviant, but I think that we are starting to see a definite stratification of acceptance based on generation. In these discussions, I always try to show people the construction of deviance, and how any group can decide that an action is deviant, but that deviance and deviant label actions change over time.”

“We watched ‘The Woodsmen’ around the same time we were studying sexual variants and abuse in Abnormal Psychology. I am a Psych major so it’s always interesting look[ing] at the same behavior at the individual level psychologically and then in the larger social context, sociologically.”

“My boyfriend was flipping through one of my Cosmopolitan magazines one day when he saw an article about the dangers of men in groups. He didn’t really get it, and I explained about how I just read about how guys in frats will sometimes use alcohol as a weapon and cover up any wrong doing through ‘brotherhood.’ I told him about the Martin and Hummer reading and group-level processes.”

“I would say the biggest thing I took away was sharing my deviant identity paper with my family.”

“I am currently taking social statistics as well, and that class is all about statistical relationships. When we discussed correlates, not as a cause, but as a statistically significant relationship, I could relate the two classes together.”

“This class has provided me with endless conversation at the bar and with my friends. Specifically, we discussed the topics of moral panics and drug scares over a few brews just last weekend. I feel I’ve learned a lot in this class and can ‘hold my own’ in a debate that’s relevant now. Thanks!”

“Just this morning I was telling my partner I was surprised that the 1914 Harrison Act of scheduling drug categories occurred that early. He was amazed too.”

“As a bartender, I witnessed many of this semester’s themes first hand. Saw Hirschi’s theory of self control and alcoholism intersect. I saw the negative stigma associated with alcoholism in full affect and its effect on jobs. I also witnessed techniques of neutralization and vocabularies of motive contribute to deviance in many sphere of social life. These theories helped me identify problems with others and problems with myself.”

“At the Juvenile Detention Center I talked to a young man about what it meant to him to be called juvenile sexual perpetrator. We had a long conversation about his experiences in the JDC with staff because of his crime (rape). He felt that women staff wouldn’t talk to him and only saw him as his crime (master status). I asked him what that label meant to him.”

“I used this material outside of class with regard to my good deeds paper. Even after I turned in my paper, I still tried to do acts of kindness. I attempt to give money to homeless when before I hadn’t.”

“I used the knowledge on suicide in discussion with coworkers to tell them who killed themselves the most, what countries and to bust the myth about how people think suicide rates go up around the holidays”

“I used Merton’s anomie theory to try to justify my piracy of movies on the internet. I told my mom that our society has placed universal goals that we should live in comfort. I also told her that certain people are not advantaged, so they resort to crime to achieve such goals. I said that I am a broke college student so I am considered to be disadvantaged. She still said I was wrong, but she watched the movies with me anyways.”

“I have actually used course material from this great course numerous times in speaking about people that like to dig up ‘hot’ corpses, to asphyxiation, to labeling theory, as in at work as we detained a young man screaming, ‘I’m a down ass gangsta.’ I remarked how he had labeled himself as such from differential association and his subculture.”

“My husband and I always debate theories regarding entry into drug dealing (he went ‘away’ for four years for cocaine dealing) and I’d tell him about your research on ex-cons and voting. “

“Applying the movie ‘Fight Club’ to a talk with a female friend, I was able to convince her that males were running out of all male masculinity spheres of behavior through which we can interact solely with other males, with the inclusion of women into the work force and equality of positions of authority, male dominance in the social are under attack. Femininity is leaking into masculinity diluting male championed ideals, leaving them frustrated with no avenues of self expression is the modern world. For Merton, males experience strain with the rational and the feminine.”

“I was having a debate with a friend about how prevalent the GLB commentary is in the U.S. She stated the statistic, ‘1 in 3 people are in the GLB community.’ I stated the NHSL survey and the statistics about how low the reporting actually is. We contributed the reporting to either harassment of just a fear of ‘outing’ themselves.”

“Oddly enough, I talk about this class a lot with friends, and when eating with my family. The most recent tie I made with class and discussions was with my girlfriend. She is at the U of M with a rowing scholarship and is from Lithuania. We talked both about women’s sports and the high suicide rates in her country. She was able to give me insight into both areas.”

“Just last night I was talking to my friend about deviance in terms of careers or a process. I explained mostly about drug trafficking and how its exit can be difficult. We talked about the movie, ‘Blow,’ referring to entertainment as a common ground we could both relate to. ”

“I actually use the terms often at work as a mall security guard. For example, last week I was trying to explain why a few kids couldn’t throw things at each other. I remember telling them that [they] couldn’t throw things at other people. They said there were no rules against it. So I told them their actions are deviant and they are violating the norms of the mall. They honestly had no clue what I meant, but at least they couldn’t keep arguing with me and felt like I outsmarted them.”

“When my sister discovered I was taking a class titled, ‘Deviant Behavior,’ she immediately responded, ‘I’m not deviant!’ I immediately corrected her telling her we are all deviants in some way. Deviance, I told her, is a violation of social norms and anytime she or I violated any norm we are deviants … the overall point is we all are, have been, and will continue to be deviants even if it is as simple as bringing a caffeinated soda into church (a Mormon church) as my sister has done.”

“I volunteer at Ramsey County Jail with the women, and help lead a chemical dependency relapse prevention class. I took a lot from this class and applied it to my work there. For instance, many are in for prostitution and it was very helpful for me to view them as victims/survivors of domestic abuse.”

“In a discussion about if viewing porn is o.k. for boyfriends/girlfriends in a relationship, I was able to talk about statistics of male/female[s] who view it, and how changing norms or sex are on the rise. Ex: more premarital sex and how it’s not as deviant.”

“Near the beginning of the semester I was discussing (or explaining) the labeling theory to my friend. We likened it to the label of him by his friends as an alcoholic/party animal. This label, we discussed, reinforces and encouraged his behavior as such, and even though he has acquired a lifestyle slightly less extreme, he is often enticed and/or expected by them to live up to (or down to depending how you look at it) that standard of behavior.”

“I used several statistics from this class like the Devah Pager study on race and employment as a ‘staggering sociological statistic,’ opener for my students in the lab section of SOC1001 I T.A.ed this fall.”

“What I took from this course the labeling theory that I was able to explain to my parents. You see, the Hmong community lives on reputation and labeling is very common. I sat down and had a conversation, relating to my brother’s deviant actions, about how labeling a person will actually enforce him/her to do more deviant acts. Instead, encourage the person to get out of those deviant acts and do good.”

“I avidly participate in local police ride-alongs and I brought up the topic of labeling theory to an officer. Ummmm yeah didn’t go over very well, he is a racist-XXXX and basically said that just because you ‘step in your own XXXX doesn’t give you an excuse to wipe it off on society’s doormat.’ No really, he said it! Needless to say the conversation was a hostile one and I hope he changes professions.”

“Last weekend I had a discussion with my friends about binge drinking. I told them that binge drinking was defined as 5 or more drinks in one occasion. They thought this was a very low number and I told them that [this] was because they were binge drinkers. If they thought they had enough alcohol after 2 drinks, then they would consider 5 to be binge drinking. However, since 5 drinks is a norm, we would say that 10 drinks in one occasion was binge drinking.”

“This morning actually, my brother’s girlfriend was talking about a girl who committed suicide. I asked how, and came to find out that she tried overdosing a couple times before she ended up strangling herself. I told my brother’s girlfriend that girls usually attempt more suicides than complete them because of what they do. Males complete more of suicides because of the majority of them using firearms.”

i was a bit surprised by the diversity in the responses. students didn’t simply parrot back my pet concepts or findings, but seemed to employ some course materials when situations presented themselves in their other classes, their jobs, or socializing with families or friends. i’ll definitely use such a question again.

steve sack and a pretty-much-free press

Chris Uggen on December 31, 2006

my favorite year in review stories are those showcasing the local paper’s political cartoonist. maybe that’s because the best cartoons always strike me as inherently sociological — putting big concepts into play around a particular case. as today’s story makes clear, my minneapolis strib is fortunate indeed to get regular images from steve sack.

op-eds are great, of course, but there’s a magical whoa! moment when a fine cartoonist nails a complex set of ideas in a single image. the conceptual weight of such pictures can make the accompanying editorial seem ridiculously oversimplified by comparison. would a windy sociological essay on the meaning of civilization and its incompatibility with torture pack the same punch as the cartoon above?

i treasure my daily encounters with such powerful material over strong coffee and wheaties. too often, i suppose, we take these first amendment moments for granted. as cartoonists found themselves at the center of intense religious conflict this year, i was glad to see that few seemed to shrink from the controversy. if you agree, you might browse daryl cagle‘s rich archive of political cartoons, including many by mr. sack. did any cartoons move you this year?

Justice talking

Chris Uggen on December 27, 2006

i just heard my october interview on npr’s Justice talking show about felon voting. for some chair/meeting-related reason, i had to run to the kfai studios that day, so i arrived winded and overcaffeinated in the midst of a pledge drive (hint: diet coke is a no-no before on-air interviews).

i liked the show and its host, margot adler, so i’m disappointed that the program isn’t carried locally. they asked me for a quick “big-picture overview” on felon disenfranchisement, which is fine with me. my bit preceded a more intense debate between spencer overton and john lott on the subject. i really dislike debating, so i usually decline invitations to argue for or against policy changes. part of this is due to my self-concept as a social scientist, but part of it is because i’m a ridiculously conciliatory debater (yeah, i can sort of see your point there, mr. rumsfeld. are we almost done here?). i’m probably not alone — many of us are probably more at home doing the “current state of knowledge” segment rather than the “what is to be done?” portion of such programs.

c-love

Chris Uggen on December 12, 2006

courtney love has successfully completed rehab and probation and is now officially off-paper. judge rand rubin terminated ms. love’s probation early when she finished a substance abuse treatment program. according to reuters, ms. love entered guilty pleas in 2004 and 2005 to some [silly] drug charges and pleaded no contest to [scary] assault charges in 2005:

Love was accused of dousing King with a bottle of Johnnie Walker Red Label scotch, throwing a lit candle at her head and pinching her breast. The attack came after Love found King sleeping on a couch at the home of Love’s ex-boyfriend.

of course, this is no isolated incident. ms. love has had more than her share of legal problems over the years: juvenile and adult, criminal and civil, property and violent, trumped-up and let-off-easy. maybe i’ve got a soft spot for 42-year-olds named c-love, but i’m hoping this was her last pass through the criminal Justice system.

mayor coleman bans the box in st. paul

Chris Uggen on December 7, 2006

the pioneer press reports today that the city of st. paul will no longer require jobseekers to state on their applications whether they have ever been convicted of a crime. cities such as boston have already implemented this sort of pro-reintegration policy, but it remains a gutsy move by mayor chris coleman. background checks will continue to be conducted for positions involving direct contact with children, law enforcement, and positions of financial trust.