SOCIOLOGY 587 SPECIAL TOPICS IN DEVIANCE AND SOCIAL CONTROL:

RECENT ISSUES IN CRIMINOLOGY

 

Fall 2019

Professor Ross L. Matsueda

 

COURSE DESCRIPTION:

 

This seminar will cover recent theories of crime and deviance.  It will focus on a mix of classical and contemporary criminological theories that have generated productive empirical research.  We will emphasize operationalizing theories and examining them empirically, using quantitative data, qualitative data, or a mix of each.  An important objective of the course is to introduce students to significant theoretical problems that can be addressed empirically, and introduce some key methodological issues.  There are no formal prerequisites for the course, but it is recommended that students have exposure to a basic criminology course and basic methods (including research design and multiple regression analysis).

 

COURSE OBJECTIVES:

 

·         In this seminar I will try to expose you to theories of crime and deviance that have generated empirical research programs.  In a ten-week course, we obviously can only touch on a small number of topics, and I have tried to identify lines of research in the study of crime and deviance that are recent, important, and productive.

 

·         A main objective of the seminar is to help you to evaluate contemporary criminological theories and assess empirical research on theory.  I will help you navigate empirical research conducted by some of the best scholars in criminology by discussing both formal and informal standards of the field.  

 

·         The seminar is also designed to help you develop your own style of research.  One of the best ways of doing so is to examine the styles of top researchers.  What kinds of questions do they address?  How sociological are they?  How do they operationalize theoretical concepts?  What data and methods do they use?  What conclusions do they draw?

 

·         This seminar, like other graduate seminars, will also help you make the transition from student to independent researcher/scholar. This includes professional socialization into the ways of academia, as well as tips on specific tasks of academicians, such as preparing talks and power point slides, reviewing articles for journals, interpreting journal reviews, editor letters, and funding agency reviews, responding to such reviews, and writing letters of recommendation for others.

 

 

Website                            http://faculty.washington.edu/matsueda/courses/587/web587.htm

 

Syllabus                           Course Syllabus

 

Time & Location              Tuesday 4:30-6:20pm in 409 Savery Hall

 

Instructor                         Ross L. Matsueda matsueda@uw.edu      

 

Office Hours                    227 Savery Hall, Thursday 3-4pm and by appointment

 

Readings

Week 2  Rational Choice and Deterrence

 

*Pogarsky, Greg, Sean Patrick Roche, and Justin T. Pickett. 2018. “Criminology Offender Decision-Making in Criminology: Contributions from Behavioral Economics.” Annual Review of Criminology 1:379-400.

    

*Matsueda, Ross L. 2013. “Rational Choice Research in Criminology:  A Multi-Level Framework.”  Pp. 283-321 in The Handbook of Rational Choice Social Research.  Edited by R. Wittek, T.A.B. Snijders, and V. Nee.  Stanford, CA:  Stanford University Press.

 

*Loughran Thomas A., Raymond Paternoster, Aaron Chalfin A, Theodore Wilson. 2016. “Can Rational Choice be Considered a General Theory Of Crime? Evidence from Individual-Level Panel Data”. Criminology 54:86–112.

 

*Nagin, Daniel S., Robert M. Solow, and Cynthia Lum. 2015. Deterrence, Criminal Opportunities, and Police.  Criminology 53:74-100.

 

Matsueda, Ross L., Derek A. Kreager, and David Huizinga.  2006. “Deterring Delinquents:  A Rational Choice Model of Theft and Violence.”  American Sociological Review 71:95-122.

 

Week 3  Analytical Criminology:  A Recent Proposal

 

*Matsueda, Ross L. 2017. “The 2016 Sutherland Address: ‘Toward an Analytical Criminology: The Micro-Macro Problem, Causal Mechanisms, and Public Policy.’” Criminology 55:493-519.

 

*Opp, Karl-Dieter. 2019. Analytical Criminology:  Integrating Explanations of Crime and Deviant Behavior.  Book Manuscript, First Draft.  To be published with Routledge in 2020.  Chapters 1-9 (pp. 1-231).

 

 

Week 4  Criminal Opportunities, Routine Activities, and Broken Windows

 

*Cohen, Lawrence & Marcus Felson. 1979. Social Change and Crime Rate Trends: A Routine Activity Approach. American Sociological Review 44 (4): 588-608.

 

*James Q.,and George L. Kelling. 1982. "Broken windows." Atlantic Monthly 249 (3): 29-38.

 

*Wilcox, Pamela, Kenneth C. Land, and Scott A. Hunt. 2003. Criminal Circumstance:  A Dynamic Multiconextual Criminal Opportunity Theory. Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter.  Chapter 2, pp. 21-43.

 

Osgood, D. Wayne, Janet K. Wilson, Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerald G. Bachman & Lloyd D. Johnson. 1996. Routine Activities and Individual Deviant Behavior. American Sociological Review 61 (4): 635-55.

 

 

Week 5  Work on Paper Proposals

 

*Structuring a Conventional Empirical Social Science Article

 

 

Week 6  Life Course and Crime

 

*Sampson, Robert J., and John H. Laub. 1990. "Crime and Deviance over the Life Course:  The Salience of Adult Social Bonds."  American Sociological Review 55:609-27.

 

*Laub, John H., and Robert J. Sampson. 2006. Shared Beginnings, Divergent Lives:  Delinquent Boys to Age 70.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard., Chapters 3, 6, 7, 9 & 10.

 

*Giordano, Peggy C., Stephen A. Cernkovich, and Jennifer L. Rudolph. 2002. “Gender, Crime, and Desistance:  Toward a Theory of Cognitive Transformation.”  American Journal of Sociology 107:990-1064.

 

Moffitt, Terrie E. 1993. “Adolescent-Limited and Life-Course-Persistent Antisocial Behavior: A Developmental Taxonomy.” Psychological Review 100: 674-701.

 

 

Week 7  Race, Inner-City Crime, and Residential Segregation

 

*Sampson, Robert J., and William J. Wilson. 1994. "Race, Crime and Urban Inequality."  In Crime and Inequality.  Edited by J. Hagan and R. Peterson. Stanford:  Stanford University Press.

 

*Peterson, Ruth D., and Lauren J. Krivo. 2010. Divergent Social Worlds:  Neighborhood Crime and the Racial-Spatial Divide.  New York, NY: Russell Sage, Chapter 2 (pp. 12-49), Chapter 3 (pp. 50-70) and Chapter 4 (pp. 71-90).

 

*Quillian, Lincoln. 1999. “Migration Patterns and the Growth of High-Poverty Neighborhoods, 1970-1990” American Journal of Sociology 105:1-37.

 

Small, Mario Luis. 2002. “Culture, Cohorts, and Social Organization Theory: Understanding Local Participation in a Latino Housing Project” American Journal of Sociology 108:1-54.

 

 

Week 8  Social Disorganization, Collective Efficacy, and Social Capital

 

*Shaw, Clifford R., and Henry H. McKay. 1969 [1942].  Juvenile Delinquency and Urban Areas. Revised Edition.  Chapters 6 & 7.

 

*Sampson, Robert J., Stephen Raudenbush, and Felton Earls. 1997. Neighborhoods and Violent Crime: A Multilevel Study of Collective Efficacy. Science 277:918-24.

 

*Sampson, Robert J. 2011. Great American City:  Chicago and the Enduring Neighborhood Effect.  University of Chicago Press, Chapter 7, pp. 149-178-120.

 

St. Jean, Peter K. B. 2007.  Pockets of Crime.  Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, Chapters 2 (pp. 31-56) and 8 (pp. 195-226).

 

 

Week 9  Collateral Consequences of Incarceration

 

Kirk, David S., and Sara Wakefield. 2018. “Collateral Consequences of Punishment: A Critical Review and Path Forward.” Annual Review of Criminology 1:171–94.

 

Pettit, Becky and Bruce Western. 2004. “Mass Imprisonment and the Life Course: Race and Class Inequality in U.S. Incarceration.” American Sociological Review 69:151-69.

 

Pager, Devah. 2003. “Mark of a Criminal Record.”  American Journal of Sociology 108:937-75.

 

Uggen, Christopher and Jeff Manza. 2002. "Democratic Contraction? The Political Consequences of Felon Disenfranchisement in the United States." American Sociological Review 67:777-803.

 

 

Week 10  Code of the Street, Violence, and Gun Control

 

Anderson, Elijah. 1998. The Social Ecology of Youth Violence.  Crime and Justice: A Review of Research 24:65-104.

 

Jacobs, James B. 2002. “Conclusion: The “Problem Reconsidered.” Can Gun Control Work? New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 213-226.

 

Castillo-Carniglia A, et al. 2019. “California’s Comprehensive Background Check and Misdemeanor Violence Prohibition Policies and Firearm Mortality.” Annals of Epidemiology 30:50–56.

 

Luca, Michael, Deepak Malhotra, and Christopher Poliquin. 2017. “Handgun waiting periods reduce gun deaths.”  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 114 (46) 12162-12165.

 

Ludwig, Jens. 2017. “Reducing gun violence in America.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 114 (46) 12097-12099.

 

Ludwig Jens, Cook Phillip J. 2000.  “Homicide and suicide rates associated with implementation of the Brady Handgun Violence Prevention Act.” Journal of the American Medical Association 284:585–591.

 

 

Miscellaneous

Further Reading:

Nagin, Daniel S. 1998.  “Criminal Deterrence Research at the Outset of the Twenty-First Century.”  Pp. 1-42 in Crime and Justice: A Review of Research, Vol. 23, edited by Michael Tonry.  Chicago: University of Chicago.

 

McCarthy, Bill.  2002.  “New Economics of Sociological Criminology.”  Annual Review of Sociology 28:417-42.

 

Tonry, Michael. 2008. “Learning from the Limitations of Deterrence Research.” Crime and Justice 37:279-311

 

Sampson, Robert J. and Stephen W. Raudenbush. 1999. “Systematic Social Observation of Public Spaces: A New Look at Disorder in Urban Neighborhoods.” American Journal of Sociology 105(3): 603-651.

 

Lyons, Christopher. 2007. “Community (Dis)Organization and Racially Motivated Crime.”  American Journal of Sociology 113:815-63.

 

Kirk, David S., and Andrew V. Papachristos. 2011. “Cultural Mechanisms and the Persistence of Neighborhood Violence,”  American Journal of Sociology 116:1190-1233.

 

Pager, Devah, Bruce Western, and Bart Bonikowski. 2009. “Discrimination in a Low-Wage Labor Market: A Field Experiment.”  American Sociological Review 74: 777-99.

 

Krivo, Lauren J., and Ruth D. Peterson.  1996.  “Extremely Disadvantaged Neighborhoods and Urban Crime.”  Social Forces 75:619-48.

 

Wilson and Kelling. 1982. “Broken Windows:  The Police and Neighborhood Safety.”

 

Keizer, Kees, Siegwart Lindenberg, and Linda Steg. 2008. "The Spreading of Disorder." Science 322:1681-1685.

 

 

Seminar Paper

 

 

Memos                              Writing a précis

 

                                                     

                                                     

Other Materials

 

 

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