Alissa R. Ackerman

Child Sexual Abuse in the Catholic Church How Situational Crime Prevention Strategies Can Help Create Safe Environments

Research on child sexual abuse often focuses on offenders, particularly on explanations of the etiology and maintenance of their abusive behavior. A recent study by Smallbone and Wortley suggests, however, that research should also focus on the situation in which the sexual abuse occurs. This article employs the situational crime prevention (SCP) framework that they used to study child sexual abusers in Queensland to study patterns of abuse by Catholic priests. Results from the study on the nature and scope of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests support the assertions by Smallbone and Wortley that there is a situational component to sexually abusive behavior. The discussion outlines the steps taken by the Catholic Church as well as other SCP techniques that could be employed to create safe environments.

Research Trajectories of Female Scholars in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Other than through its ties to scholarship on the sociology of higher education, the topic of female scholar productivity appears to be timely in light of the gender transformation underway in criminology and criminal justice (e.g., the majority of CCJ graduate students are female, and the CCJ professorate will be majority female if admission patterns hold). Toward this end, the present study provides an examination of the employment patterns and publication trajectories of 88 female scholars who graduated between 1996 and 2006 from 18 North American doctoral programs in criminology and criminal justice. In addition, the study employs a subset of career concepts (frequency, specialization, seriousness, and co‐offending) to the publication records of a group of 20 graduates we call “academic stars” to more fully explicate trends and issues related to the dissemination of knowledge in leading academic journals. Findings suggest that research productivity varies depending on the measure utilized (e.g., type of outlet; standardized or unstandardized by time‐in‐profession; weighted or unweighted by coauthorship patterns). Different measures of central tendency provide different snapshots of institutional output. Publication frequencies are found to be greater among scholars employed at Carnegie high‐research‐intensity universities. Regarding research type‐mix, the stars tend to be more eclectic than specialized. Future directions for research are also discussed.