Christopher Uggen

Work as a turning point in the life course of criminals: A duration model of age, employment, and recidivism

crimes? Prior research is inconclusive because work effects have been biased by selectivity and obscured by the interaction of age and employment. This study yields more refined estimates by specifying event history models to analyze assignment to, eligibility for, and current participation in a national work experiment for criminal offenders. Age is found to interact with employment to affect the rate of self-reported recidivism: Those aged 27 or older are less likely to report crime and arrest when provided with marginal employment opportunities than when such opportunities are not provided. Among young participants, those in their teens and early twenties, the experimental job treatment had little effect on crime. Work thus appears to be a turning point for older, but not younger, offenders.

Democratic contraction? Political consequences of felon disenfranchisement in the United States

Universal suffrage is a cornerstone of democratic governance. As levels of criminal punishment have risen in the United States, however, an ever-larger number of citizens have lost the right to vote. The authors ask whether felon disenfranchisement constitutes a meaningful reversal of the extension of voting rights by considering its political impact. Data from legal sources, election studies, and inmate surveys are examined to consider two counterfactual conditions: (1) whether removing disenfranchisement restrictions alters the outcomes of past U.S. Senate and presidential elections, and (2) whether applying contemporary rates of disenfranchisement to prior elections affects their outcomes. Because felons are drawn disproportionately from the ranks of racial minorities and the poor, disenfranchisement laws tend to take more votes from Democratic than from Republican candidates. Analysis shows that felon disenfranchisement played a decisive role in U.S. Senate elections in recent years. Moreover, at least one Republican presidential victory would have been reversed if former felons had been allowed to vote, and at least one Democratic presidential victory would have been jeopardized had contemporary rates of disenfranchisement prevailed during that time.

Citizenship, Democracy, and the Civic Reintegration of Criminal Offenders

Convicted felons face both legal and informal barriers to becoming productive citizens at work, responsible citizens in family life, and active citizens in their communities. As criminal punishment has increased in the United States, collateral sanctions such as voting restrictions have taken on new meaning. The authors place such restrictions in comparative context and consider their effects on civil liberties, democratic institutions, and civic life more generally. Based on demographic life tables, the authors estimate that approximately 4 million former prisoners and 11.7 million former felons live and work among us every day. The authors describe historical changes in these groups; their effects on social institutions; and the extent to which they constitute a caste, class, or status group within American society. The authors conclude by discussing how reintegrative criminal justice practices might strengthen democracy while preserving, and perhaps enhancing, public safety.

Predictors of desistance among sex offenders: The interaction of formal and informal social controls

Increasing attention is being given to the issue of desistance or cessation in adult criminal careers. We contribute to this research by considering how informal and formal social controls affect recidivism among 556 sex offenders placed on probation in 1992. We conduct an event history analysis of reoffense, based on the predictions of Sampson and Laubs and Gottfredson and Hirschis control theories. We build on these perspectives by examining how informal social controls condition the effects of formal social controls generally and across offense types. We find less recidivism among offenders with stable job histories, particularly among those in court-ordered sex offender treatment. The results add both to theoretical formulations concerning desistance and recidivism and to policy formulations directed at growing prison populations.

Ex-Offenders and the Conformist Alternative: A Job Quality Model of Work and Crime

Criminologists from diverse theoretical perspectives have long asserted that the quality of employment is more strongly associated with criminal behavior than its presence or absence. By this argument, “good jobs” or “meaningful work” are necessary to induce offenders to desist from crime. This paper constructs a satisfaction-based measure of job quality using data from the National Supported Work Demonstration and the 1977 Quality of Employment Survey and tests whether employment in high quality jobs reduces the likelihood of criminal behavior among offenders. After statistical corrections for selection into employment, job quality is found to reduce the likelihood of economic and non-economic criminal behavior among a sample of released high-risk offenders. None of the most salient alternative explanations—sample selection, human capital accumulation, personal expectations, external labor market effects, or prior criminality—appear to diminish the job quality effect.

Ballot manipulation and the menace of negro domination: Racial threat and felon disenfranchisement in the United States, 1850-2002

Criminal offenders in the United States typically forfeit voting rights as a collateral consequence of their felony convictions. This article analyzes the origins and development of these state felon disenfranchisement provisions. Because these laws tend to dilute the voting strength of racial minorities, we build on theories of group threat to test whether racial threat influenced their passage. Many felon voting bans were passed in the late 1860s and 1870s, when implementation of the Fifteenth Amendment and its extension of voting rights to African‐Americans were ardently contested. We find that large nonwhite prison populations increase the odds of passing restrictive laws, and, further, that prison and state racial composition may be linked to the adoption of reenfranchisement reforms. These findings are important for understanding restrictions on the civil rights of citizens convicted of crime and, more generally, the role of racial conflict in American political development.

Sexual harassment as a gendered expression of power

Drawing on recent insights from the study of legal consciousness and gender relations, the authors test the generality of Catharine MacKinnons theory of the sexual harassment of adult women. Survey and interview data from the Youth Development Study and the General Social Survey are analyzed to identify a behavioral syndrome of sexual harassment for males and females during adolescence and young adulthood and to compare the syndrome against subjective reports of sexual harassment. A clear harassment syndrome is found for all age and sex groups and MacKinnons predictions about the influence of workplace power and gender relations are generally supported. Financially vulnerable men as well as women are most likely to experience harassing behaviors, and men pursuing more egalitarian gender relationships are most likely to identify such behaviors as sexual harassment. Nevertheless, adult women remain the most frequent targets of classic sexual harassment markers, such as unwanted touching and invasion of personal space.

Alcohol and Employment in the Transition to Adulthood

We elaborate the relationship between work hours and alcohol use during the transition from adolescence to adulthood. Both hours of employment and drinking may be products of weak bonds to school and family. Alternatively, work may exert an independent effect on alcohol use by exposing adolescents to opportunities and associates that facilitate drinking. Using longitudinal data from the Youth Development Study (YDS), we present static score regression models showing that long work hours increase levels of drinking during high school. These effects are mediated in large part by work-derived independence from parents, suggesting that a precocious transition to adult roles may be the mechanism connecting work hours and alcohol use. Work effects on drinking are short-lived, however, as adolescent hours of employment do not significantly influence alcohol use after high school.

The socioeconomic determinants of ill-gotten gains: Within-person changes in drug use and illegal earnings

Generalizing from the sociology of earnings attainment, we develop a conceptual model of social embeddedness in conventional and criminal activities to explain illegal earnings among criminal offenders. To isolate the effects of time‐varying factors such as legal earnings, drug use, and criminal opportunities, we use data from the National Supported Work Demonstration Project to estimate fixed‐effects models predicting month‐to‐month changes in illegal earnings. We find that criminal earnings are sensitive to embeddedness in conforming work and family relationships, criminal experience, and the perceived risks and rewards of crime. Moreover, heroin and cocaine use creates a strong earnings imperative that is difficult to satisfy in the low‐wage labor market, and offenders earn far more money illegally when they are using these drugs than during periods of abstinence.

Settling down and aging out: Toward an interactionist theory of desistance and the transition to adulthood

Conceptions of adulthood have changed dramatically in recent decades. Despite such changes, however, the notion that young people will eventually “settle down” and desist from delinquent behaviors is remarkably persistent. This article unites criminology with classic work on age norms and role behavior to contend that people who persist in delinquency will be less likely to make timely adult transitions. The empirical analysis supports this proposition, with both arrest and self‐reported crime blocking the passage to adult status. The authors conclude that desisting from delinquency is an important part of the package of role behaviors that define adulthood.