John Heeren

Gendered Justice: Domestic Homicide and the Death Penalty

This research examines a newspaper sample of men and women who killed multiple people in a single domestic altercation during the years 1993 to 2002. As all these perpetrators of multiple domestic homicide are eligible to be capitally tried, differences in capital sentencing are examined using bivariate statistics and descriptive, case-oriented analyses. Women who kill their children using a knife or firearm are disproportionately sentenced to death, whereas men who kill in the context of a separation are granted leniency in regard to the death penalty. The interaction between the gender of the offender and the crime committed is discussed.

Mass media and delinquency prevention: The case of “scared straight”

This paper focuses on the Oscar winning television documentary “Scared Straight.” This documentary describes the Juvenile Awareness Project (JAP) at Rahway State Prison in New Jersey, which attempts to deter juvenile delinquency by briefly exposing young offenders to the harsh realities of prison life. The paper analyzes the possible reasons for the popularity of this show and the JAP. It is suggested that factors such as the public perception of increasing crime rates, declining support for rehabilitation, and a dramatic promise of a new, synthetic solution for delinquency were among the major reasons for the success of the television documentary.

Talk about visions: Spiritual readings as deviant work

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the linguistic and interactional features of the work done by practitioners of a deviant occupation, spiritual reading. Based on 42 transcriptions of such readings, we uncover the common elements of grammatical form and propositfonal content and the way readers use setting, self, and talk to make their visionary utterances more forceful. The successful accomplishment of a reading typically requires that the client be an active participant and that reader and client share a “common religion.”