Katherine Irwin

Blueprints for Violence Prevention: From Research to Real-World Settings--Factors Influencing the Successful Replication of Model Programs

As science-based programs become more readily available to practitioners, the need for identifying and overcoming problems associated with the process of implementation becomes critical. A major goal of the Blueprints for Violence Prevention initiative has been to enhance the understanding of program implementation by studying the influence of human- and systems-level factors that challenge the successful implementation of programs. This article describes the results of a process evaluation focused on discovering common implementation obstacles faced by 42 sites implementing eight of the Blueprints programs. This evaluation revealed that most sites involved in the project faced many challenges when implementing in real-world settings. Using regression analyses to identify the most important of these factors, findings revealed that the quality of technical assistance, ideal program characteristics, consistent staffing, and community support were important influences on one or more measures of implementation success.

SUBJECTIVE CONSTRUCTIONS OF NEIGHBORHOOD BOUNDARIES: LESSONS FROM A QUALITATIVE STUDY OF FOUR NEIGHBORHOODS

ABSTRACT: This article explores the boundaries of neighborhoods as subjectively constructed by 37 adolescents and 33 parents across four census-defined block groups in a Western city. We examine the degree of consensus among participants on the spatial boundaries of their neighborhoods, the stability of participants’ subjectively constructed neighborhood definitions, and the overlap between subjectively constructed definitions and census block group and tract definitions. Through an analysis of qualitative interviews, we isolate four factors that appear to influence how participants define their neighborhood boundaries: physical and institutional characteristics of the neighborhood, its class, race, and ethnic composition, perceived criminal threats from within and outside the neighborhood, and symbolic neighborhood identities. These factors can operate to facilitate or compromise consensus and stability about neighborhood boundaries and identity. The study findings are exploratory but suggest several avenues for further investigation into how parents and adolescents construct neighborhood boundaries and the possible influences that subjective neighborhood definitions have on families.

SAINTS AND SINNERS: ELITE TATTOO COLLECTORS AND TATTOOISTS AS POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE DEVIANTS

Arguing that the deviance literature has presented an overly negative image of norm breaking, some researchers in the 1980s and 1990s began to argue for a category of positive deviance that included studies of individuals who exceed social norms (Ben-Yehuda 1990; Dodge 1985; Heckert 1989, 1997, 1998). The positive deviance perspective inspired several strong theoretical statements suggesting that deviance can only be conceptualized as a negative response to norm breaking (Best and Luckenbill 1982; Goode 1991; Sagarin 1985). The result is a schism between researchers studying positive deviants and those investigating negative deviants. This article looks at two groups within the most elite realm of tattooing, tattoo collectors and tattooists, and identifies how they use both positive and negative deviant attributes to maintain a privileged status on the fringe of society. By exploring an example of individuals who exceed and fall below social norms, I offer two new categories of positive deviance: high culture icon and popular celebrity. In addition, I examine how individuals who occupy both positive and negative deviant statuses challenge assumptions within normative and social response perspectives of deviants and point to larger processes of social change and social stability.

SALVAGING SELF : A GROUNDED THEORY OF PREGNANCY ON CRACK COCAINE

A grounded theory was developed to describe how pregnant crack cocaine users perceived their problems and responded to them. A basic social psychological process, salvaging self, was identified from constant comparative analysis of in-depth interviews with 60 pregnant or postpartum women who used crack cocaine an average of at least once per week in pregnancy. Salvaging self included two phases, facing the situation and evading harm. Participants evaluated the value, hope, and risk of various responses to pregnancy. Actions included strategies of harm reduction and stigma management aimed at reducing damage to the fetus, their identities as individuals and mothers, and the maternal-child relationship. Personal histories and social contexts influenced the salvaging process.

Policing girlhood?: Relational aggression and violence prevention

Relational, covert, and indirect aggression among girls has recently caught the attention of those interested in school violence prevention. In the name of being gender responsive, violence prevention or antibullying programs are being encouraged to include this form of aggression among the sorts of behaviors one seeks to prevent. The authors review the literature on relational aggression and suggest that the research to date does not necessarily support the notions that such aggression is the exclusive province of girls, that those who engage in it have other social problems, and most importantly, that it is equivalent to physical aggression, violence, or bullying. The authors argue, then, that scarce violence prevention resources should not be diverted to prevent this nonviolent behavior. Furthermore, the authors speculate that policing what is essentially noncriminal behavior simply encourages further and unnecessary control over girls and brings an increased number of girls into noncompliance with school rules and policies.

The Violence of Adolescent Life: Experiencing and Managing Everyday Threats

This article examines the experiences of 43 adolescents living in Denver, Colorado, from 1994 to 1996—the 2-year period following the peak of the youth violence epidemic. Where the dominant theories explaining inner-city violence tend to focus on disadvantaged communities, this study sampled youths from 5 neighborhoods with varying crime, poverty, family stability, and resident mobility rates. The findings demonstrate that, although most teens worried about the seemingly pervasive violence surrounding them, adolescents’ experiences with and attempts to manage violence differed dramatically. By identifying a range of violence management strategies used by individuals living in resource-poor and resource-rich neighborhoods, this study examines the way that everyday interactions within and across a variety of contexts may theoretically increase violence rates. The implications of these findings for violence research and prevention are also discussed.

Exploring the hypothesis of ethnic practice as social capital: violence among Asian/Pacific Islander youth in Hawaii.

Background: Studies of youth violence have usually examined social capital using qualitative methods, but remain limited by small sample sizes. In addition, few studies examine violence among Asian/Pacific Islander (API) youth, even though they are one of the fastest-growing youth populations in the USA. Aims: To contribute to a better understanding of culture and ethnicity in youth violence among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders by quantifying ethnic forms of social capital. Methods: We use an n = 326 sample of three API groups from Oahu, Hawaii. Defining social capital as ethnic practice, we test Filipino, Hawaiian and Samoan forms of youth social capital on intimate and non-intimate violence. Results: Bivariate findings associate lower violence with language ability among Filipinos, coming-of-age practices among Hawaiians, and community leader engagement among Samoans. Multivariate tests showed language to be the strongest correlation. Bivariate tests also suggested potentially risky forms of social capital. Conclusions: Results lead us to hypothesize that social capital that deliberately places individuals within their respective ethnic communities are risk-reducing, as are those that promote formal ethnic community structures. Those that formalize ethnic practice and social capital into commercial activities may be associated with higher risk of violence. Given the relatively small sample size and the exploratory approach for the present investigation, further research is needed to determine whether the findings can be replicated and to extend the findings of the present preliminary study.

Fighting for Her Honor Girls’ Violence in Distressed Communities

Since the 1980s, delinquency researchers and urban ethnographers have increasingly placed girls’ violence in the center of their inquiries. Within recent scholarship, there are several looming questions such as how much of girls’ violence is shaped by the same forces motivating violent boys and how much is shaped by concerns unique to girls. This study draws on data from a 6-year qualitative study of violence among Pacific Islander high school students in Hawaii. We explore how girls’ violence attends to gender as well as to the rampant economic, racial, ethnic, and political dislocations that threatened family survival in adolescents’ communities.

What's Wrong Is Right: A Response to the State of the Discipline

In the June issue ofSociological Forum, several authors addressed the question, “Whats Wrong with Sociology.” Answers included increased fragmentation of the discipline, and the lack of an identifiable cumulative core of sociological knowledge. This paper examines many of the claims made by the contributors to the June 1994Sociological Forum, reframes their arguments, and by placing debates regarding the problems in sociology in a broader perspective, identifies many of the recent advances made by the discipline. Focusing on such notable contributions to the field as feminist and postmodern scholarship, we locate the positive side of multiple perspective research.

Being Fearless and Fearsome: Colonial Legacies, Racial Constructions, and Male Adolescent Violence

Violence and masculinity, as many criminologists have argued, are tightly coupled in the United States. According to the current masculinity and crime perspectives, men who confront multiple oppressions (e.g., class, race, and political) are particularly apt to use violence because, while marginalized men lack economic power, they possess power in terms of their gender, especially through the use or threat of violence. While many scholars acknowledge that racial oppression can contribute to the development of violent masculine identities, the authors argue that race remains undertheorized in prevailing explanations of masculine identities and violence. In this study, the authors argue for further advancement of the colonial criminology framework to deepen our understanding of the race-based inequalities leading up to violence. More specifically, the authors analyze data collected from a 6-year ethnographic study of youth violence among Pacific Islander adolescents to illustrate the effects of the lasting legacy of colonialism as well as the continuing salience of racial and ethnic identity formation in explanations of violence, primarily involving Native Hawaiian and Samoan youths in Hawai‘i.