Miriam Northcutt Bohmert

Men's vulnerability to prisoner-on-prisoner sexual violence: A state correctional system case study

The one-state case study described in this article assesses imprisoned men’s vulnerability to sexual assault by an inmate before policies were implemented to reduce sexual violence. The cases studied were substantiated in an internal hearing procedure. On average, victims were more recently incarcerated, younger, smaller, and less aggressive than their perpetrators, but many victim-perpetrator pairs deviated from this profile. The strongest predictor of victimization was a history of childhood sexual victimization. Other predictors were race, youth, build, education, and experience with incarceration.

Minnesota’s Affordable Homes Program Evaluating the Effects of a Prison Work Program on Recidivism, Employment and Cost Avoidance

The Affordable Homes Program (AHP) is a prison work crew program managed by the Minnesota Department of Corrections (MNDOC). To examine whether AHP has increased postrelease employment, lowered recidivism, and reduced costs to the State of Minnesota, this study uses a retrospective, quasi-experimental design in which propensity score matching was used to control for observable selection bias. The results show that during the 1998-2008 period, AHP (a) built 285 affordable homes, (b) significantly increased offenders’ odds of obtaining postrelease employment in the construction field, and (c) produced US

Evaluating Restorative Justice Circles of Support and Accountability Can Social Support Overcome Structural Barriers

13.1 million in costs avoided. It did not, however, significantly reduce recidivism.

Interracial friendship and the trajectory of prominority attitudes: Assessing intergroup contact theory

In a climate in which stigmatic shaming is increasing for sex offenders as they leave prison, restorative justice practices have emerged as a promising approach to sex offender reentry success and have been shown to reduce recidivism. Criminologists and restorative justice advocates believe that providing ex-offenders with social support that they may not otherwise have is crucial to reducing recidivism. This case study describes the expressive and instrumental social support required and received, and its relationship to key outcomes, by sex offenders who participated in Circles of Support and Accountability (COSAs), a restorative justice, reentry program in Minnesota. In-depth interviews with re-entering sex offenders and program volunteers revealed that 75% of offenders reported weak to moderate levels of social support leaving prison, 70% reported receiving instrumental support in COSAs, and 100% reported receiving expressive support. Findings inform work on social support, structural barriers, and restorative justice programming during sex offender reentry.

An exploration of female offenders’ memorable messages from probation and parole officers on the self-assessment of behavior from a control theory perspective

We analyze the trajectory of racial attitude change among White university students, over a 4-year time period, representing an advancement over previous studies’ use of longitudinal designs alone to test the causal ordering and nature of the relationship between contact and attitudes. Adding to the literature on intergroup friendships, we examined the impact of two types of intergroup contact (interracial friendships and neighborhood racial context) on two types of racial attitudes: attitudes supportive of affirmative action and feelings of commonality with minorities. Overall, we find that a greater number of interracial friendships is associated with more positive racial attitudes. Women and those with more interracial friendships experience a faster rate of increase in their endorsement of affirmative action policies. Individuals growing up in more racially homogeneous neighborhoods expressed less support for affirmative action and politically conservative students had lower support for both affirmative action and feelings of commonality.

“A rape was reported”: construction of crime in a university newspaper

ABSTRACT Guided by control theory, this study examines memorable messages that women on probation and parole receive from their probation and parole agents. Women interviewed for the study were asked to report a memorable message they received from an agent, and to describe situations if/when the message came to mind in three contexts likely to emerge from a control theory perspective: when they did something of which they were proud, when they stopped themselves from doing something they would later regret, and when they did something of which they were not proud. The types of memorable messages and the reactions to these messages within the three contexts were coded, and differences between women on probation versus parole were examined. Overall, a greater proportion of women on parole recalled memorable messages, and the most frequently reported type of memorable message was behavioral advice. Women reported that the message helped them do things of which they were proud, such as engaging in routine activities and fulfilling goals; helped them to not give into urges that could lead to further negative sanctions or feelings of regret; and came to mind when they relapsed. Practical implications of the findings for training are presented.

Cumulative Disadvantage and the Role of Transportation in Community Supervision

ABSTRACT Historically, the news media have engaged in high rates victim blaming in their reporting of sexual assaults. However, in recent years, gains in civil rights and renewed attention to Title IX may mean sexual assault victims are receiving less-biased news coverage. Using a content analysis, we examined the tone and message of all crime stories published in one United States university newspaper from academic year 2015–2016 (n = 99). Comparing attributions of responsibility made to both victims and offenders across several major crime categories (rape, murder, sexual assault, robbery, physical assault, sexual misconduct, and sexual abuse), and consistent with historical trends, we found higher levels of victim blaming in stories on rape and sexual assault than any other crime. We identify rhetorical devices commonly used to discredit the victim and/or absolve the perpetrator. Despite perceived gains achieved by Title IX, news coverage continues to buttress victim blaming culture.

Evaluating Recidivism and Job Quality Outcomes for Participants in the Hoosier Initiative for Reentry Employment (HIRE) Program

Drawing from cumulative disadvantage theory, we are the first to examine the role of transportation disadvantage among other known challenges for women on community supervision. We create a composite measure of transportation disadvantage using factor analyses and data for 362 women on probation and parole in one Midwestern state: It is used to predict arrest and conviction using multiepisode event history analysis and conditional logistic regression. Consistent with cumulative disadvantage theory, the results suggest each additional disadvantage makes women more vulnerable, over and above the other disadvantages. Transportation disadvantage is a significant and entrenched feature in criminal justice-involved women’s lives. The import of modeling all available recidivism events, given the entrenched nature of criminal justice system involvement, cannot be overstated.

New directions for criminology: notes from outside the field, by Ronnie Lippens and Patrick Van Calster

ABSTRACT The Hoosier Initiative for Reentry Employment (HIRE) program provides employment assistance to Indiana residents with felony offenses. We examine whether HIRE participants (n = 328), who obtained jobs after release from prison in 2014, had lower recidivism rates than the comparison group of all offenders released from Indiana prisons in 2014 (n = 17,901). Our results show that HIRE participants, despite having more serious criminal histories, have lower hazards of reincarceration (both new offenses and technical violations) than the comparison group. Contrary to hypotheses, HIRE offenders who had better paying and more prestigious jobs did not have significantly lower hazards of reincarceration. Finally, several factors predict quality of job placement (wage, prestige of field) including: age, veteran status, gender, race/ethnicity, and previous sex offense.

Women at the nexus of correctional and social policies: Implications for recidivism risk

New Directions for Criminology is comprised of essays written by researchers and scholars from disciplines outside criminology. Their backgrounds include biopolitics, law, philosophy, and sociology...New Directions for Criminology is comprised of essays written by researchers and scholars from disciplines outside criminology. Their backgrounds include biopolitics, law, philosophy, and sociology. The authors were asked to demonstrate how the most recent theoretical work in their fields could challenge and enhance criminology. The main premise of this book is that criminologists should more critically examine their theoretical approaches and methodological strategies, with an eye toward incorporating post-structuralist thought. Researchers should no longer ask, “What is crime? Who are criminals? What should we do with criminals?” Instead, they should ask themselves, “How are we, as researchers, bringing our own experiences, judgments, and biases to our research? How will we, as researchers, impact our research findings?” The book has an introductory chapter followed by 10 chapters divided evenly into two parts. Part I, ‘Theories and Models’, presents theories, perspectives, and organizing concepts to augment traditional mainstream approaches to the study of crime. Part II, ‘Themes and Topics’, addresses methodological issues and presents specific criminological research topics from a post-structuralist perspective. The introductory chapter presents a succinct description of the 10 chapters in the book, but falls short in orienting the reader to post-structuralist thought. An introduction to poststructuralism and even a direct comparison with postmodernism would strengthen this work. Further, the introductory chapter does not sufficiently situate the post-structuralist themed works within the existing criminological theoretical discourses. All of the authors appear to assume that criminology is limited to positivist application of the scientific method. This omission is problematic if a main objective of the book is to build on, and improve, existing criminological thought. Following the Introduction, in Chapter 1, Patrick Van Calster explains that the dominant, largely unquestioned paradigm in science, the scientific method, erroneously presumes an order in the world that properly designed research can discover. He identifies numerous problems with the dominant paradigm. It incorrectly assumes that research subjects move through life in an ordered manner toward a known and desired purpose. When researchers attempt to find order so they can control problems such as crime, they fail because there are no simple cause and effect relationships. For instance, they break up the problem into small, measurable pieces, which leads them to neglect that the sum of the parts is often greater than the whole. Because the interventions of researchers have unintended negative consequences for populations being studied, Van Calster argues, most research produces more harm than good. In short, the author argues convincingly that the world is far too complex for current positivist research strategies to advance understanding.