Nicole T. Carr

Gender Effects Along the Juvenile Justice System Evidence of a Gendered Organization

This article provides an example of the unequal outcomes generated by humans interacting in a gendered organizational context. Ackers concept of gendered institutions is applied to a juvenile justice program. Using data from court records and program files, official outcomes for boys and girls are compared. Findings indicate that variation in the level of program implementation produced an increase, rather than a decrease, in the odds of female youth being charged with a new offense. They also indicate that girls who committed a new offense were much more likely than comparable boys to be returned to residential treatment, even when controlling for the severity of their reoffense. Taken together, these findings illustrate the reproduction of gender inequality consistent with operations of a gendered organization.

Lifelines of Women in Jail as Self-Constructed Visual Probes for Life History Research

Abstract This study is based on interviews with 30 incarcerated women. Each interview began with the probe, “Tell us about your life …” with the goal of identifying “turning points.” During the interview a visual probe (a sheet of paper with a single line printed across the landscaped page, with the word “Birth” on the left and “Now” on the right) was given to each respondent to aid in identifying important events in their life histories. More than half of the sample (n = 17) reported family transition (geographic relocation of the family, parental divorce and changes in custody) as a turning point, and one respondent noted only “incarceration.” However, there was surprising uniformity across the lifelines regarding the types of events recorded (losses, births, relocations, abuses, and incarcerations) consistent with definitions in the literature of the concepts of turning points and life transitions. A pattern of late onset offending was an unexpected finding.

If “60 is the New 40,” is 35 the New 15? Late Onset Crime and Delinquency

Using data from 30 life history interviews with incarcerated women, we examine 8 interviews of women that became involved in crime, and then with the justice system, after age 18. Literature in the area of crime and delinquency supports a relationship between age and crime. The general agreement among researchers is that initial involvement in offending occurs during the early or middle teens and then declines rapidly in the late teens and early twenties. Further, research suggests that the shape of the age crime relationship is similar by sex (Steffensmeier and Allan 1996; Steffensmeier et al. 2006; Steffensmeier and Streifel 1991). However, recent quantitative analyses document the existence of an adult onset population (Block et al. 2007; Eggleston and Laub 2002; Gomez-Smith and Piquero 2005; Simpson et al. 2008). During our research we found that 8 of the 30 women we interviewed became involved in crime after age 20. The present analysis provides a description of these “anomalous” women. They share several qualities, including frequent mention of loss, caretaking (both social and economic), and addiction as turning points or periods that contributed to their involvement in crime. The presence of children was also mentioned as a factor that prevented criminal activities. While we find potentially new pathways into crime for this late onset sample of women, we also explain how our findings are consistent with the life course perspective in criminology as elaborated by Sampson and Laub (1993; Laub and Sampson 2003).

Psychometric properties of a suicide screen for adjudicated youth in residential care

There is a need to efficiently and effectively screen adjudicated youth residing within the juvenile justice system for suicide proneness. Accordingly, in the current study, the psychometric properties of the Life Attitude Schedule: Short Form (LAS:S), a 24-item risk assessment for suicide proneness, were assessed using data from adjudicated youth residing in an alternative sentencing facility (n = 130). As predicted, statistically significant correlations were obtained between total LAS:S suicide proneness scores and reports of recent suicide ideation and hopelessness. Contrary to expectation, the previously reported 2-factor model for the LAS:S, with Factor 1 representing physical unhealthiness and Factor 2 representing psychological death, poorly fit the data. In adjudicated youth, we found that a single factor model derived from the 4 LAS:S subscales produced a better fit to the data than the 2-factor model. The death-related, self-related, injury-related, and negative health-related behaviors contained on the LAS:S shared common variance in these youth. A clinical implication is that practitioners can effectively use the total LAS:S score when screening adjudicated youth for suicide proneness.

“Everything I've Done I've Done for Men”: One Woman's Deployment of Femininities and Her Pathway to Crime

The feminist pathways perspective offers a framework for understanding how patriarchal culture shapes gendered involvement in crime. While the pathway is shaped by gender and explains how gender matters as it relates to crime, we do not know how women construct gender along the route. Do they support patriarchy by speaking and acting in a traditionally feminine way, or do they present a more resistant femininity? Situating one womans words in the pathways perspective, we find that Amber calls on both traditional femininity as well as a more resistant femininity throughout different experiences and periods during her life. When discussing victimization, abuse, and relationships, she frequently deploys the hegemonic feminine in her accounts. Interestingly, when describing self-medication and drug use, and acting out and crime, she more often uses pariah words and phrases. Femininity is not “one size fits all” and clearly can and does vary during important times and periods in our lives.

Understanding the Patient-Physician Interaction: Potential for Reducing Health Disparities:

Racial differences in health and health care persist. These differences can be linked, in part, to physician-patient communication. This study examined the effect of race concordance and communication comfort on the patients level of general satisfaction and their intent to adhere to physician instructions. Results indicate that patient satisfaction and likelihood of adherence are related to communication comfort. Additionally, patients seeing a physician of their own race are more likely to adhere to instructions than those seeing a physician of a different race, although the effect of race-concordance is not as strong as communication comfort. In-terestingly, race-concordance is not related to patient satisfaction. We conclude that both communication comfort and race-concordance play major roles in the patient-physician relationship. Given that communication comfort appears to play a more important role than race concordance, our findings suggest that increasing awareness of racial differences and effective communication can increase patient satisfaction and adherence intent. Increasing adherence with treatment regimes should increase positive health outcomes.

Juvenile Delinquency, Criminal Sentiments, and Self-Sentiments: Exploring a Modified Labeling Theory Proposition

Originality/value This study is the first to test a modified labeling theory proposition on juvenile delinquents.

Character Strengths and First-Year College Students’ Academic Persistence Attitudes: An Integrative Model:

Higher education scholars produce the majority of research on student persistence. However, counseling psychologists may be uniquely situated to help students persist toward graduation by enhancing strengths. The present study integrated counseling and higher education models to examine college students’ character strengths (i.e., hope and gratitude) as predictors of student persistence variables (i.e., academic integration and institutional commitment). Drawing on higher education theories of persistence, we examined the mediating effects of academic integration on the associations between character strengths and institutional commitment among first-year undergraduate students (N = 653). Controlling for social support, greater academic integration mediated the associations between character strengths and institutional commitment in a structural equation model. Consistent with higher education theories emphasizing academic integration as a precursor to institutional commitment, character strengths may be important for understanding academic integration and persistence. Implications for prevention and the integration of counseling psychology and higher education perspectives are discussed.