Philip R. Kavanaugh

The Continuum of Sexual Violence Women’s Accounts of Victimization in Urban Nightlife

Despite the fact that a substantial amount of research has been conducted on sexual victimization among youth and young adults with active night lives, few of these studies have provided an analysis of the varied types of victimization that have occurred. I attempt to fill this gap with a qualitative analysis of women’s accounts of sexual victimization. Based on the substantive content of these women’s accounts, a three-part typology was generated, comprised of: (a) competing definitions of the situation, (b) opportunistic predation, and (c) involuntary incapacitation. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Identity, Resistance and Moderation in an Online Community of Zoosexuals

Regulation plays a key role in the construction of sexuality. Given the extent to which new forms of communication technology have had a liberating effect on the production of new discourses emanating from historically marginalized sexual communities, this study examines how zoosexuals active in an online community work to construct, assert and manage their sex-based identities, situate their sexual practices, attempt to resolve ethical dilemmas, as well as moderate and sanction dissidents for the greater civility of zoosexual discourse. We conclude by further considering the complications inherent in accomplishing these interactive tasks in a virtual space.

Support for Restorative Justice in a Sample of U.S. University Students

Theories of restorative justice suggest that the practice works best when offenders are enmeshed in multiple interdependencies or attachments to others and belong to a culture that facilitates communitarianism instead of individualism. Restorative justice principles and practices are thus believed to be incongruent with the individualistic culture and legal system of the United States, especially compared with that of nations like Australia and Japan. Using a nonprobability convenience sample of students enrolled in a large public university in the United States, our study examines attitudes toward restorative justice as a fair and just process for reintegrating offenders and meeting the needs of victims. Results indicate that our sample holds less punitive attitudes than citizens in either Australia or Japan. Our findings are discussed in light of recent policy shifts in the United States that suggest a concerted move toward decarceration following the 2008 recession.

Race, inequality and the medicalization of drug addiction: an analysis of documentary films

Abstract The increased medicalization of traits and behaviors signifies a society eager for more humane approaches to social problems such as drug addiction. Yet, scholars have only begun to understand how medicalization processes might perpetuate inequality. One type of disparity could be symbolic if media campaigns represent people differently. For example, to what extent does the neuroscience approach define all addicts as patients suffering a brain disease? Our paper begins to address this question by analyzing documentary films between 1991 and 2008. We found evidence of symbolic inequality by race in both the representation of addicts and explanations of their addictions. White addicts were portrayed as patients suffering disease and in need of treatment despite their heavy criminal involvement. Overall, minorities were under-represented in medicalized narratives. When depicted, minority addicts were discussed with criminal narratives, highlighting personal choice, deviance and state control. We end by linking our work to debates on the medicalization of drug addiction.

Pathways on the sexual violence continuum: A lifestyles theory of victimization in urban nightlife

While scholars have identified a consistent link between deviant lifestyles and victimization, little research to date has examined how life-course trajectories and lifestyle factors can shape exposure to varied forms of victimization and, in particular, different types of sexual assault. Drawing on interviews with 20 women with active night lives and direct observation of 33 nightlife events, this study employs a feminist pathways conceptual framework to examine how dispositional and lifestyle factors shaped the types of sexual assault reported. Findings indicate that while a number of factors associated with general sexual victimization were shared among those in the sample, the specific types of assault experienced were further conditioned by their individual trajectories in nightlife scenes, substance use histories, cultural taste preferences, as well as distinct aspects of the social contexts where victimization occurred. More broadly, this study suggests that well-established risk factors associated with victimization impact women in different ways and exert their effects uniquely, through the intervention of culture.

The social organization of masculine violence in nighttime leisure scenes

Recent scholarship on masculinity and crime suggests that men who have difficulty asserting their masculine status due to social marginalization (across age, class, and racial lines) have a higher likelihood of engaging in violent behavior to offset their lack of social power in other areas. While marginalization can abet the development of masculine violence, in this article I suggest more attention to the mitigating effects of structural changes and cultural contexts is necessary for a richer understanding of how masculine violence plays out. Drawing on multi-method ethnographic data from a case of one major US city with a thriving nighttime cultural economy, I aim to show how the structural characteristics of nighttime leisure scenes create situations for the enactment of particular forms of violence that reflect a number of subterranean convergences with the masculinization of the cultural economy.

The impact of race and extra-legal factors in charging defendants with serious sexual assault: Findings from a five-year study of one Pennsylvania court jurisdiction

ABSTRACT Research on sexual assault case processing remains mixed regarding how extra-legal factors such as the racial-ethnic composition of the defendant-victim dyad may impact prosecutorial decision-making. We use data from 2006–2010 in a Pennsylvania county court jurisdiction to examine the victim- and defendant-related factors that influence charging decisions. We also explore how the demographic and offense characteristics influence decisions to prosecute offenders for more serious types of sexual assault. Our findings indicate that the racial composition of the defendant-victim dyad contributed to the prosecutorial decision to charge an offender with a more serious sexual assault, while victim characteristics and use of violence during the offense were not related to seriousness of the charge.

Competing constructions of bath salts use and risk of harm in two mediated contexts

Drawing on depictions of bath salts use in two different mediated contexts (110 local news reports, 109 individual user reports), in this study we highlight the incongruence between accounts of use and harm in news media versus drug users’ own narratives. Findings reveal that depictions of bath salts use in local news stories drew on three overlapping frames of risk and harm: a medical/health frame, a typifying example/atrocity story frame, and a legal/regulatory frame. User narratives were comparably neutral and richly descriptive, with tempered accounts of drug effects, psychopharmacological and other experiences while using, as well as tactics used to counter unpleasant effects. We find that both media forms limit discussions of drug use and risks of harm and are similarly dependent on a medical/health frame to legitimate them. The problem with news accounts is the denial of complex social and cultural contexts and possibilities regarding alternative drug policies. The problem with user narratives is the extent to which their accounts are moderated or excluded in order to manufacture a coherent public presentation of self, serving alternate ideological aims.

Women’s Evolving Roles in Drug Trafficking in the United States: New Conceptualizations Needed for 21st-Century Markets

Drugs and crime research and theory in the United States originated after President Nixon declared the first War on Drugs in 1971. This research agenda promised to reveal the scope, dynamics, and impact of the drugs–crime relationship, thus promising solutions for the country’s drug problems. The initial focus was on drug trade violence and, as a result, produced scholarship mostly on men’s involvement in drug distribution, purchasing, and related crimes. It paid little attention to women’s involvement and failed to consider how gender might shape the drugs–crime relationship. By the early 1980s, however, studies began to appear on women’s experiences and addressed the role of gender in U.S. street-based illegal markets for crack cocaine and heroin. These studies revealed women’s relative powerlessness or supporting roles to domineering males in illegal, street-based drug markets. Today, drugs of concern in the U.S. originate and are sold and purchased through both legal and illegal channels that often work in tandem. This interplay requires us to rethink the drugs–crime relationship. Our article seeks to provoke new thinking and research on how 21st-century drug trends might reshape the gendered nature of drug selling across both legal and illegal markets and the gray area in between. In specific terms, we review the nature of women’s involvement in newer drug markets and consider how their involvement differs from that of men and how theory and research might move forward in addressing these changes. Our conclusions, and those reached by others in this issue, speak to the centrality of gender scholarship in research and policy on drugs and crime currently and into the future.

Decayed Prospects A Qualitative Study of Prison Dental Care and its Impact on Former Prisoners

As controversy surrounding the Affordable Care Act continues to occupy the national landscape, inequality in access to care, especially among disadvantaged groups such as prisoners, garners comparably scant attention. While the corrections literature has examined prisoner health in more depth, fewer studies have specifically addressed the effects of prison dental care. Drawing on a sample of 30 adult male parolees, our study examines their experiences with prison dental services, how it affected their relationships during incarceration, and their reintegrative experiences—particularly with regard to employment. We find that dental care protocols are such that they often discourage inmates from seeking treatment, resulting in or exacerbate a damaged maxillofacial appearance, and that the social and psychological implications for reintegration are profound.