Richard Stansfield

The Role of Religious Support in Reentry Evidence from the SVORI Data

Objective: Research on the relationship between religion and criminal recidivism has produced encouraging but ultimately inconclusive findings. This study offers a new direction for studying the role of religious support in reentry, providing a longitudinal analysis of the effect of change in religious support on both crime and noncrime outcomes postrelease. Methods: Employing mixed-effects longitudinal analyses, this study uses data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative to examine the impact of religious support on postrelease substance use, criminal recidivism, and employment. Results: Religious support had strong and robust prosocial effects on both postrelease employment and substance use. The relationship between religious support and recidivism, however, did not reach statistical significance when we added social support to the research model. Conclusion: Religious support and meaning making seems to help people address their criminogenic needs and also seems to be an important responsivity factor that is often overlooked in criminological theory and practice. Religious support must therefore be recognized as an important theoretical and practical variable in current efforts to develop successful reentry pathways.

Religious and Spiritual Support, Reentry, and Risk

Systems and agencies intent on pursuing an evidence-based approach to correctional interventions have widely adopted the risk principle. For a variety of reasons, many studies have found that giving treatment to low risk people has little impact on reducing recidivism and can even increase recidivism. Because of the risk principle, many prison and community correctional systems now target their treatment resources to medium and high risk. This study tests whether the effects of religious/spiritual support on reentry success generalize across offenders as a function of risk. Results from random effects count models suggest that religious and spiritual support does have a strong and robust effect on the likelihood of ex-offenders desisting from substance abuse. Findings also reveal that the risk principle was not supported; religious and social support was associated with significantly lower levels of substance abuse among low risk offenders, but not among higher-risk offenders. On the other hand, religious and spiritual support did not significantly relate to criminal offending at any risk level. Implications for religious programming and services, as well as the study of religion and reentry, are discussed.

American crime drops: Investigating the breaks, dips and drops in temporal homicide

OBJECTIVES While a great deal of attention has been given to the 1990s crime drop, less is known about the more recent decline in homicide rates that occurred in several large U.S. cities. This paper aims to explore whether these represent two distinct drops via statistical evidence of structural breaks in longitudinal homicide trends and explore potentially differing explanations for the two declines. METHODS Using homicide data on a large sample of U.S. cities from 1990 to 2011, we test for structural breaks in temporal homicide rates. Combining census data and a time series approach, we also examine the role structural features, demographic shifts, and crime control strategies played in the changes in homicide rates over time. RESULTS Statistical evidence demonstrates two structural breaks in homicide trends, with one trend reflecting the 1990s crime drop (1994-2002) and another trend capturing a second decline (2007-2011). Time series analysis confirms previous research findings about the contributions of structural conditions (e.g., disadvantage) and crime control strategies (e.g., police force size) to the crime drop of the 1990s, but these factors cannot account for the more recent drop with the exception of police presence. CONCLUSIONS Although both structural conditions and crime control strategies are critical to the longitudinal trends in homicide rates over the entire span from 1990 to 2011, different factors account for these two distinct temporal trends.

Probing Change in Racial Self-identification A Focus on Children of Immigrants

Recent studies have shown that racial identification varies across context and time. Although sociologists recognize many contextual factors associated with racial group membership, relatively little attention has been given to understanding the specific factors—such as self-perceptions, socioeconomic incentives, and family pressures—that relate to changes in racial self-identification, especially among children of immigrants individuals who may have a relatively high propensity for inconsistency in racial identification. Using two waves of data from the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study and guided by social identity theory, the authors seek to (1) explore the prevalence of changes in racial self-identification over time within this sample and (2) understand the mechanisms that may contribute to changes in self-identification. The results indicate that self-esteem, self-worth, and family cohesion are related to an individual’s reporting a change in racial identification between waves. Socioeconomic status and depression are not related to changes in racial identification.

Reevaluating the Effect of Recent Immigration on Crime Estimating the Impact of Change in Discrete Migration Flows to the United Kingdom Following EU Accession

The United Kingdom experienced a rapid inflow of migrants from European Union accession countries between 2004 and 2011, many of whom participated in the Worker Registration Scheme (WRS). Given the relative labor market position of this recent migrant wave, scholars argued that returns to criminal activity were negligible. Yet, recent data from London’s Metropolitan Police estimated that foreign-born nationals from Poland, Lithuania, and other Eastern European nations were responsible for almost 25% of alleged crimes in London between 2010 and 2011. With the United Kingdom set to see an influx of Romanian and Bulgarian immigrants starting in 2014, political and public arenas became rife with fears of a growing Eastern European crime wave. This article attempted to bring some coherence to the relationship between recent Eastern European immigration and multiple forms of crime in the United Kingdom. Using data from 348 local authorities in England and Wales, this study examined recent immigration composition effects on crime. The study also went beyond existing studies on immigration and crime by examining the effects of change in employment-related migration flows, study-related migration, and other migration flows since 2004. Results confirmed that areas that saw the highest rates of immigration do not have higher rates of violence. These areas did exhibit higher rates of drug offenses, however, that could not be explained away by differences in structural conditions. Finally, evidence was found that the reason for migration was critical in predicting criminal returns.

Threat Perceptions of Migrants in Britain and Support for Policy

Arguments that migrants represent a threat to the Britain are often cast in terms of impact on the economy and a criminal threat to Britain’s streets. We examine the impact of these attitudes on support for policies curtailing the rights of European Union (EU) and non-EU migrants in the United Kingdom separately, as well as their implications for support for punitive criminal sanctions. Using data on a nationally representative sample of Britons, results indicate that perceptions of migrants as a criminal threat have a greater effect on support for curtailing rights of EU migrants, more so than economic threat, suggesting that British citizens invoke deep rooted stereotypes about EU migrants as criminal when choosing their preferences. Criminal threat is also associated with support for more punitive criminal sanctions. Thus, threat narratives, especially narratives of immigrant crime, could be instrumental in public support for policy, but different narratives are associated with EU and non-EU migrants.

Uniting needs, responses, and theory during reentry: The distinct and joint contributions of peer influence and religious/spiritual support on substance use

ABSTRACT Using a dual framework of differential association and the risk-need-responsivity model, this study uses data from the Serious and Violent Offender Reentry Initiative to investigate how peer criminality, peer support, and religious or spiritual support impact substance use during reentry. Results indicate that less peer criminality and more religious/spiritual support relate to lower levels of substance use, and in both independent and interdependent ways. However, results also suggest that religious/spiritual support interacts with high amounts of peer support to increase substance use. Collectively, the three elements of risks, needs, and responses may be intertwined in the case of peer influence and religious/spiritual support.

Economic Disadvantage and Homicide: Estimating Temporal Trends in Adolescence and Adulthood

Although research has established economic disadvantage as one of the strongest, most robust predictors of urban violence, the conditions under which this relation holds need further elaboration. This study examines the disadvantage–violence link across age-specific transitional periods from adolescence to adulthood and provides theoretical arguments for why the strength of this relation should decline with age. Using 90 of the largest cities in the United States, the present study analyzes the impact of economic disadvantage and other urban conditions (residential instability, family disruption, and population heterogeneity) on age-specific homicide counts from 1984 to 2006. The analytical strategy incorporates temporal trends by using negative binomial fixed-effects regression models. The results reveal a consistent decline from adolescence to adulthood in the strength of the estimated effects of economic disadvantage, residential instability, and family disruption on homicide trends. The findings are discussed in terms of the implications for future research and public policy.

Juvenile Desistance and Community Disadvantage: The Role of Appropriate Accommodations and Engagements

In recent years, juvenile justice systems have shown renewed interest in ensuring effective programming and support for young offenders as they reenter the community. These services often focus on suitable accommodations, education, work-based employment, and engagement in conventional activities. Recent studies also suggest, however, that these services may not have the desired impact in the community (i.e. desistance) if underlying community-level risk factors are not attended to. This may especially be the case for young offenders. Given the developmental literature underscoring the heightened sensitivity of youth to external conditions, this study focuses attention on the recidivism of young offenders in the United Kingdom. Data from 2005 through 2009 show that changes in appropriate accommodation and engagement offered to ex-offenders in a community are both related to a community’s rate of youth reoffending; however, the strength of this relationship differs across level of community disadvantage.

Revisiting Racial/Ethnic Composition Effects in a Multicultural Society

In this article, the relationship between racial/ethnic composition and violence is revisited. This includes efforts to conduct a deeper exploration of the ethnic composition effects of discrete Latino-origin populations. This is an important extension for a number of reasons. First, recent research has demonstrated the dangers of pan-ethnic classifications in the study of race, ethnicity, and crime. Different histories of migration, settlement, opportunity, and intergenerational advancement have produced different levels of successful integration for some groups relative to others, with different implications for crime. One of the distinguishing features of the contemporary Latino population is a disproportionately young average age. Specifically, Latinos in the United States include a higher percentage of adolescent and young adults than the national average—a period of the life course where criminal behavior tends to peak. Thus, I also examine how racial and ethnic composition and change in these areas is associated with variation in violence perpetrated by youth and emerging adults specifically.