Thomas J. Mowen

Drug Use and Crime after Incarceration: The Role of Family Support and Family Conflict

People who were previously incarcerated overwhelmingly cite family interaction as among the most important factors in successful reentry and desistance. Yet, little research has explicitly sought to explore the relationship between family support and family conflict among former prisoners and their effect on reentry. Utilizing social control theory from a life course perspective, the current project explores patterns of drug use and criminal desistance of people who were previously incarcerated (n = 740) and the relationship to family support and conflict. Results indicate higher levels of family conflict coincide with increased odds of drug use and crime immediately following release from prison. A multinomial logistic model indicates patterns of drug use at specific points in time directly coincide with patterns of family conflict, but not family support. The implications of these findings are addressed.

School Discipline as a Turning Point The Cumulative Effect of Suspension on Arrest

Objectives: To examine how school discipline may serve as a negative turning point for youth and contribute to increased odds of arrest over time and to assess whether suspensions received across multiple years may present a “cumulative” increase in odds of arrest. Methods: Using four waves of data from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we use a longitudinal hierarchical generalized linear model (HGLM) to explore how school suspensions contribute to odds of arrest across time while controlling for a number of theoretically important dimensions such as race, age, delinquency, and gender among others. Results: Results show that youth who are suspended are at an increased risk of experiencing an arrest across time relative to youth who are not suspended and that this effect increases across time. Further, with each subsequent year the youth is suspended, there is a significant increase in odds of arrest. Conclusion: Supporting prior work, we find that youth who receive a suspension are at an increased odds of contact with the criminal justice system, and increases in the number of suspensions received contribute to significant increases in odds of arrest. Findings demonstrate that suspensions present a form of cumulative effect over time.

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.

Changing the Ties that Bind

Research Summary By using a subsample of the Returning Home data set, we explored how family relationships change during reentry as a result of incarceration. Overall, we found that individuals who completed parenting classes, those with more frequent visits from family members, and Black and female respondents experienced positive changes in family relationships. On the other hand, single and divorced individuals, those with prior convictions and mental health issues, and individuals who reported barriers to family contact reported significant negative changes within the family relationship. Policy Implications The findings from this study suggest that reducing barriers to family contact—especially the cost of visitation and visitation procedures—may lead to positive changes within family relationships for formerly incarcerated individuals. Furthermore, developing programs to assist individuals with mental health issues to maintain family relationships may create avenues to help those individuals keep, or reestablish, family ties after release.

Building the Ties that Bind, Breaking the Ties that Don't

Research Summary Although family support is an important protective factor against recidivism, less is known about how the domain of family works with other elements of the risk–need–responsivity model. By using the Serious and Violent Offenders Reentry Initiative (SVORI) data, we explore whether family and criminal peers have (a) independent and (b) interdependent effects on substance abuse and crime after release from prison. The outcomes of multilevel models demonstrate that the risk factor of criminal peers is as strong, or stronger, of a predictor of substance abuse and crime as is the protective factor of family support for offenders during reentry. Policy Implications Institution-based policies aimed primarily at improving family ties for reentering offenders must begin focusing as much on peers as they do on family. These programs should instead focus on improving family ties (thereby increasing a protective factor) while focusing on severing the offenders relationships with criminally inclined friends (thereby decreasing a risk factor).

School Punishment in the US and England: Divergent Frames and Responses

In an effort to better understand the roots of contemporary school punishment practices, this study compares policy discourse and practice of school punishment and security in the United States and England. American policy discourse is predominantly punitive, harsh punishment strategies are favored, and policy makers have centralized decision-making power outside of the classroom. Contrastingly, English policy discourse about and policy responses to student misbehaviour focus more on reducing social exclusion, improving student behaviour, and returning the locus of control over rule enforcement to teachers. However, despite these substantial differences, suspension and expulsion rates are fairly similar in the US and England. Several hypotheses to explain these findings are offered.

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.

School security measures and extracurricular participation: an exploratory multi-level analysis

Although delinquency in US schools is near historic lows, concern over delinquency in US schools remains a pressing issue among school officials, parents, and policy-makers. Many scholars argue that the current approach to discipline in the United States is highly punitive. While some projects have assessed the effect of punitive security on students’ perception of safety and general well-being, little attention has been given to understanding the role these measures play in extracurricular activity. Using the Educational Longitudinal Study (2002/2004), we examine the role of security measures in predicting student extracurricular activity cross-sectionally and over time. Results show that schools with greater numbers of security measures have students who are less involved in extracurricular activities, although the presence of security measures does not relate to decreased levels of participation over time.

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.

Maternal Parenting Style and Delinquency by Race and the Moderating Effect of Structural Disadvantage.

Contemporary research suggests authoritative parenting is the most effective parenting style in deterring juvenile delinquency. Some research has found there are differences in parenting style between racial groups due to structural disadvantage faced by marginalized individuals. Yet, relatively little is known about how racial differences in parenting and the moderating effect of disadvantage relate to juvenile delinquency. The current project explores parenting style differences among Black, Hispanic, and White mothers and the moderating impact of disadvantage on delinquency. Results indicate authoritarian parenting is least effective in deterring delinquency among all racial groups; however, neighborhood disadvantage provides a negative moderating effect between authoritarian parenting and delinquency for Black youth only, whereas uninvolved parenting was related to delinquency for White youth only.