Crime, Youth Unemployment, and the Black Urban Underclass

1987 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 300-316 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troy Duster
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Youth Unemployment ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Crime Reduction ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Current Period ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Development

There is now a wealth of data demonstrating a strong relationship (in the United States, at least) between unemployment and contact with the criminal justice system. Black youth are disproportionately represented in both categories. Until the current period, most youth simply “matured” out of a life of crime. However, we are witnessing a new development of a deep bifurcation of the social structure and a corresponding development of a possible permanent “underclass.” Our previous assumptions about the life cycle, the market economy, and employment prospects must be reconceptualized if we are to address this concern with any success. In particular, programs of “crime reduction” must address the structural transformations that have so altered the unemployment differences between Black and White youth.

scholarly journals Leprosy and the Plague: State Surveillance of Low-Income Fathers

2013 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-139
Author(s):  
Monika Jean Ulrich Myers ◽  
Michael Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Social Control ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Child Support ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Child Support Enforcement ◽  
The Social ◽  
State Surveillance

Foucault’s theory of state social control contrasts societal responses to leprosy, where deviants are exiled from society but promised freedom from social demands, and the plague, where deviants are controlled and surveyed within society but receive some state assistance in exchange for their cooperation.In this paper, I analyze how low-income fathers in the United States simultaneously experience social control consistent with leprosy and social control consistent with the plague but do not receive the social benefits that Foucault associates with either status.Through interviews with 57 low-income fathers, I investigate the role of state surveillance in their family lives through child support enforcement, the criminal justice system, and child protective services.Because they did not receive any benefits from compliance with this surveillance, they resisted it, primarily by dropping “off the radar.”Men justified their resistance in four ways: they had their own material needs, they did not want the child, they did not want to separate from their child’s mother or compliance was unnecessary.This resistance is consistent with Foucault’s distinction between leprosy and the plague.They believed that they did not receive the social benefits accorded to plague victims, so they attempted to be treated like lepers, excluded from social benefits but with no social demands or surveillance.

Migrant Detention and Incarceration

Criminology ◽  
2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Enrique Alvear ◽  
Patrisia Macías-Rojas
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Capitalism ◽  
Immigration Enforcement ◽  
Private Business ◽  
Global Trends ◽  
The Social ◽  
Micro Level ◽  
Race Ethnicity ◽  
And Gender

Over the last 30 years, the detention of irregular immigrants, undocumented workers, and the incarceration of immigration “offenders” has been on the rise. After 9/11, the social construction of immigrants as a source of “danger” reached a new scale, and the mechanisms through which immigration enforcement reproduces the criminal justice system became even more sophisticated. This article discusses the expansion of migrant detention in the overall “punitive turn” of immigration enforcement, the frequent tension between the state’s practices of power and detainees’ human rights, and the ways through which the securitization of migration replicates the commonsense link among immigration, crime, and national (in)security. This article starts with the complex distinction between migrant detention and incarceration as two different but related state enforcement apparatuses. While detention is a form of “administrative confinement” characterized by a deprivation of liberty for immigration-related civil offenses, incarceration refers to a deprivation of liberty for violations of criminal statutes. Based on detainees’ experiences, this article further examines whether migrant detention should (or not) be conceptualized as punishment, its importation of carceral tactics, and the increasing punitiveness of detention in the 21st century. Global capitalism has made the expansion of migrant detention possible. The privatization of detention has not only brought an extension of institutions, means, agents, and enforcement facilities, but it has also produced enormous profits for corporations, transforming detention into a profitable private business. At the micro level, the privatization also creates a complex geography of detention, a set of politics of carceral time and space, and a tension between mobility and immobility. Overall, the article reviews the most prominent trends in migrant detention in the northwestern hemisphere and in jurisdictions usually neglected by the mainstream literature. The article pays attention to global trends in detention across the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and northwestern Europe and also reviews understudied regions such as Australia, Indonesia, Greece, Sweden, Malta, and Norway, among others. The explicit effort to expand the mainstream literature’s Euro-American bias is here developed to problematize and expand the naturalized boundaries of immigration enforcement scholarship. At the same time, this bibliography emphasizes the need for developing more intersectional approaches on migrant detention particularly attentive to factors such as race/ethnicity, class, and gender. The authors would like to thank Mary Bosworth, Cesar Hernandez, David Hernandez, Nicholas de Genova, Amanda McDonald, and the reviewer for their insightful feedback on earlier drafts of this article. Any mistakes and shortcomings are our own.

FROM THE SOCIAL CONTRACT TO THE ART OF ASSOCIATION: A TOCQUEVILLIAN PERSPECTIVE

2008 ◽  
Vol 25 (2) ◽  
pp. 263-287
Author(s):  
Aurelian Craiutu
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Contract ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Democratic Citizenship ◽  
Alexis De Tocqueville ◽  
The Social ◽  
Political Background ◽  
Democracy In America ◽  
Political Associations

In the United States, the debate on civil associations has coincided with the revival of interest in the writings of Alexis de Tocqueville, particularly Democracy in America (1835; 1840) in which he praised the Americans' propensity to form civil and political associations. Tocqueville regarded these associations as laboratories of democracy that teach citizens the art of being free and give them the opportunity to pursue their own interests in concert with others. Tocqueville's views on political and civil associations cannot be properly understood unless we also take into account the larger intellectual and political background of his native France. The main sections of this essay examine Tocqueville's analysis of civil and political associations in America. Special attention is paid to the strong relationship between democracy and civil and political associations and the effects that they have on promoting democratic citizenship, civility, and self-government.

From Medicine to Health: The Proliferation and Diversification of Cultural Authority

2021 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 240-254
Author(s):  
Steven Epstein ◽  
Stefan Timmermans
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Structural Transformations ◽  
Cultural Authority ◽  
Self Monitoring ◽  
Alternative Healing ◽  
Health Social Movements ◽  
Social Authority ◽  
Medical Institutions ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Structural

In his account of the medical profession’s ascent, Paul Starr drew a distinction between the social authority of physicians and the cultural authority of medicine—between doctors’ capacity to direct others’ behavior and the ability of medical institutions and discourses to shape meanings of illness, health, wellness, and treatment. Subsequently, scholars have reflected on the social-structural transformations challenging physicians’ social authority but neglected shifts in cultural authority. Focusing on the United States, we find a proliferation and diversification of cultural authority, reflecting a partial movement from the domain of medicine into new terrains of health. This shift is apparent in the resurgence of alternative healing, the advent of new forms of self-care and self-monitoring, the rise of health social movements, and the spread of health information online. We advance a research agenda to understand how the mechanisms and dynamics of cultural authority shape contests to speak in the name of health.

Improved Mortality among U.S. Blacks, 1968–1978: The Role of Antiracist Struggle

1981 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 511-522 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Cooper ◽  
Michael Steinhauer ◽  
Arthur Schatzkin ◽  
William Miller
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Social Role ◽  
The United States ◽  
Hypertension Detection ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Social ◽  
Access To Medical Care ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
And Control

A marked improvement in health status for black adults took place over the last decade in the United States. Life expectancy for black men increased 4.6 years between 1968 and 1978, while for black women the increase was 5.7 years. Death rates for the age group 35–74 decreased approximately 25 percent for blacks over the same period. The largest contribution to this improvement was made by cardiovascular diseases (coronary heart disease and stroke). Although similar improvement was observed in the white population, on both a percentage and absolute basis the change was greater for blacks. For the first time in the U.S., important progress was made in the effort to narrow the gap in mortality rates between black and white adults. Hypertension detection and control appears to have played the key role in this positive public health trend. The community-based demand for greater access to medical care, which emerged from the social struggle of the 1960s, also can be accorded a major social role. The current policies of the Reagan Administration pose a serious threat to these antiracist programs, as well as to the effort to close the gap in black-white mortality.

Black and White Homicide Differentials

1983 ◽  
Vol 10 (4) ◽  
pp. 407-440 ◽  
Author(s):  
DARNELL F. HAWKINS
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Justice System ◽  
The United States ◽  
Future Research ◽  
Economic Factors ◽  
White Americans ◽  
Direct Effects ◽  
Causal Factors ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Black Life

Rates of homicide among blacks in the United States have been consistently higher than those of white Americans and of other American nonwhites. Subculture of violence theory has been the most widely accepted explanation for these differences. In this article, I argue that subculture theory ignores or underemphasizes a variety of historical-structural, situational, and economic factors that might explain high rates of black homicide. Seldom examined is the behavior of the law. Three theoretical propositions are offered as guides for future research. These propositions suggest that (1) the historical devaluing of black life, (2) official responses of the criminal justice system to prehomicide behavior among blacks, and (3) the direct effects of economic deprivation are important causal factors.

scholarly journals Cross-State Differences in the Processes Generating Black–White Disparities in Neonatal Mortality

Demography ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Sosnaud
Keyword(s):  
Birth Weight ◽  
Neonatal Mortality ◽  
Very Low Birth Weight ◽  
The United States ◽  
Neonatal Mortality Rate ◽  
Black And White ◽  
The Social ◽  
Weight Distributions ◽  
Specific Mortality ◽  
Birth Weight Distribution

Abstract The U.S. Black neonatal mortality rate is more than twice the White rate. This dramatic disparity can be decomposed into two components: (1) disparities due to differences in the distribution of birth weights, and (2) disparities due to differences in birth weight–specific mortality. I utilize this distinction to explore how the social context into which infants are born contributes to gaps in mortality between Black and White neonates. I analyze variation in Black–White differences in neonatal mortality across 33 states using 1995–2010 data. For each state, I calculate the contribution of differences in birth weight distribution versus differences in birth weight–specific mortality to the total disparity in mortality between White and Black neonates. Disparities are largely a product of different birth weight distributions between Black and White newborns (mirroring the pattern for the United States as a whole). However, in at least nine states, differences in birth weight–specific mortality make a notable contribution. This pattern is observed even among those from advantaged sociodemographic backgrounds and is driven by differences in mortality among very low birth weight neonates. This calls attention to inequality in medical care at birth as an importantcontributor to racial disparities in neonatal mortality.

scholarly journals Black and White discrimination in the United States: Evidence from an archive of survey experiment studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 205316801775386 ◽  
Author(s):  
L.J. Zigerell
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
The United States ◽  
Survey Experiment ◽  
Time Sharing ◽  
Job Applicant ◽  
Black And White ◽  
Political Candidate ◽  
The Social ◽  
Candidate Target

This study reports results from a new analysis of 17 survey experiment studies that permitted assessment of racial discrimination, drawn from the archives of the Time-sharing Experiments for the Social Sciences. For White participants (n=10 435), pooled results did not detect a net discrimination for or against White targets, but, for Black participants (n=2781), pooled results indicated the presence of a small-to-moderate net discrimination in favor of Black targets; inferences were the same for the subset of studies that had a political candidate target and the subset of studies that had a worker or job applicant target. These results have implications for understanding racial discrimination in the United States, and, given that some of the studies have never been fully reported on in a journal or academic book, the results also suggest the need for preregistration to reduce or eliminate publication bias in racial discrimination studies.

Integrating Medical Examiner and Police Report Data

Crisis ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (3) ◽  
pp. 160-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian W. Ward ◽  
Ryan T. Shields ◽  
Bert R. Cramer
Keyword(s):  
Reporting System ◽  
Strong Relationship ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medical Examiner ◽  
Public Health Issue ◽  
Violent Death ◽  
The Social ◽  
Police Report ◽  
Report Data ◽  
Reported Data

Background: Recently, suicide in the United States has begun to be viewed as a preventable public health issue. This has led to the creation of a National Violent Death Reporting System that collects and integrates data on the social circumstances surrounding suicides. Aims: The study examines data on social circumstances surrounding suicides as collected by the medical examiner report (ME) and police report (PR) and subsequently integrated into the state of Maryland’s violent death reporting system. Methods: Reported data on social circumstances surrounding suicides occurring in the years 2003–2006 in Maryland (n = 1,476) were analyzed by examining their prevalence in the ME and PR, strength of association, and integration. Results: With the exception of three circumstances, there was variation among reported circumstances in the ME and PR. Furthermore, there was only a moderately strong relationship between the ME and PR for most circumstances, while a significant increase occurred in the prevalence of these circumstances when ME and PR were integrated. Conclusions: The integration of ME and PR has the potential to increase our knowledge of the circumstances surrounding suicide and to better inform prevention efforts. However, before this potential can be reached, there are still issues that must be considered.

Social Work Luminaries: Luminaries Who Contributed to Social Work Theory and Scholarship in the Late 20th and Early 21st Centuries

Social Work ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles D. Garvin ◽  
Lorraine M. Gutiérrez ◽  
Larry E. Davis
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Workers ◽  
Work Practice ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Work Practice ◽  
Current Period ◽  
Social Work Theory ◽  
Select Group ◽  
The Social

Oxford Bibliographies in Social Work includes three articles describing the scholarly writings of a select group of deceased social workers who have been especially prominent and influential in the profession within the United States. We refer to these individuals as social work luminaries. These three bibliographies can be used to identify the publications of prominent individuals who have been most influential in the development of social work. We identified these individuals by first reviewing the biographies of significant social workers in the Franklin’s article on Encyclopedia of Social Work and obituaries collected by the Council on Social Work Education since the publication of the Encyclopedia of Social Work. From this list we reviewed the biographical material and publications, selecting the most prominent luminaries for each of the three articles. For each luminary we provide a brief biographical overview and one to five annotated citations of their most important publications. Respectively, the three articles describe the publications of luminaries (1) who were involved in the founding and creation of the social work profession in the United States during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, (2) who subsequently contributed to the clarification and elaboration of social work practice and theory, and (3) who contributed to social work theory and scholarship in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. This article presents social work luminaries who made major contributions to research and practice in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Luminaries in this era often made more use of scientific findings than those luminaries in the previous two articles. They related practice and theory to the social conditions of this more current period, and they often were concerned about a research-based (i.e., empirical) practice and incorporated contemporary ideas of social justice into their thinking. In this period, as in the previous one, most luminaries fell into one of several categories in terms of their contributions to social work scholarship, although several luminaries contributed to more than one category. We have organized this article around these different categories, which include contributions to social work methods; specific fields of service; the overall field of social work; diversity, multiculturalism, and empowerment; and social work research.

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