This 1966 paperback edition of a publication which first appeared in 1963 has by now been widely reviewed as a worthy contribution to the sociological study of deviant behavior. Its current appearance as a paperback is a testimonial both to the quality of the work and to the prominence of deviant behavior in this generation. In general the author places deviance in perspective, identifies types of deviant behavior, considers the role of rule makers and enforcers, and some of the problems in studying deviance. In addition, he develops a sequential model of deviance relying on the concept of career, a concept originally developed in studies of occupations. In his study of a particular kind of deviance, the use of marihuana, the author posits and tests systematically an hypothesis about the genesis of marihuana use for pleasure. The hypothesis traces the sequence of changes in individual attitude

Outsiders Studies in the Sociology of Deviance.

Find the secret to improve the quality of life by reading this group based modeling of development. This is a kind of book that you need now. Besides, it can be your favorite book to read after having this book. Do you ask why? Well, this is a book that has different characteristic with others. You may not need to know who the author is, how well-known the work is. As wise word, never judge the words from who speaks, but make the words as your good value to your life.

Group-Based Modeling of Development

The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives. Nicholas W. Townsend. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. 2002. 248 pp. ISBN 1-56639-958-0. $19.95 (paper). ISBN: 1-56639-957-2. $64.50 (cloth). The questions raised for scholars of fatherhood by recent trends in the intersection of work and family are well known: Why aren't fathers taking women's increased workforce participation as an opportunity to reduce their commitment to work and increase their commitment to housework and child care? Why do fathers' connections to their children typically attenuate in the aftermath of divorce and the father's departure from the household? Cultural anthropologist Nicholas W. Townsend argues that the prevailing answers to these questions fall short because they are partial and decontextualized. The premise of The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives is that to understand and help shape contemporary fatherhood, we need to know what fatherhood means to men. Central to these meanings, Townsend argues, are dominant cultural values that link hegemonic masculinity with pervasive images of fatherhood, creating ideals that all fathers must attend to, regardless of their ability (or desire) to live up to them. Understanding fatherhood from fathers' perspectives, then, becomes a task of exploring how "dominant cultural values about fatherhood are embodied and negotiated in individual lives" (p. 29). To this end, Townsend focuses on a group of men who graduated from the same Northern California high school in 1972, and he produces an analysis that is part case study, part ethnography, and part narrative analysis. The core data source is in-depth interviews about the meaning and practice of fatherhood with a racially and ethnically representative sample of 39 fathers from the graduating class. The core interviews are supplemented by couple interviews, interviews with others (e.g., female classmates, former teachers), observation, and a detailed portrait of the demographic and socioeconomic trends that have shaped the area over the last 50 years. The interview data are analyzed as narratives, and Townsend examines them with just the right balance of skepticism and sympathy. He appreciates that inconsistencies in accounts often signal "strains and conflicts in [the men's] values and their lives" (p. 28), and this is where context comes in. Combining the interview data rich contextual information, Townsend shows how the challenges and choices these fathers face can be traced to contradictions between dominant cultural values about fatherhood and economic and social realities. The dominant cultural notion of fatherhood for men of this era, he says, is the "package deal"; fatherhood is just one part of "successful" manhood, which also includes marriage, steady work, and home ownership. …

The Package Deal: Marriage, Work, and Fatherhood in Men's Lives

New frontiers in criminal careers research, 2000-2011: A state-of-the-art review

essentially UMC evangelicals who have been mobilizing against the liberals in the Church leadership on many social issues. As is well known, the mainline leadership is more liberal than the membership, and evangelical leadership is more conservative than the membership. How is it that the leadership in the mainline can be forced to the right by its members? Tipton touches upon ecclesiology as the answer, but he does not sufficiently develop the insight. The most interesting part of the book is what I think is his implicit answer: conservatives from outside of the mainline facilitate the activism of the conservatives within it in order to achieve secular political goals. For example, Chapter Five examines the Institute for Religion and Democracy (IRD), an independent activist group dedicated to fighting the liberal tendencies within mainline political activism, particularly in foreign affairs. The chapter shows how nonor marginal mainliners associated with the neo-conservatives in the Reagan administration such as Elliot Abrams, Michael Novak and Jeane Kirkpatrick worked to de-legitimate mainline activism both within and outside of the church. With 89 percent of the funding at one point coming from foundations on the political far right, such as the Scaife Family Charitable trusts (p. 175), and with connections to secular conservative institutions such as the American Enterprise Institute, the conclusion is clear—the liberal advocacy of the elites was being suppressed by secular conservatives, not by a dissenting group within the mainline. Chapter Six shows how the IRD evolved from a primary concern with foreign affairs advocacy of the mainline to fighting against the liberal leadership on culture wars issues like abortion and homosexuality. Chapter Eight is a case study of the rise and fall of a mainline dominated interfaith coalition named “Interfaith Impact for Justice and Peace.” This group died due to its inability to master another tension in the mainline, between the church as focused on “broad social teaching and focused policy research” or “mass mobilization and political organizing.” (p. 283) Chapter Nine is a case study of the advocacy of the National Council of Churches and Chapter Ten of the creation of mainline-oriented parachurch advocacy groups like the Interfaith Alliance. Unfortunately, this book lost an opportunity to provide deeper insights into the mainline’s political influence because it focuses on the trees with little view of the forest. There are extensive discussions of particular trees—profiles of directors of agencies from decades ago, details of who said what to whom, and page-long block quotes from interviews. The reader must dig through all the detail to find the unifying themes in the analysis. I learned a lot from the book, but primarily because I could put Tipton’s detailed data into my existing theoretical narrative about the mainline. For those lacking such a narrative, Tipton does not clearly provide one. But, for any scholar hoping to make an argument about the mainline’s advocacy, they must read this book, because its data will show you that certain hypotheses are just dead wrong, and others should be pursued further.

Promises I Can Keep: Why Poor Women Put Motherhood Before Marriage:

Does employment promote desistance from crime? Most perspectives assume that individuals who become employed are less likely to offend than those who do not. The critical issue has to do with the timing of employment transitions in the criminal trajectory. The turning point hypothesis expects reductions in offending after job entries, whereas the maturation perspective assumes desistance to have occurred ahead of successful transitions to legitimate work. Focusing on a sample of recidivist males who became employed during 2001-2006 (N = 783), smoothing spline regression techniques were used to model changes in criminal offending around the point of entry to stable employment. Consistent with the maturation perspective, the results showed that most offenders had desisted prior to the employment transition and that becoming employed was not associated with further reductions in criminal behavior. Consistent with the turning point hypothesis, we identified a subset of offenders who became employed during an active phase of the criminal career and experienced substantial reductions in criminal offending thereafter. However, this trajectory describes less than 2 percent of the sample. The patterns observed in this research suggest that transition to employment is best viewed as a consequence rather than as a cause of criminal desistance. Language: en

Changes in criminal offending around the time of job entry: a study of employment and desistance

Group-based methodology (SPGM) has been presented as suitable to test for the existence of subpopulations not directly observable. Several criminological studies have used this methodology, and it is fair to say that typological theorizing has been spurred by its development. In particular, much of the empirical support for Moffitt's taxonomy (1993, 2006) is from studies using SPGM. In a small simulation experiment, I investigate whether SPGM is suitable for such tests, and I examine the extent to which similar trajectories might equally well result from mechanisms suggested by general theories. I conclude that, as it is usually applied, SPGM cannot provide evidence either for or against a taxonomy and that the usual findings can be explained by competing theories. I argue that this result is not only because of the methodology characteristics but also because of the modeling strategy applied.

Distinguishing facts and artifacts in group-based modeling*

The Nordic countries have developed similar advanced register data systems for purposes of producing official statistics and research. The register’s advantages in criminological research include the ability to maintain data on the total population; the possibility of studying small subpopulations; a virtually continuous timeline in longitudinal data sets; using panel data designs with no sample attrition; having few or no nonresponses or other missing data; making connections between different observation units, such as family members; and the ability to construct research designs that are practically impossible with surveys. Use of register data for research requires legislation that protects the privacy of individuals and regulates access to data. Register data have been used extensively in demographic, economic, and sociological research. There is a huge and largely untapped potential for their use in criminological research.

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/658881

Nordic Register Data and Their Untapped Potential for Criminological Knowledge

Social bonding theories argue that marriage has a restraining effect on criminal offending. Given what is known about marriage and union formation in contemporary Western societies, it is realistic to assume that the social and emotional bonding between married partners predates the actual date of marriage. In consequence, if these processes influence criminal behavior, we should expect significant reductions in offending several years prior to marriage. Independently of the social bonding theory, it is possible to treat marriage as an outcome of rather than a causal agent in the process of criminal desistance. An individual who has "cleaned up his act" may be more attractive in the market; marriages may be unlikely to occur at elevated points of the criminal trajectory for this reason. These issues have received limited attention in prior research. In this study we examine criminal offending trajectories using a within-individual design and population-wide register data on Norwegian men who entered marital unions in the years 1995-2001 (N=120,821). Our results show a gradual and substantial decrease in offending levels during the five years prior to marriage, followed by a small but a non-trivial increase after the formalization of the relationship. Overall, the decade around the marital event is characterized by major strides towards criminal desistance. However, the effect of marital event is negligible relative to the amount of desistance that takes place prior to marriage. Earlier research may have overstated the importance of marriage as a discrete life course event as a causal factor in criminal desistance.

https://halshs.archives-ouvertes.fr/halshs-00870455/document

Understanding the Marriage Effect: Changes in Criminal Offending Around the Time of Marriage

Investigate the transition from prison to employment and the relationship between post-release employment and recidivism. We use a sample of every person released from Norwegian prisons in 2003 (N = 7,476), and they are followed through 2006 with monthly measures. We estimate the time to recidivism using discrete time survival models, conditioning upon both pre-release characteristics and post-release time-varying covariates (employment, educational enrollment and participation in labor market programs). The majority of former inmates were employed at some point in our data window, but it took approximately 30 months for 30% of them to become employed. The hazard of recidivism is substantially lower (0.12, p < .001) when former inmates are employed compared with unemployed, although observable individual characteristics can account for a large share of this association (0.50, p < .001, after adjustment). The negative association between employment and recidivism remains when controlling for other post-release statuses. Although post-release employment periods are associated with a lower risk of recidivism for all categories of principal offence, the magnitude of the association varies. The association is smaller for those receiving social benefits. The findings are consistent with theories suggesting that employment reduces the risk of recidivism.

Torbjørn Skardhamar

Papers

Changes in criminal offending around the time of job entry: a study of employment and desistance

Distinguishing facts and artifacts in group-based modeling*

Nordic Register Data and Their Untapped Potential for Criminological Knowledge

Understanding the Marriage Effect: Changes in Criminal Offending Around the Time of Marriage

Post-release Employment and Recidivism in Norway