Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Criminal career research finds that the most consistent predictors of continued offending are early onset and frequent, serious offending as a juvenile. Considerable attention has been directed to these chronic offenders as they contribute to over half of the offenses committed by juveniles. However, only one study demarcates by type of offense for chronic juveniles and finds that prior record is predictive of serious nonviolent offenses and personality characteristics for violent offenses. In Texas, approximately 3% of juveniles processed by the juvenile justice system are committed. Arguably, they constitute the most violent and chronic juvenile offenders. Using data from the Texas Youth Commission, this research extends prior work by examining subgroups of chronic offenders. The data consist of all juveniles released in 2000 with arrest data follow-up for five years extending into adulthood. Analyses employ logistic and Cox regression to investigate the factors affecting recidivism for serious, violent, and chronic juvenile offenders using static and dynamic factors from pre-, during, and post-commitment time periods. Theoretical refinements and the implications for treatment and risk assessment instruments are addressed.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper examines the viability of studying life course criminality issues of the onset of offending, persistence and chronic criminality among adult populations. Sampson and Laub have argued that important information on these issues can be gleaned from tracking people into middle and later stages of their lives. Using data for a population of both men and women from the combined files of juvenile police records, young adult police and court records, and subject interviews, this study underscores the declining significance of age in the study of desistance.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Several of the concepts in Goffman’s Asylums (1961) and Foucault’s Madness and Civilizations (1965) can be used to illustrate current problems in mental health care facilities despite the movement to deinstitutionalize treatment of the mentally ill. The alternative community-based mental health care facilities fail to rehabilitate and integrate the chronically mentally ill into the community. The identity of the individual is demolished by the objectives of the institution to rehabilitate and integrate the resident into the community. The institution is able to shape the self in order to fulfill the goals of the institution through a process of mortification, discipline, punishments, and privileges. Drawing from work experience at Andrew Residence, a mental health care facility, it can be said that the mentally ill continue to be treated in a way that is dehumanizing. Because mental health facilities continue to dominate and control the mentally ill, the goals of mental health facilities need to be reevaluated to fit the goals of the individual and the residents need to be given a sense of control and empowerment. It should be accepted that the full service mental health facility, rather than the community-based mental health facility can provide the best care for the mentally ill once the goals of the institutions are reevaluated.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper examines one of the unforeseen consequences of chronic illness "social isolation". Social isolation refers to a negative state of aloneness or diminished participation in social relationships which can happen in two ways:either the ill person, given the symptoms, unexpected crises, lengthy hospitalizations and convalescence, difficult regimens and loss of energy, withdraws from most social contact, or the ill person is avoided or even abandoned by friends and relatives. In either case, social relationships are disrupted or falter and break down. My interviews with a large number of non-hospitalized ill persons suffering from a variety of chronic conditions reveal that lessened and impaired social contact and a sense of increased social isolation are among the more detrimental consequences of chronic illness and has serious implications for effective health care.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: More than ten million Americans are diagnosed with a functional somatic syndrome. In part because of the medically marginal nature of these syndromes, hundreds of electronic support groups have been created to address the concerns of this population. Medical researchers are split in their evaluation of the impact of these electronic support groups, and there is growing awareness that new methods, borrowed from ethnography, are needed in this area. The proposed project aims to combine methods of ethnographic research and textual analysis to study a year in the life of one such electronic support group. Substantively, particular interest is paid to the role of electronic support groups in the medicalization of human experience and the impact of this on the well being of participants. Methodologically, I hope to add to the tools available for the broader study of cybercommunities and cybertexts.