Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Community policing is a political philosophy in which the police and police department are seen as members of the community, with police officers being part of where they live and work. Cities and counties that subscribe to this philosophy tend to do much more community work than traditional police departments. The basic idea is to create bonds of trust and reliance between police and the public.
This new policing paradigm tells police to develop skills in planning, problem solving, organization, interpersonal communications, and perhaps most importantly critical thinking. At the heart of the police transition to community policing is the question: "How do the police identify and deliver high-quality services to the community?" Historically, police services have been reactive and unscientific with attention given to proactive policing.
The efficient delivery of police services requires a systematic process to assess the needs of the public and translate those needs into police services and programs for delivery to the community. This project examines one community; the Sisseton-Wahpeton Oyate in South Dakota, and analyzes the links between federal, state, tribal, and county political processes, which impact the beginnings of this philosophy.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: One of the central propositions advanced in Gottfredson and Hirschi’s (1990) General Theory of Crime is that low self-control is an invariant characteristic that remains unchanged over time and across contexts. Contrary to this proposition, however, recent research (Ariely and Loewenstein, 2006) suggests that at least some aspects of self-control may vary with situational factors. The current research note extends Ariely and Loewenstein’s (2006) work, in particular the finding that sexual arousal increased individuals’ willingness to engage in risky sexual behaviors Specifically, the invariance proposition is examined by the effect of sexual arousal on self-control among a sample of male college students who were randomly assigned to one of two arousal conditions or to a no arousal condition. The impact of these conditions on changes in the six components of self-control captured on the Grasmick et al. (1993) scale were examined. The results revealed that contrary to expectations, individuals who were exposed to the more intense arousal conditions displayed higher amounts of self-control than those who experienced less arousing conditions. Limitations and suggestions for future research are presented, as are the study’s implications for the recently proposed concept of “self-control strength.”

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Over the last quarter century the ‘tough on crime’ movement, accompanied by neoliberalist individualism, has sought to “devolve” responsibility for crime prevention from state agencies to the community through programs like neighborhood watch, community policing, and community-based prevention programs in a process termed responsibilization. Political leaders have increasingly relegated the responsibility for crime prevention to local community-based agencies while advocating a punitive “tough on crime” approach in order to maintain the appearance of power over criminals and offending behavior. This paper presents the results of ethnographic field work examining community-based youth-serving agencies, a crime prevention task force, and policy conferences in Southern California in order to elucidate the degree to which the strategies of prevention and punitive crime control coalesce politically and on the ground. Practitioners of community-based prevention agencies tailor their procedures to correspond to punitive strategies, but also resist these strategies, thus producing a complex and rich environment of control, correspondence, and resistance. The paper suggests that allowing individuals and communities to shape, implement, and manage the state’s indirect crime control strategy of prevention actually creates opportunities for community-based practitioners to interject their own, sometimes countervailing, practices and philosophies of prevention.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper draws from the social movement theory of framing to identify the multiple frames and analyze the dynamic framing process Margaret Sanger used in the rhetoric of the American birth control movement. Prior research has addressed neither the nature of framing as a process nor the agency of leaders in developing and manipulating this process. I use the case of Margaret Sanger because it has not been adequately utilized by either sociologists or historians. My analysis of Sanger’s public writings finds that she used the following frames to justify the legalization of birth control: feminist, maternalist, eugenic, democratic, and responsible parenthood. Historians have criticized Sanger for shifting her views in order to ally herself with more powerful members of society, particularly doctors and members of the eugenics movement. I find evidence that Sanger’s combination of both dynamic and static frames in her framing repertoire may have been less a product of her shifting alliances and more a deliberate social movement tactic. Although not all of the frames I analyzed evolved over time, the fluidity of the framing process demands further attention by social movement scholars, especially with regard to the role of leaders in mobilizing diverse and broad audiences.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Gottfredson and Hirschi’s general theory of crime has generated an impressive array of theoretical and empirical research. Recently, Hirschi has redefined self-control as the tendency to consider the full range of potential costs of a particular act, and suggests that such inhibiting factors vary in both number and salience in how they relate to criminal activity. He also suggests that a person’s level of self control is influenced by their bonds to others. This study reports the results of an initial attempt to examine whether Hirschi’s recent restatement of the relationship between social control and self control can be used to accurately predict offending likelihood (i.e., drunk driving). Results suggest that Hirschi’s restatement of the relationship between social and self control is accurate and that social bonds impact offending likelihood through their impact on self control as measured using Hirschi’s new operationalization of self-control. Additional analyses suggest that the anticipated pathway between bonds and self-control only operates through Hirschi’s newly conceptualized measure of self control, but does not appear to operate through self control when measured using an alternative measure (i.e., the “Grasmick” attitudinal scale). Future theoretical and empirical directions are outlined.