Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: The Minnesota Population Center has undertaken several projects to create and disseminate harmonized census data for research and classroom use. These include the Integrated Public Use Microdata Series database (IPUMS-USA, IPUMS-International, and IPUMS-CPS) and the National Historical Geographic Information System (NHGIS). IPUMS-USA and IPUMS-International create uniform codes and documentation across 150 years of US census data and 50years of census microdata from twenty-five other countries around the world. IPUMS-CPS does the same for 45 years of US Current Population Survey data. All data and documentation are available to researchers free of charge at http://ipums.org.The NHGIS provides aggregate census data and GIS-compatible boundary files for the United States between 1790 and 20006, available free of charge at http://www.nhgis.org.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For decades, Minnesota history books omitted the story of how a white crowd numbering in the thousands lynched three Southern black men in one of the state’s largest cities. This research about how Minnesota newspaper coverage of this one event—that in some ways epitomized, and in other ways was an anathema to, much that marked American culture in 1920—constructed the account, and in the process shaped perceptions of responsibility for the lynching and perceptions of marginalized groups, people, and ideas. In the analysis of fifteen mainstream daily newspapers and two African American weeklies, research for this case study shows how dominant voices reinforced dominant presentations of responsibility for the lynching, presentations that reinforced dominant social structures. Additionally, it presents how black and white women’s, and black men’s, voices were absent or rare, as well as addresses information and ideas not reported or slighted and how media’s construction of the lynching contributed to hegemony.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Low turnout remains a persistent
problem in American politics. The decline in turnout has been studied
in various ways. In some cases scholars analyzed aggregate data for
voting turnout and compared turnout in election districts with high and
low concentrations of particular social groups (Neimi and Weisberg,
1993). In other cases, voting survey provided an additional opportunity
to examine the causes and correlates of turnout at the individual
level. Various researchers find that socio-economic factors are related
to turnout. People with more education vote at much higher rates than
those with less education, higher income and middle class people are
more likely to vote than lower income people. Based on various surveys,
it has been widely accepted that lower class people are considered low
rate of voting turnout and they also contributed decline of overall
voting turnout in American politics more than higher class people
(Bennett 1991; Reiter 1979). However, Leighley and Nagler (1992) argue
that the class differences between voters and nonvoters in presidential
elections remain the same through 1964-1988. We will ask whether the
lower class really show lower voting turnout than the upper class. We
also ask how the difficulty of registration affects lower class people
by looking at two different states, Michigan and Minnesota, where
Michigan has harder registration law while registration law in
Minnesota is quite moderate. This research question starts from the
problem of accuracy of survey research. As Neimi and Weisberg (1993)
argue, surveys always obtain a higher turnout rate than official
statistics reveal. They argue that misreporting turnout is related to
demographics, with more highly educated people most likely to claim
they voted when they did not. To determine how accurate
individual-level surveys are, I will use the Bayesian method of
ecological inference to exam registration and voting behavior in
Michigan and Minnesota.
This study is expected to contribute to the study of voting behavior in
several ways. First, through the reliable ecological inference, we do
not have to rely solely on the survey data to study individual voting
behavior. Secondly, as we are able to analyze aggregate-level, we can
locate behavior within its social and political context. Thirdly, the
analysis of registration and income is expected to yield in depth
discussion of voting behavior

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Literature regarding female offenders suggests that women have unique needs relating to parenting, childcare, abuse or trauma, mental health, substance abuse, relationships, and self-concept issues (Bloom, Owen, and Covington, 2003; Chesney-Lind, 2000). Emerging interest in gender-responsivity has prompted research regarding gender-specific, objective classification systems (Hardyman and Van Voorhis, 2004). Research is currently being conducted to construct and validate a dynamic risk/needs assessment tool for women offenders; referred to as the “trailer,” this instrument taps self-report data and is designed to gather information related to the gender-responsive needs of women. The “trailer” is being validated in Maui County (Hawaii) and Minnesota. This paper presents preliminary analyses of responses to the “trailer” and six-month follow-up measures of new arrests, returns to prison, and serious misconducts in prison from a sample of 569 women sentenced to probation, incarceration, and a drug court in Minnesota.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Research comparing per capita incarceration rates by race (White and Black state prison inmates per 100,000 state residents of each race) has found striking and persistent racial disproportionality in Minnesota prison populations (Blumstein 1988, Tonry 1991, Mauer 1997). Analysis of total (prison plus jail) inmate populations reveals lower but still very substantial racial disparity (The Sentencing Project 2004). Minnesota actually has a much lower-than-average per capita Black incarceration rate (in the studies cited above, two-thirds to three-quarters of the states had higher rates); Minnesota's high Black/White ratio is due to its extremely low White per capita incarceration rate—the lowest in the nation in all four of the cited studies. This paper explores the extent to which the racial disparities in Minnesota's prison populations reflect crime patterns, sentencing laws and guidelines, decisions to depart from guidelines recommendations, prosecutorial charging and plea bargaining decisions, and law enforcement practices.