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Toward a Gendered Social Bond/Male Peer Support Theory of University Woman Abuse 

Alberto Godenzi, Martin D. Schwartz, Walter S. DeKeseredy

Despite many calls for integrated woman abuse theories, few have made any such attempt.  Taking as a starting point that gender blind and conservative theories may still have some value, Hirschi’s social bond theory is fleshed out with insights from feminist male peer support theory and other critical perspectives.  The goal is not a formal new theory but rather a heuristic designed to show the value of adding feminist insight to gender blind theory.  Hirschi is turned upside down with an argument that attachment and involvement with conventional peers may in fact promulgate violence against women on the college campus, when it is noted that conventional institutions are patriarchal and part of a rape culture.  University groups (social fraternities, sports teams, etc.) may enforce adherence through homophobia and group pressure, while promoting a hypermasculine culture that encourages men to use coercion and force to increase their “count” of sexual encounters. [Access full text via SpringerLink]

The Use of Incarceration in the United States

James Austin, Marino A. Bruce, Leo Carroll, Patricia L. McCall, Stephen C. Richards (American Society of Criminology, National Policy Committee)

The past two decades have produced a profound increase in imprisonment in the United States, resulting in a prison population of two million and expenditures of over $35 billion annually on corrections, while other important government services are underfunded. Imprisonment is highest for minority males largely because of the war on drugs, which has also dramatically increased the incarceration of women and created nearly 1.5 million children having a parent incarcerated. The American Society of Criminology (ASC) is greatly concerned about these trends. President Roland Chilton directed the ASC National Policy Committee (NPC) to draft a policy paper on the incarceration issue, and the ASC Executive Board directed the NPC to develop a policy paper on "Incarceration Trends” that would not speak for the Society but to its membership. This article explains the main ideas, themes and recommendations of the full policy paper. It analyzes the sources and effects of the increased use of imprisonment, drawing attention to the negative effects of excessive incarceration -- a topic the NPC believes criminologists have paid insufficient attention.  The paper and its recommendations reflect a concern that the ASC needs to set a research agenda that is independent of the federal government and conventional wisdom.   The NPC hopes this paper will stimulate a healthy and much overdue debate on the role of the ASC in public policy in general, and the merits of widespread incarceration in particular. [Access full text via SpringerLink]

Peter Singer’s ‘Heavy Petting’ and the Politics of Animal Sexual Assault

Piers Beirne

This paper confronts Peter Singer’s controversial suggestion that human-animal sexual relations should be tolerated if they do not involve cruelty, a pseudo-liberal position contradicted by the author’s recent testimony to the Maine State Legislature in favor of a Bill to criminalise bestiality. Against Singer the paper argues that human-animal sex is a harm that is wrong for the same reasons as is inter-human assault - because it involves coercion, produces pain and suffering, and violates the rights of another being. Positively, however, Singer’s text opens up for much overdue discussion some difficult questions about the politics of animal sexual assault. [Access full text via SpringerLink]

See Piers Beirne's syllabus on Animal Abuse (Animals and Society section of American Sociological Association)

Crime and Crime Control in an Age of Globalization

Gregg Barak

This essay examines the impact of globalization on both crime and crime control at the national and global levels. In order to make conceptual sense out of the transforming nature of these activities at the turn of the 21^st Century, a threefold analysis is presented: (1) an overview of the three traditional developmental models of crime and crime control -- modernization, world system, and opportunity; (2) a characterization of crime and crime control in relationship to the more recently emerging models of globalization; and (3) a discussion of the implications of the dialectical relations between the models of development and the models of globalization. Assessments of the models and other provisional conclusions are drawn based on a recent 15 nation-state survey of both crime and crime control in developed, developing and post-traditional nation-states. [Access full text via SpringerLink]

Guys, Gangs, and Girlfriend Abuse by Mark D. Totten.  Reviewed by Emanuel Boussios [Access full text via SpringerLink]